Good grief!

President Trump tried, in Washington parlance, to “walk back” the doubt he expressed Monday in Helsinki about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 US election:

This is ridiculous, as he only repeated in Helsinki what he has said dozens of times on other occasions, but the ferocious reaction, even among Republicans, to his doing it in front of Russian President Putin got to him. Still he added in this feeble lie that it might be others.

He has also managed to question the mutual defense provisions on which NATO is based, by worrying about whether Albania or Montenegro might provoke a war. That is precisely what Putin would want him to do. None of the allies can now be even moderately confident that the US would come to their aid in the event of war. Russia, a middling power, no longer faces the strongest alliance in history and can pick off bits and pieces in its “near abroad” at will, as Putin has already done in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Who is next?

This weakening of an already declining America is purposeful, not incidental. Trump is far more concerned with his own image and strength than with the nation’s. He announced in Monday’s press conference that he had turned around America’s relations with Russia in a single meeting, just as he claimed he had ended Kim Jong-un’s threat to America a few weeks before in a single meeting. Kim has let him know that is nonsense by continuing his missile and nuclear programs as well as dissing Secretary of State Pompeo on his last visit to Pyongyang. Putin will do likewise. Trump’s is a needy ego, one that craves always being at the center of attention and credited with superhuman feats. If the nation’s interests are too difficult to pursue, that’s not a problem. He’ll pursue his own.

Who follows such an obviously inadequate and self-serving leader? Something like 40% of Americans do. What they see in him is a mirror of themselves: a needy person who commands the kind of attention and credit they think their due. They see strength where I see weakness. They see truthfulness where I see mendacity. They see capability where I see incompetence. Fox News has convinced them that the Emperor is wearing a magnificent suit of clothes.

Are we close to the moment when the little boy cries out “but he isn’t wearing anything at all!” I doubt it. The Republicans do not seem ready to do more than complain about Trump kissing Putin’s ass in Helsinki. Trump’s followers will remain loyal and the Republican party firmly in his hands, even if in private many members of Congress are complaining bitterly. In the meanwhile, the rest of the world, including more than half of Americans, sees all too clearly what Trump is wearing. And their reaction is “good grief!”