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We all just saw Donald Trump deliver his crazy speech on “a new foreign policy direction for our country,” right?
Well, for those not planning their lives around this year’s political sideshow, Trump took up an invite from the Center for National Interest to speak on how his administration would handle international affairs. The probable GOP nominee laid a framework for a reputation damaging global posture that would surely cost the United States a ton of allies, but that looks like a big delicious steak to his Main Street voters. Hunting down ISIS through ultra covert tactics, because we “have to be unpredictable.” Telling our friends abroad that if they don’t support U.S. military operations they can say goodbye to our protective embrace. Declaring that if he makes an effort to get the Olympics hosted by the U.S. it will absolutely, 100 percent happen! It was all quite macho and very much the rhetoric of a known “winner” like Trump.
New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog has a great rundown of the whole half hour speech, and their best observation comes when they call out the sheer hypocrisy of The Donald’s bulldog stance:
“As with so many of the Donald’s remarks, most of his address at the Mayflower reads like satire. His speech was framed as a call for ‘a disciplined, deliberate, and consistent foreign policy,’ yet was littered with obvious contradictions: Trump criticized Obama for raising doubts about America’s willingness to support its allies — then promised that if those allies refused to donate to American arms manufacturers, ‘the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.’ He lamented America’s misguided interventions in Iraq and Libya and Obama’s reluctance to intervene in Syria. He called nuclear weapons ‘the single biggest problem that we have today in the world,’ and demanded that we ‘renew’ our nuclear-weapons arsenal. He promised that ‘unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and aggression will not be my first instinct,’ then suggested that Iran’s brief detention of ten U.S. sailors (who had drifted into its territorial waters) was an act of belligerence that demanded a muscular response.”
The more we have to hear Trump rail on in this election, the more listening to him feels like spending time with your roommate and her boyfriend that you kind of hate—not because he’s abusive. Just because he’s a complete dick and you can’t understand at all why your friend cannot or will not see the truth. He just keeps making comments that are so stupid and so offensive they approache satire and you think, “He can’t possibly mean what he’s saying. Nobody says these kinds of things. Who even raised this person?!”
If Donald was just some guy in a bar you could walk away and maybe laugh about him later, but he’s not just some drunk idiot. His choices now affect the emotional health and well being of someone very important to you—and because he’s dating your roommate, they affect your emotional health and well being, too—so you get super angry. It’s her life and her choice, but now it’s starting to screw up your whole deal and you’re getting really frustrated and a little scared this is never going to end.
After six months you finally loose your cool and ask, “Why are you even with him? He’s awful!” And your friend says, “You don’t see him when it’s just the two of us. He’s sweet to me. He’s just not good at other people. He gets nervous and overly excited and says the wrong thing. But he doesn’t mean it. We’ve talked about it a lot and he wants to be better.” But then the next time you’re all together he says some crap like “Woman card!” and you’re sure he’s incapable of being a decent guy. You always thought your friend was better than just chasing a guy with a big bank account, but suddenly you’re questioning everything and all you want to do is drink and cry.
So. Yeah. That’s definitely what this is starting to feel like.
The complete video of Trump’s speech is more than an hour, and if you want to skip ahead to his remarks they start at 34:30. Watch it and then get on your group text and decompress with friends about what a terrible boyfriend—sorry, presidential hopeful—Donald Trump is and vent about how you wish you could just break up with him for your poor, idiot friend and delete his number from her phone—sorry, we mean delete his name from the presidential ballot. Donald Trump is the worst.
