Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Thursday, April 28, 2016

The reviews on The Trumper's foreign policy speech are in...


and they're bad.

Trump excels at judging beauty contestants and building casinos and golf courses, abilities that are useless for a world leader.  Trump showed us all how poorly prepared he is to be the leader of the free world. His speech was naive, incoherent, and self-contradictory.

Trump talked about regaining the trust of our allies, then threatened to pull out of NATO.

Trump says he'd be unpredictable, then expects America to trust him with nuclear codes.

Trump praised Western values then questioned supporting democracy around the world.

Trump's ideas on torture are completely out of sync with military leaders, international and American law.

And here's a little advice for the beauty contest impresario:   When you're going to give a speech to impress America and the world and you use a teleprompter, it's a good idea to go over the speech so that you can avoid embarrassing yourself by mispronouncing country names.  It's Tan-zan-NIA, not Tan-ZANE-ia. Apparently The Trumper is lazy, and didn't bother to read the speech someone wrote for him, and it showed in his halting, stumbling presentation -- and in the mispronunciation of a well-known African country.

Here are some of the reviews:



The Conservative Review:

Ouch! Scathing Reviews for Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech






A Mess of Contradictions by Fred Kaplan:

 Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech was even worse than his usual incoherent rambling. I didn’t think it possible, but Donald Trump’s “major foreign policy address” on Wednesday—a written speech, which he read off a teleprompter—was even more incoherent than his impromptu ramblings of the past several months. In fact, it may stand as the most senseless, self-contradicting foreign policy speech by any major party’s presidential nominee in modern history.




Donald Trump’s big foreign policy speech, explained by Daniel W. Drezner

I suffered through all of Donald Trump's foreign policy speech. This is my story. Trump doesn’t really have any useful ideas or strategies to offer for how to improve American foreign policy. What he does have, however, is a really stinging indictment of the existing foreign policy establishment. 

This certainly resonates with a lot of Americans, even people who wouldn’t otherwise sympathize with Trump. The challenge for Hillary Clinton will be to point out that whatever qualms one has about the foreign policy status quo, Trump’s alternative would be worse.


The Wall Street Journal:


"For prepared remarks, or for that matter even an after-dinner talk, Mr. Trump’s speech was especially rife with contradictions. He said the conduct of foreign policy must be “more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything.” He also said the conduct of foreign policy must be “disciplined, deliberate and consistent.” 


 [skip] 

"Mr. Trump isn’t known for close readings of his briefing books, if such documents exist, and deep policy knowledge is obviously not the source of his political appeal. But Americans typically prefer Presidents who are conversant about the world’s biggest problems beyond a sound bite or two, and Hillary Clinton will aggressively litigate the businessman’s Commander in Chief credentials, to put it mildly."


The National Review:

Trump’s ‘Foreign Policy’: Incoherent and Shallow


The guy who stood in front of an audience yesterday and lit into past and present administrations for their foreign policy mistakes showed America and the world that he has little to no understanding of the subject and given any power would be a national and international disaster.


Shallowness is a "deep experience" for this clown:


trump quote 2

13 comments:

Dave Miller said...

And those are the views from conservatives.

Shaw Kenawe said...

From Politico:

In his address to an elite, invitation-only Washington foreign policy audience Wednesday, Donald Trump promised that, as president, he would restore a “coherent” vision to America’s role in the world.

But across the ideological spectrum, and even among natural allies, Trump’s speech received a failing grade for coherence and drew snickering and scorn from foreign policy insiders who remain unconvinced that Trump is up to the job.

“It struck me as a very odd mishmash,” said Doug Bandow, a foreign policy scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, who shares many of Trump’s beliefs about scaling back America’s role abroad. “He called for a new foreign policy strategy, but you don’t really get the sense he gave one.

Donnie Little Hands said...



Yesterday Trumpolino gave a feckless foreign policy speech.

Trumpolino gave few specifics how he as President will reverse the foreign policy positions of the present White House.

Americans should feel a renewed sense of dread, fear and loathing knowing that a narcissistic, know-nothing carnival barker is the choice of a major political party in this country.

And those who believe he's fit to lead this country and the world are crazier than Trumpolino.

Anonymous said...


SHaw, did yousee this?

BOEHNER UNLEASHED
John Boehner says Ted Cruz is “Lucifer in the flesh” and a “miserable son of a bitch”

TeaPublicans eating their own.

Kevin Robbins said...

In all fairness, here's Ann Coulter with a dissenting view:

GREATEST FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH SINCE WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS.

Please resume trashing him now.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Oh thank you for that, Kevin.

Everyone knows that Ann Coulter is the go-to expert on foreign policy.

Didn't she publish a coloring book on American foreign policy during her fabulous career as a hack writer of simple-minded idiocies?

Shaw Kenawe said...

Anonymous,

Was Boehner on or off the sauce when he said that?

DLH, the The American Academy of Middle School Experts on Foreign Policy gave The Trumper's speech a C+.

Dave,

Yes, those are the conservative reviews. And from there it goes down hill.

Dave Miller said...

In addition to calling the speech "Nonsensical" Sen Graham added this... “This speech was unnerving. It was pathetic in its content, and it was scary in terms of its construct. If you had any doubt that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief, this speech should’ve removed it...”

I guess that's what you get when you essentially say we need to be consistently unpredictable... can anyone explain that? Anyone?

Les Carpenter said...


John Boehner just confirmed everything liberals suspected about the Republican Party

Shaw Kenawe said...

Well Boehner confirms what we -- liberal, libertarians, sane Republicans, the rest of the world -- have known and have been saying for years:

John Boehner was the Speaker of the House as recently as a single year ago. He is, himself, a conservative Republican. And he is saying, flatly, that the Republican Party has been captured by morons, goofballs, and "Lucifer." He is saying that the party has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan wouldn't recognize it.

Boehner is validating one of the most persistent and controversial critiques of the modern Republican Party. And he has the authority to do so.

Has the Republican Party become "an insurgent outlier"?
In 2012, the congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein wrote a column for the Washington Post diagnosing what they saw to be the central problem in modern American politics.

"The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics," they wrote. "It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

"When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges."


Call Me Hank said...

Re:John Boehner on Ted Cruz: Lucifer might say (as he allegedly said of Michael Eisner), "I don't know if you could call him a 'role model,' but, yes, Ted Cruz is the kind of guy I look up to."

Ray Cranston said...

It looks like the GOP is beginning to understand what a huuuuuge mistake it was to support Trump. Buyers remorse? Except for the under educated, who else is for him?

queenish69 said...

Trump does shallowness very well.