On the menu today: It’s Donald Trump’s world, we’re just living in it, and everyone must decide for themselves how they’re going to adjust to the once and future president. French president Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin offer starkly different examples of how to respond to the impending second term of Trump.
World Leaders Greet Trump: A Cheer, a Sneer, Fear, and Nude Pictures of Melania
Donald Trump will take the oath of office January 20, 2025, and barring some health issue, will be the president of the United States until January 20, 2029. If you’re a head of state who wants a good relationship with the U.S. for the foreseeable future, you had better figure out how to get along with Trump and where you have common ground. You’d better take the initiative, you must figure out where you disagree, and you’d better pick your battles carefully. Disagreements are inevitable, but discord is not.
Most human beings like being praised and don’t like being criticized. The president-elect is no different.
French president Emmanuel Macron gets it. He extended the invitation to the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral and literally warmly embraced Trump upon his arrival at Élysée Palace, telling Trump, “It’s a great honor for French people to welcome you five years later. Welcome back again.”
As the Associated Press described:
An actual red carpet was rolled out for Trump as Macron bestowed the kind of full diplomatic welcome that France offers sitting American presidents, complete with trumpets blaring and members of the Republican Guard in full uniform. It was a clear sign that even though Trump doesn’t take office until Jan. 20, 2025, Macron and other European leaders are already working to win his favor and treating him as America’s representative on the world stage.”
As Trump arrived at the official residence of the French president, Macron went out of his way to project an image of close ties, offering handshakes and plenty of back-patting for the cameras.
In a video posted later on X, Macron could be heard asking Trump: “You remember?” as both men entered a reception room.
“I remember,” Trump answered.
Trump spent about 90 minutes inside, meeting first with Macron before they were joined by [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelensky for about 35 minutes.
Zelensky gets it, too. On X, Monday, Zelensky described his meeting with Trump and Macron on December 7:
The most important thing is to work together on how to end this war — that is our top priority. During the meeting in Paris, this was exactly what we focused on, and it was a very productive conversation. I reiterate my gratitude to President Macron for organizing it, as well as my deep gratitude to President Trump for his strong resolve to bring this war to a fair end. This is the right approach, and it is important that all details are thoroughly worked out to ensure that peace is truly durable.
We know that America has the capacity to accomplish remarkable things — things that others have not been able to achieve. To succeed in ending this war, we need unity — the unity of America, Europe, and everyone in the world who values security — as well as strong positions and guarantees for peace.
I told President Trump that Putin fears only him and, perhaps, China. And that’s the truth — only decisiveness can bring this war to a just end and ensure lasting peace. Action is needed now to restore the proper international order. [Emphasis added.]
Do you think Trump likes being told that he’s one of perhaps two forces in the world that can intimidate Vladimir Putin? Yeah, I think so, too. (By the way, did you notice that in his meeting with Zelensky, Trump wore a blue suit and yellow tie, the colors of Ukraine? Maybe that’s sartorial coincidence. Maybe not.)
For those who think the Ukrainians are dreading the return of Trump, the sense in many Ukrainian circles is that the Biden administration’s various restrictions and slow walking of arms has made Joe Biden a frustrating and contradictory ally, while Trump will be, if nothing else, clear and decisive. After the U.S. presidential election, one Ukrainian independent media group concluded of national security adviser Jake Sullivan, “The best news for today is that this person will no longer be in power. Sullivan did everything he could not to respond to Russia’s aggression in 2014 under Obama with his peacemaking policy. In 2022-2024 under him, Russia maintained its impunity. Farewell, we will not miss you!” (This is why some contend Sullivan should be working at Chipotle.)
Sullivan’s incoming replacement, Florida congressman Mike Waltz, combines a clear-eyed view of Russian aggression with realistic expectation that our European allies, by virtue of their geographic proximity to Ukraine and fiscal resources, must step up and take a larger role. Waltz laid out his thinking in a September 2023 op-ed:
Most Americans are sympathetic to Ukraine and understand Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion is the next big step in his goal of recreating the old Soviet Union. If Putin is successful in Ukraine, he won’t stop until he involves NATO countries, and the United States will be treaty obligated to send American troops to fight. Doing nothing in the face of aggression is how World War III will eventually start.
Giving Ukrainians the bullets to do the fighting and dying for their freedom was the right thing to do, and Congress has duly supported Kiev with sufficient military aid. But President Joe Biden has not been a good-faith partner. . . .
In the near term, U.S. military aid must be contingent on European burden sharing and equal European assistance going forward. The U.S. has provided nearly as much military aid to Ukraine — a reported $46.6 billion — as every other nation combined.
We need this administration to bring our allies to meet their pledge to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense now, today. Unfortunately, Biden’s diplomacy seems to be lagging. The largest European states consistently fail to meet that benchmark, pledged at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales shortly after Russia’s last Ukraine invasion.
But not every foreign leader is willing to play nice with Trump the way Macron and Zelensky are.
I am sure that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau does not like Trump jokingly referring to him as “a governor” and Canada as “a state.” But the U.S. is not going to annex Canada. Trudeau could laugh it off. There are a million and one quips Trudeau could make in response: “We can’t be an American state, we don’t have enough gun violence,” “Our money is prettier,” “Without the Blue Jays, you can’t argue it’s a World Series,” “A guy who winters in Mar-a-Lago can’t handle a Canadian January” — you get the idea.
But the Canadian prime minister took a shot at Trump in a different way.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday that Kamala Harris’s loss in the U.S. presidential election was a setback for women’s progress — and cited several recent incidents that he said suggest women’s rights are under attack by “regressive” and “reactionary” political forces.
In an address to an Ottawa gala for Equal Voice, an organization that works to get more women elected to public office, Trudeau said politicians who are hostile to women’s rights — particularly a woman’s right to choose abortion — are “winning too often, unfortunately.” He said feminists like himself have to be “lucid” about the challenges ahead.
“We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult, march towards progress. And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president,” Trudeau said, adding that “women’s rights and women’s progress” are “under attack.”
“And I want you to know that I am and always will be a proud feminist,” he said. “You will always have an ally in me and my government.”
Now, it’s not surprising that leaders on the left generally prefer other leaders on the left, and no doubt, Trudeau would have preferred to be working with a President-elect Kamala Harris. But that statement reads like an endorsement of Harris, a month after she lost the election. Who does it help and what good does it do? Sure, maybe it makes Trudeau and the feminists in the audience feel better to sneer that Trump’s election was a setback for women’s rights. But do you think Trudeau’s comment makes Trump more conciliatory, or does it make the incoming U.S. president more determined to slap a 25 percent tariff on imports from Canada?
And then there’s Russia. On November 7, on the state-owned Russia-1 channel, one of the most popular channels in the country, the Russian political talk show 60 минут (60 Minutes) displayed the nude photos that Melania Trump took for British GQ back in 2000, five years before she married Trump.
Russia-1 anchor Evgeny Popov declares, “Now that Melania Trump’s husband has finally won, she is getting ready to go back to the White House for a second time. Here is how Melania looked in the year 2000. This is the cover of the magazine GQ. The future first lady lies on top of furs in a negligee.” It goes on for about a minute and a half; the program made sure the viewers saw every photo from that magazine spread several times.
Now, things like this don’t just pop up on Russian state-owned television by accident. Nothing appears on Russian state-owned television without the approval of the Russian government. And little if anything happens in the Russian government without the approval of Vladimir Putin.
The farstunken cohones on this guy. You don’t have to agree with everything Trump says or does to recognize the egregious insult that Russia just made to the president-elect, the incoming first lady, and the entire country.
ADDENDUM: There’s a lot of good commentary out there about the assassination of Brian Thompson; you’re going to want to read Christian Schneider, Jeff Blehar, Andy McCarthy, Noah Rothman, Charlie Cooke, Dan McLaughlin, and Rich Lowry.
But I liked the succinctness of this comment from Benji Sarlin:
America has lots of problems, but if you’re going with “Of course that rich Ivy League grad in the richest country ever shot that CEO who was vaguely connected to his problems, he could only take so much before he snapped” then you truly could justify anything anytime against anyone and come up with some vague post hoc capitalism explanation.
If you’re wondering what kind of idiot would argue that privileged, wealthy, well-educated, snot-nosed punks shooting unarmed men in the back was an inevitable consequence of a society where 75 percent of Americans are satisfied with their current employer-provided health-insurance plans and 74 percent prefer to get their coverage through an employer rather than through the federal or state government, well, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said this week:
“Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far,” Warren added. “This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
So, you know, that kind of idiot.