USA: The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it

Fintan O'Toole is one of Ireland’s many national treasures, a great writer who stands out in a country where great writing would be almost ordinary were it not so revered.
In today’s Irish Times, O’Toole writes:

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
 
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The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it - Imgur

EU-US Relations: Trump Seems to Hate the EU. Is It Because He Already Had a George W. Bush Florida Orange Juice Moment?

Trump and his administration have been especially hateful of the EU with respect to Brexit, and their impudent encouragement of the UK to leave the Union, and on top of that to even do so without a Brexit deal, the so called hard or no-deal Brexit.

The latest of the Trump Administration’s EU bashing came this week from Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton who advertised a no-deal Brexit with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the British public with the prospects of a fast US-UK trade deal.

Bolton, however, also shyly admitted that such a deal wouldn’t probably take the form of a comprehensive all-out agreement but would likely be negotiated “in pieces” and stages.

Critics have reacted that to get even that, the UK would have to give the Trump Administration a lot of concessions and backing on all sorts of top-level global political issues.

Diplomatic tone and manners aside, it has got to be pointed out categorically that downgrading, diminishing, or even destroying the EU does not make sense from the point of view of America’s best interests. This is so self-explanatory that there is no need go into much detail here. It suffices to remind everybody that the West rests on two pillars – North America and (Western) Europe – the USA and the EU, respectively. And if one of those two pillars sabotages or undermines the other, that could lead to the collapse of the entire structure.

The fact that Brexit could actually prove a blessing, rather than a curse to the EU but effectively removing the countless British vetoes to the deepening and widening of EU integration is a whole other story.

Trump first seriously raised eyebrows on the other side of the Atlantic with his campaign speeches, and his first post-inauguration interview in January 2017, in which he openly bashed the European Union.

Read more: Trump Seems to Hate the EU. Is It Because He Already Had a George W. Bush Florida Orange Juice Moment?

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USA :America the beautiful? Republicans to Obama: "We really don′t like you"

Last week's unprecedented event of having a foreign leader in the final stages of a close election campaign speak before a joint session of Congress without consulting the White House seemed like a tough act to follow - especially when the sole purpose of that speech was to bash the Obama administration's nuclear talks with Iran. That event was orchestrated by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

By publishing an open letter to Iran's leadership and lecturing Tehran about the US Constitution and legislators' opposition to a nuclear agreement, however, the Republican-controlled Senate may have succeeded in besting the performance of the lower house.

"I think there is no precedent in the history of the Republic for Senators to write to a foreign leader in this way," Nigel Bowles, director of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, told DW. "And to that extent it represents a new low in the relations between this president and this Congress, or more concretely this Senate."

"Even during Vietnam nothing like that happened," said James Sperling, professor of international relations at the University of Akron.

For the complete Report go to: Republicans to Obama: We really don′t like you | World | DW.DE | 10.03.2015