Just like the balloon designed to mock him.
The big orange-faced baby floated high over London, looking down at the people of England Land and their golf courses. It was still there on Friday, when Donald Trump met Theresa May. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, had said that Londoners’ right of expression includes the freedom to launch a giant balloon in the shape of Donald Trump.
Down on the ground, some of the people of England Land were puce with rage. Not at the globalist, corporatist European Union, even though Trump had explained in an interview with London’s Sun tabloid that immigration was ‘very negative’ for Europe’ because ‘it’s changing the culture’, but at the democratically elected president of Britain’s closest ally, and at a time when Britain, its international standing uncertain until Brexit is completed, needs American support.
“That balloon, letting it fly over the city, what does it do for relations between the two countries?” Donald Trump Jr. asked on Friday. “Who can tell me that isn’t a foolish thing to let happen?”
The president, of course, sailed blithely above small matters of local politics. His three days in Britain were wedged between the NATO summit in Brussels and a meeting scheduled for Monday with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. The British episode was not the meat in this diplomatic burger, so much as the cheese in a stale sandwich. One day of politics, two days of golf, and one cup of tea with the queen. More than enough time, though, to float some balloons of his own.
People think that Donald Trump does no homework and just says whatever comes into his mind. This is true, but not all the time. He knows, for instance, that Germany, as the chief beneficiary of the euro currency, runs a budget surplus three times higher than permitted by the rules of the European Union—rules that Germany set. He knows that NATO members commit to spending 2 percent of GDP on defense, and that last year Germany spent only 1.25 percent of GDP on defense.
Going to Brussels, he also knew that his first grumblings on the matter had elicited a promise from Angela Merkel to raise defense spending to 1.5 percent of GDP in 2019. This suggested, accurately as it turned out, that further nudging would elicit further promises. And he has long known that a nudge from an electric cattle prod before the world’s media can have a wonderfully stimulating effect on negotiations. In Brussel, Trump applied the prod and pressed the trigger. NATO’s European members panicked like cows and fled like sheep into the corral marked “2 percent.”
Trump had also prepared carefully for his trip to Britain—much more carefully than the last American president did. In April 2016, Barack Obama thought he was doing David Cameron a favor by warning the British people that if they voted for Brexit, they would be “at the back of the queue” in trade negotiations with the United States.
Note the use of “queue” instead of “line.” Obama really knew how to talk to people. Unfortunately, that was all he knew. Under the Trump presidency, there is no queue, and no line either, just a crowd of petitioners milling around while American officials attempt to separate the economic children from the productive adults.
Trump knows how to talk to people. As soon as he landed in London, Trump signaled that he understood the locals. “Brexit means Brexit,” he said.
You can go a long way with those words. As Theresa May has shown, you can even go all the way to 10 Downing Street, and without ever knowing what they mean. Trump said them in the right forum, too, in an interview with the Sun tabloid. He also said that May’s proposal for the softest of Brexits, announced on Friday and killed by ministerial resignations on Monday, would “kill” Britain’s chances of a free trade deal with the United States. He had tried to advise May on Brexit, he told the Sun, but she hadn’t listened.
The Sun ran the interview late on Thursday night, as Trump and May finished a formal dinner at Blenheim Palace, where Winston Churchill was born, and where Theresa May’s premiership continued to crawl toward its tortured death. By Friday, her people had begged his people to ask him to save the last shreds of her dignity. Ever the gentleman, Trump obliged when the two gave a press conference at Chequers, then prime minister’s weekend retreat.
The Sun was “fake news,” Trump said, again demonstrating his unerring judgment of local matters (and ignoring the reality that the paper had audio of the conversation). Reading from prepared remarks, he said that May was a “terrific woman” doing a “terrific job” in “a very tough situation.” But prepared remarks are to Donald Trump as a Broadway show tune was to John Coltrane, the prelude to reckless exploration, leaving a wreckage of harmony in its wake.
He had urged her to be “brutal” with the EU, but she had found his advice “too brutal.” She hadn’t listened, so no wonder she was on her way out. “I can fully understand why she thought it was a little bit tough,” Trump said, “and maybe someday she will do that—if they don’t make the right deal she might very well do what I suggested that she might want to do.”
Translated, this means that Trump suggested May begin Brexit negotiations with a “No Deal” stance, rather than the deal-at-any-price stance which, as any viewer of The Apprentice knows, is a loser’s gambit. Trump also plugged what might be a forthcoming season in British politics, starting with his celebrity apprentice Boris Johnson, whose resignation on Monday leaves May’s government rudderless and sinking.
As May watched with the glassy smile of one hoping that the green lawn of Chequers would open and swallow her up, a journalist asked Trump about his endorsement in the Sun of Johnson, as potentially “a great prime minster.” Fake news, Trump said.
“Lots of people give me advice about dealing with the European Union,” May croaked. “My job is actually getting out there and doing it.”
Trump ended by upgrading the Special Relationship to “the highest level of special.” Tragically, there wasn’t enough time to clarify what that means.
