Eggers: Trump's Lunatic UN Speech Was Dangerously Unhinged, and Humiliated the U.S. in Front of the World
The abominable address by the reality TV president showed that the U.S. no longer is the world's leader of democratic nations, but now espouses an all-against-all, lawless populist nationalism.
By Andrew Egger The Bulwark
Watching Donald Trump’s long, self-congratulatory, ridiculous, ominous address at the United Nations on Tuesday, it was hard to know what was more unsettling: What the speech showed about America under this president, or what the speech showed about Trump himself.
Given his tendency to meander—sorry, weave—it can sometimes be difficult to sum up what a Trump speech is about.
But at its heart, Trump’s speech yesterday, which droned on for almost an hour, was ideological: a defense of his brand of lawless populist nationalism as the only solution for the challenges now facing the world, challenges against which liberal multilateralism doesn’t stand a chance.
Refugee resettlement programs, attempts to police borders while simultaneously abiding by the law, even efforts to fight climate change and diversify into renewable energy, which he called the “green energy scam”—all these, Trump said, were self-sabotaging projects that “the English-speaking world” needed to immediately abandon.
“Both the immigration and suicidal energy ideas,” he said, “will be the death of Western Europe.”
America, he said, was showing another way—one that, he implied, was setting aside petty concerns like wielding force only in accordance with the law in pursuit of the higher aim of results.
Perhaps the speech’s most unsettling moment in this vein came when Trump boasted of his repeated sinking of alleged drug-running boats from Venezuela—attacks for which the administration has still given no justification under U.S. law, except by pointing, as Trump did yesterday, to “the supreme power of the United States military” to destroy “terrorists and trafficking networks.”
“Let’s put it this way: People don’t like taking big loads of drugs in boats anymore,” Trump leered. “There aren’t too many boats that are traveling on the seas by Venezuela.”
Stunning self-absorption. All this was abominable—the latest demonstration that America, far from leading the charge toward a world based on orderly international cooperation, now actively seeks to supplant such a world with one based on a state-of-nature struggle between nations (or perhaps “the English-speaking world” against the barbarian hordes outside).
Somehow, though, I found myself even more unsettled by some remarks Trump made in passing, not about the world per se, but about himself. Trump, of course, has always been a braggart and a blowhard. But the levels of auto-hagiography he put on display before the world yesterday were remarkable even for him.
To hear Trump tell it, the biggest problem with bodies like the U.N. wasn’t that they were bureaucratic, ossified structures dedicated to a failing vision of international cooperation. The biggest problem was that they had never been able to understand that he, Trump, was the personal solution to all their problems.
The U.N.’s failure to appreciate him, Trump said, was a longstanding problem—going all the way back to the time, he recalled, when they declined his bid to renovate their New York complex.
“I remember it so well,” Trump lamented, sounding momentarily more like a jilted lover than a world leader. “It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, ‘I’m going to give you marble floors, they’re going to give you terrazzo. I’m going to give you the best of everything. You’re going to have mahogany walls; they’re going to give you plastic.’ But they decided to go in another direction.”
These issues, Trump grumbled, have only persisted. “I ended seven wars,” he (spuriously) claimed, without ever getting so much as a “phone call” from the U.N. offering to help out. “It’s too bad I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.”
After rattling off a long list of international wins, Trump said this: “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.”
At first, I laughed at this comment. But then I realized that this wasn’t just bluster. Trump doesn’t just think he deserves a stack of Nobels—he actually thinks that everyone thinks this.
Think of what it’s like to go through life as this guy.
You’ve just spent a decade purging your party and personnel of all but the most pliable and spineless tongue-bathers and yes-men. You sit atop perhaps the largest and most powerful cult of personality the world has ever seen. You’ve repeatedly demonstrated your love for retaliatory action against everyone who displeases you on any matter, no matter how petty—business leaders, opposition politicians, international leaders. And recently, you’ve shown zero compunction about wielding the entire U.S. government to settle those scores.
The result is a life crammed with people, from sunup to sundown, who do absolutely nothing but kiss your ass. It doesn’t matter if you’re meeting with your staff, your congressional allies, business leaders in your country, foreign allies, foreign foes—every single person you meet knows their best course of action is to spend the whole interaction buttering you like a roll. Add that on top of your preexisting lifelong egomania, and it’s a wonder you haven’t actually gotten around to proclaiming yourself Lord of the World.¹
This isn’t just a deeply stupid state of affairs—it’s dangerous.
Bottom line. Trump’s increasingly ironclad sense that everybody, more or less, worships the ground on which he walks strengthens his confidence that he has no need to triangulate on even his most controversial actions.
Why seek consensus from across the aisle when you are convinced you’re the consensus?
As for those remaining foes and critics, in Trump’s mind they don’t represent alternative views so much as some dark and ominous agenda—no doubt as bought-and-paid-for members of an elite conspiracy.
It’s not the headspace of a guy who’s considering taking his foot off the gas, whether he’s speaking at the White House or before fellow world leaders at the U.N.
Andrew Eggers co-writes the “Morning Shots” newsletter, with Bill Kristol, for The Bulwark. You can subscribe here.