In ama­teur the­ater, being reject­ed as not good enough for a bit part is a hurt­ful snub. On the world stage, Don­ald Trump just turned that into a star­ring role, once again prov­ing that  he’s in a class of his own — just  not in the way he fantasizes.

After Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney repu­di­at­ed, but did not name Trump in a half hour speech to the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos, the puta­tive “leader of the free world” took cen­ter stage on his social media out­let to “… rep­re­sent that the Board of Peace is with­draw­ing its invi­ta­tion to you regard­ing Canada’s join­ing, what will be, the most pres­ti­gious Board of Lead­ers ever assem­bled, at any time.”
Appar­ent­ly no one told him that Car­ney had already declined the “offer” to pay one bil­lion dol­lars for a seat on the new “Board of Peace”, where even a walk-on part requires being an under­study to the dis­tinct­ly Trumpian script for the U.S. role in the world.
 In a pub­lic dis­play of pique, Trump jeered that “ … Cana­da lives because of the Unit­ed States. Remem­ber that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
By con­trast, his­to­ri­an Matthew Specter, a senior fel­low at the Insti­tute of Euro­pean Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, said Car­ney “… ripped “the Band-Aid off the fray­ing lib­er­al order… in a spir­it that is sto­ic, not celebratory.”
That’s as opposed to gloat­ing, threat­en­ing, being petu­lant, pugna­cious, ill-man­nered and insult­ing, an absence of his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive or sense of deco­rum, com­pound­ed by a lack of ora­tor­i­cal skills and a grasp on real­i­ty that is ten­u­ous at best.
Car­ney got a rare-for-Davos stand­ing ova­tion. Dur­ing Trump’s hour long-plus ram­ble and rant,  “some in the crowd of elites sat speech­less. Oth­ers groaned. A few gasped.”
That amounts to a clear sign world lead­ers have lit­tle faith that the upcom­ing U.S.mid-term elec­tions will defin­i­tive­ly repu­di­ate Trump­ism and revert to poli­cies based on com­mon sense, diplo­ma­cy and the rule of law, as opposed to the bed­lam of uncer­tain­ty, whim and inco­her­ent mid­dle-of-the-night dec­la­ra­tions on social media that may, or may not, be actu­al ideas.

                            SCRIPT REVISIONS

Accord­ing to Trump, Europe is not head­ing in the right direc­tion. There are ele­ments of truth in that, but nowhere in Europe are cit­i­zens or immi­grants, ille­gal or oth­er­wise, being sum­mar­i­ly detained and deport­ed by masked thugs. There are no mass shoot­ings on a week­ly basis, and by and large every­one has access to health care, whether they can afford it or not.
Nor, unlike Mr Trump, do Euro­pean lead­ers ever con­fuse Green­land with Ice­land, let alone four times in as many sentences.
Is that proof of the deri­sive “they couldn’t find it on a map “ adage about Amer­i­cans and geog­ra­phy, or evi­dence of dementia?
Either way, flat­tery being the way to Trump’s heart and atten­tion span, I sug­gest Green­land build a huge igloo, spray paint it gold, put an out­size TRUMP sign on top, declare it the biggest in the world and award him a gold medal embla­zoned  “Green­land Win­ner”, and he’ll be happy.

                        ONE WIN, SORT OF…

In the inter­est of fair­ness, Trump can take a shov­el­ful of cred­it for the cease­fire in Gaza, such as it is.
Proof  that his Board of Peace is any­thing more than a self-aggran­diz­ing and enrich­ment scheme, depends on shov­el­ling an esti­mat­ed 70-mil­l­lion tonnes of rub­ble cour­tesy of Israeli bomb­ing and Hamas stu­pid­i­ty, and rebuild­ing homes, busi­ness­es and infra­struc­ture, rather than a vision of Gaza as  some kind of “riv­iera“  to enter­tain and enrich Trump cronies.
The chances of that are dimmed by the board’s inclu­sion of Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu, who vir­u­lent­ly oppos­es the estab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state, and Arab lead­ers who see it as the only way to achieve sus­tain­able peace.
Among the oth­er join­ers in thrall to Chair­man Trump are such paragons of democ­ra­cy, human fights and gen­er­al decen­cy as Hun­gary, Sau­di Ara­bia, Egypt, Belarus, and Pakistan.
Vladimir Putin is an as yet to accept invi­tee. For­mer British Prime Min­is­ter and glee­ful pro­mot­er of the spu­ri­ous grounds for George W Bush’s the ulti­mate­ly sham­bol­ic and dis­as­trous inva­sion of  Iraq Tony Blair, is a board mem­ber, too.
To end on an admit­ted­ly jin­go­is­tic but ground­ed in real­i­ty note, Car­ney said in rebut­tal to Trump’s apoplexy: “ Cana­da doesn’t live because of the Unit­ed States. Cana­da thrives because we are Canadian..”
I’m will­ing to bet the oth­ers in the cast Trump dis­missed as mere crowd scene extras feel the same about their  roles, and countries.

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