Trump is a divider, a fanatic. Biden is a uniter, searching for compromise so as to get things done. Go down a one way street by mistake and you have to find another way to return to your path; if you're on a two way street, you can turn around and find an alternate to your destination.
Nobody knows everything. Liberals or conservatives have part of the anwswer, as do pacifists and militants.
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail."
(Quote from Maslow, Abraham Harold (1966). The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance. Harper & Row. ISBN n>978-0-8092-6130-7.)
Trump is hammer. He exerts force in one direction- he hammers screws, bolts, nuts into position because he lacks the subtlety to move in any direction but that one force in one direction. No issue in life is that simple, except that you live or you die. If you don't address intervening issues you speed toward the ultimate outcome- death.
On the other hand, a screwdriver, a wrench, anything more technologically advanced than the caveman's rock is versatile; and can address issues with multiple directions towards the end.
Trump is a joke as a politician, simplistic and unsophisticated at anything beyond real estate. In that, he's a hammer. Even a rivet needs a bucker to work with the hammer.
December 4, 2019 at 8:48 a.m. EST
Instead, Trump has been the object of repeated jest and even mockery by fellow world leaders. And it’s been caught on tape — again.
The most recent example came Tuesday, when the leaders of Canada, France, Holland and the United Kingdom seemed to be recounting Trump’s lengthy — and occasionally wild — interactions with reporters earlier in the day.
“He was late because he takes a 40-minute press conference off the top,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the video, which was first released by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
“You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” he added later, motioning down from his chin.
Trump, on Wednesday, called Trudeau “two-faced” for the comments but still said he was a “nice guy."
President Trump responded Dec. 4 to a video where Canada's Justin Trudeau, France's Emmanuel Macron and Britain's Boris Johnson appear to joke about him. (Video: The Washington Post)
Even more world leaders appeared to join in mocking Trump last year during his speech at the United Nations. Trump made one of his characteristically hyperbolic claims about his achievements as president — “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country” — and drew audible laughter.
Trump, apparently taken aback, responded, “Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.”
President Trump elicited laughter at the start of his address to world leaders Sept. 25 at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. (Video: Reuters)
(He later tried to argue that the world leaders were laughing with him rather than at him, but his real-time reaction didn’t exactly back that up. In addition, world leaders said anonymously that they were indeed having a laugh at Trump’s expense.)
Trump also drew laughter during the same speech from the German delegation, after he lodged a hyperbolic claim about their country’s reliance on Russian energy.
The year before, in 2017, then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull roasted Trump and his selective taste in polls during what was supposed to be an off-the-record dinner. But video soon leaked.
“We are winning in the polls. We are! We are! Not the fake polls. Not the fake polls,” Turnbull said. “They’re the ones we’re not winning in. We’re winning in the real polls. The online polls. They are so easy to win.”
Turnbull added: “I have this Russian guy. Believe me, it’s true. It is true.”
Turnbull explained later that it was “a good-humored roast” that “was affectionately lighthearted.”
That year, Turnbull’s world-leader neighbor, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern, recounted what could also be seen as some good-natured ribbing of Trump — but also seemed to have an edge. Here’s what she told a local reporter:
“I was waiting to walk out to be introduced at the East Asia Summit gala dinner, where we all paraded and while we were waiting, Trump in jest patted the person next to him on the shoulder, pointed at me and said, ‘This lady caused a lot of upset in her country,’ talking about the election.
“I said, ‘Well, you know, only maybe 40 percent,’ then he said it again, and I said, ‘You know,’ laughing, ‘no one marched when I was elected.’
“He laughed, and it was only afterwards that I reflect that it could have been taken in a very particular way – he did not seem offended.”
On a smaller scale, there was the time that Nordic leaders reenacted a photo of Trump and Saudi leaders with their hands on a glowing orb. The Nordic leaders instead used a soccer ball.
And Trump isn’t the only member of his family who has drawn what appeared to be derision in a candid moment at a gathering of world leaders. Earlier this year, his daughter Ivanka Trump was talking at a Group of 20 summit with then-British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and the then-head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.
“As soon as you charge them with that economic aspect of it, a lot of people start listening who otherwise wouldn’t listen,” May said at one point.
Ivanka Trump responded, “And the same with the defense side of it, in terms of the whole business that’s been, sort of, male-dominated” — to which Lagarde gives an animated reaction that’s difficult to view as anything other than perplexed.
The French presidential palace later expressed regret that it had released such a clip. But given the reaction, you’d think leaders such as Macron and Trudeau would take care to avoid a repeat.
Unless, that is, they truly are just that exasperated.
Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.
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