European leaders stick it to a newly weakened Donald Trump

| 9:05 am EST November 12, 2018
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For the first two years of Donald Trump’s illegitimate presidency, America’s allies have reluctantly tried to work with him, if only for the sake of keeping their long term relationship with the United States intact after he’s gone. Trump, ever the narcissist, has naturally misinterpreted this as world leaders actually liking him. But now that Trump has lost the midterms and is in danger of being ousted, we’re seeing world leaders take an entirely different tack with him.

For instance, at this week’s World War I commemoration, host nation France apparently allowed Donald Trump to believe that he was going to sit next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during dinner, only to switch it up on him at the last minute. Instead, Trump was stuck sitting next to French President Emmanuel Macron, which was a form of punishment, considering how much Trump and Macron have been feuding this week.

It’s a subtle shift, but an important one. Donald Trump has routinely tried to bully America’s allies, as part of his overall plan for sowing enough chaos to distract from his own worsening criminal scandals. We’ve seen scattered pushback from European leaders before, but for the most part they’ve sucked it up and tried to make things work with Trump.

Now, just after European leaders openly condemned Donald Trump’s nationalism, they’re even bossing him around when it comes to where he gets to sit. Translation: they don’t think he has much political muscle left, and they don’t expect him to be in power for all that much longer.