Donald Trump’s G20 summit goes completely off the rails
The G-20 summit is over, without much accomplished. That is, aside from a few instances of Donald Trump being rude to foreign allies, joking around with hostile countries, and regularly tweeting about the Democratic debates – more in depth than any picture of his plans at the summit.
Perhaps the debates and their record-breaking ratings stood out so prominently in Trump’s mind that he failed on one of his central campaign promises: striking a successful trade deal with China – the country he came after aggressively on the campaign trail for taking his supporters’ jobs, and who he needlessly started a trade war against that could have far reaching effects on the U.S. economy even after Trump is out of office.
Now that he’s failed to secure a deal, he’s trying to see if he can get away with having failed, and trying to ensure that farmers won’t blame him for the high tariffs they’re already paying. “We’ll see what happens, but we are going to have a good deal and a fair deal or we’re not going to have a deal at all and that’s OK too,” said Trump at a humiliating press conference. Or one that would be humiliating for someone who was the least bit self-aware.
Things behind the scenes make one wonder if anything significant happened at all during the summit, or if it was all a front for Donald Trump to meet again secretly with Putin, while trying to convince the world that his mental faculties were still in order – a job that is growing increasingly difficult by the day.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making