Will the Real Leader of the Free World Please Stand Up?

     What does it say when the so-called leader of the free world shows less life and vigor than the dead Pope Francis?

     It's long been an article of faith that every single time without fail that when Trump goes on an overseas trip, he will find some way to embarrass us on the world stage. We saw that back in 2017 when Trump went to the G7 summit in Sicily, when he was so tuckered out after two days that he had to follow the other six world leaders in a golf cart.

     He hardly showed any more life at Pope Francis's funeral a few days ago in Rome, in which he was spotted nodding off. It was bad enough that he was the only one in attendance who wasn't wearing black, which everyone knows you're supposed to wear at a funeral. But he couldn't be bothered to stay awake at the funeral of the Catholic leader because it simply wasn't all about him. Thank goodness he wasn't tapped to deliver a eulogy because it would have inevitably devolved into how much he won Pennsylvania by in 2020.

 

     Things didn't get off to a good start when Ukrainian President Zelenskyy showed up and was greeted by a round of applause. Trump? When he showed up, no one paid him any notice whatsoever. In fact, the one who did notice his presence was Zelenskyy himself when Trump wanted to sit down with him for about an hour before the funeral started. To make matters worse, he was savaged by Cardinal Re during the homily. It was a miracle Trump was even seated in the front row. 

     (However, Trump's first row seat wasn't so much based on his or our prominence on the world stage as much as it's due to this: "Past Vatican funerals have seen the leaders arranged into alphabetical order based on their country, per the French interpretation... In French, the United States is actually written Etas-Unis, which means this places Trump near the top of the list rather than towards the bottom.")

     We don't know what exactly was said between Trump and Zelenskyy but it was probably something along the lines of, "Please just give up Crimea! Putin's sending me pictures of my grandchildren sleeping in their beds!"

      Even though statesmanship and presence on the world stage ought to be major considerations when electing a president, MAGA instead gave us and inflicted on the rest of the world a narcoleptic honey badger who unerringly finds some way to humiliate us on that stage. And whatever Trump does, it always benefits Russia and Putin in some way, which alone gives me pause and prevents me from concluding that Trump is incipiently demented.

     And, yes, he's definitely lost a step or three since he ran for office a decade ago. But it can't be ignored, the fact that everything Trump does, says or proposes will make Putin happy. Whether it's pulling us from the INF treaty, threatening to pull us from NATO, insisting every year without fail that Russia be allowed back into the G7, withholding money, weapons and intelligence from Ukraine, these are the things that make Russian state media cheer and jeer Trump simultaneously.

     On the hallowed ground of St. Peter's Square days ago, we got a glimpse of who the real leader of the free world was and it sure as hell wasn't Trump.