The Sadness of Being Left Behind by Autocrats

     Donald Trump has proven, after just a little over 150 days, to be about as consequential and influential as the lone, robed lunatic you see on urban street corners holding up signs reading, "The End is Near!"

      The dictators to whom Trump has been shamelessly sucking up have shown in word and deed, especially in deed, that they do not take him seriously. These madmen have their own agendas and they know that Trump is, at best, a lame duck and perhaps assume that he won't be around for much longer. Take the recent violation of the cease fire between Israel and Iran:

      Without any confirmation from either country, Trump announced a big beautiful cease fire between Israel and Iran. Obviously, he unilaterally announced this so he could grab credit for it in order to burnish his credentials for that Nobel Peace Prize with which he's so obsessed with winning. Less than a day later, Israel launched a barrage of missiles at Iran and Iran, naturally, responded in kind.

     This led Trump to lash out at CNN, MSNBC and even Israel on the South Lawn today as he was about to board Marine One so he could be ignored at the NATO summit at the Hague. "They don't know what the fuck they're doing," yelled the old man who'd told us to inject disinfectants into our veins and suggested dropping nuclear bombs on hurricanes.

     Then, just five weeks ago, after an informal phone call with Putin, Trump announced that Russia and Ukraine were going to begin ceasefire talks immediately. Then hours later Russia resumed its bombing campaigns into Ukrainian urban centers, which came to the surprise of absolutely no one who knows the first thing about Putin's Russia.

     "The end is near but I alone can fix it!"

     This is a pattern we're seeing with increasing frequency, in which Trump says one thing, promises this and that then these autocrats mash their grubby fingers on their big red buttons, anyway. And, really, who with any sense can still take Trump seriously.when he says that if he were in the White House in 2014 or 2022, Russia wouldn't have dared invade Ukraine. Because one would be at a loss to even roughly estimate how many bombs and missiles Russia has launched at Ukraine just since January 20, 2025.

     That's because Putin looks at Trump as if he's a joke and, let''s face it, he's right. Russian state TV sneers at him as if he's the useful idiot he truly is. That same state TV less than two years ago detailed how they'd hit the US with nuclear warheads and posted nude pictures of Melania Trump.

     That doesn't sound like a government that respects Trump.

 

     Since it's obvious to virtually every world leader out there that our nation is run by a rage toddler trapped in a bloated old man's body, the rest of the world has already begun preparing a new world order without the United States at its vanguard. The picture above is of Trump at the G20 summit eight years ago. While the rest of the economically-advanced world and its leaders were strategizing, Trump sat by himself waiting for people to walk up to him and tell him how great he was.

     

     This was basically what it was like for Trump at the last G7 earlier this month.
     There will always be autocrats and dictators in human affairs but, more often than not, they still possess just enough statecraft savvy and pragmatism to know a joke in their midst when they see one. And Trump is the guy no one wants to be around.