U.S. allies and adversaries around the globe breathed a sigh of relief after 78-year-old President Joe Biden was sworn in yesterday as the nation’s 46th president. Few U.S. allies, with the exception of the U.K. and Israel, liked 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, pressuring NATO allies to pay a greater portion of their Gross Domestic Product [GDP] toward NATO’s budget. Brussels-based European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed her delight at the end of the Trump era. “After four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House,” Von der Leyen said, the closet statement to saying, “good riddance.” “This time-honored ceremony on the steps of the U.S. Capitol will be a demonstration of the resilience of American democracy,” Von der Leyen said in Brussiels. U.S. allies were horrified by reports from the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Because foreign allies get their news from dominant U.S. press outlets, it looked like the U.S. went trough a coup d’etat Jan. 6. Blown out of proportion, the angry mob was not an insurrection as presented by the U.S. and foreign press but a good old fashioned riot or mob scene that unfortunately spiraled out of control. Had the Capitol or D.C. police cordoned off the area properly, like they did on the Jan. 20 inauguration, very little would have happened. Yet to U.S. allies and adversaries it looked like the U.S. government was under siege. Unlike many foreign governments that have gone through revolutions in the recent past, they concluded the worst based on grossly exaggerated press reports. Any student or revolutions know that insurgent come armed with more than cell phones to take selfies but are heavily armed with automatic weapons needed to topple an existing government.
Yet the message conveyed by the U.S. and foreign press to the European Union, Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, etc., was that coup d’etat was going on, even though only a few hundred pro-Trump protestors breached the Capitol walls. Today’s Democrat and media narrative was that Trump’s backers tried to overthrow the U.S. government, not with guns but with cell phones, something so preposterous it doesn’t deserve to make U.S. and foreign headlines. Impeaching Trump for a second time Jan. 13, 80-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” That what made the headlines across the pond, all over the world, not that some renegade misfits, misanthropes and losers had their field day trespassing and vandalizing the Capitol. “Victory of democracy over the ultra-right,” said 48-year-old Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Europeans, with their long history of revolutions, have no clue about U.S. democracy, knowing that its institutions, it military and its bureaucracy have stood the test of time for 245 years. “Five years ago, we thought Trump was a bad joke, but five years later we realized he jeopardized nothing less that the world’s most powerful democracy,” Sanchez said, showing his complete ignorance of U.S. democracy. But more than that, the power of U.S. and foreign news outlets to spread the most twisted, distorted and misleading propaganda. Saying the U.S. faced a coup d’etat epitomizes the fake news that flows freely in the U.S. and across the world. Trump faces impeachment charges of “incitement of insurrection” concocted by the fake news establishment. When Senators meet for another show trial, do Democrats really think they have a compelling case that Trump incited an insurrection?
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeir, largely in a ceremonial job, said Germans felt “greatly relieved” about Trump’s departure. Portrayed in the U.S. press as a kind of Adolf Hitler, it’s now wonder that Steineir would make such overblown statements about Trump. “Despite all the joy we feel today, we must not forget that even the most powerful democracy in the world has been seduced by populism,” Steinmeir said before Biden was sworn in. Whatever happened in Germany before WW II, it’s outrageous that otherwise informed European politicians would draw any such parallels. Trump wasn’t part of some renegade faction of “populists” or insurgents that sought to overthrow the U.S. government. French President Emmanuel Macron said it was “a significant day for the American people,” stopping short of saying the U.S. faced under Trump right-wing dictatorship.
Europeans expressing “relief” that the U.S. is no longer in the throws of a right-wing dictatorship shows the extent of U.S. and foreign fake news, leaving the word in the dark unless they do a lot of homework. If you listen to the nightly news, whether in the U.S. or abroad, they mirror the same kind of disinformation used by political campaigns to advance certain agendas. Europeans don’t get that Trump was demonized by Democrats and the U.S. press for four years in office. No matter what Trump did for the American people, Democrats and the press slammed him. Only 56-year-old British Prime Minister Boris Jiohnson didn’t drink the EU Cool-Aid. “America’s leadership is vital on the issues that matter to us all, from climate change to Covid,” said Johnson not taking a last shot at Trump. When the Senate Judiciary Committee meets for Trump’s impeachment trial, let’s see how much Cool-Aid they drank.
