Countries in normal times value access to the White House, and the smaller a country is the more important that access is. The trouble is that America has elected a complete nutter as president. He knows nothing. Reads nothing. Understands nothing. Drowns in his own prejudices and cluelessness. Often he can for no good reason turn on a visitor and attack them. So countries want the meeting, but dread meeting him. They long for the days when the US actually had an intelligent knowledgeable president, not a complete uneducated imbecile.
Trump typically went off on another of his crazy clueless rants but this time the target wasn't the visitor but bullshit about supposed 'windmills'. (He is so stupid he don't know their actual name. They are wind turbines.)
He also thinks they are all built by China (they aren't) and that China doesn't use them. China in fact is the number one user of wind turbines. It is slashing its use of coal and oil and switching to wind turbines. Its production of electricity by wind turbines exceeded 600 GW by late 2025. Of course, being clueless, Trump knows none of that.
He even thinks wind turbines causes cancer. They don't. Thinking they do shows he has no idea what cancer even is or how it is caused.
Martin must have been so relieved to know that Trump was off on another stupid clueless rant, and that clueless rant wasn't about Ireland or Martin. Trump really is the epitome of complete and utter stupidity. People used to mock George W Bush for being stupid. He was not stupid. He wasn't at the same level as most presidents in terms of intellect, but people who dealt with him noticed that he spent his presidency reading intensely. On occasion he shocked staff by reading seriously intellectual stuff.
He made mistakes and admitted it, unlike Trump. He consulted widely with experts. He listened. He questioned. He never sent people to war lightly, and frequently had nightmares over mistakes he made.
All presidents but Trump found sending people to war weighed heavily on them, causing sleepless nights, and nightmares. In contrast, Trump frequently skipped going to receive the remains of dead soldiers so he could go to play golf. That is well documented. He even talking about bombing a target that would cause deaths "for the fun!" No sane leader ever takes actions that would cause deaths "for the fun" unless they are a complete sociopath. But then Trump has long been defined by mental experts as both a sociopath and malignant narcissist.
Successive presidents literally had nightmares where a mistake they made had caused a nuclear attack on the US. Trump tried to cancel a critical early warning system in South Korea that would alert the US if North Korea launched nuclear weapons on the US - giving them enough time to shoot the missile down. He told his national security adviser "I don't care. It costs too much." When explained that North Korea could hit California with a nuclear missile within 19 minutes, he response was a chilling that he didn't care what happened to California as it did not vote for him! He wasn't joking. His Chief of Staff found it chilling.
He also kept asking the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff why he couldn't just use nuclear weapons, at least to blackmail countries in trade deals. The chairmen repeatedly struggled to make him understand that nuclear weapons are not to be used that way. In fact they are not intended to be used at all. They are there for deterrence to stop someone using one against you as they that even if they destroy you, you can destroy them - hence mutually assured destruction. The aim is for them never to be used. But Trump couldn't comprehend that. They were like some sort of macho toy to him.
G.W. Bush, like every predecessor, and like Obama and Biden, would not dream of going to war in Iran because all of them realised the nightmare of the Strait of Hormuz. If it was blocked, and with Iran having a perfect line of fire on every inch of it (it would inevitably be,) it could cause not just a worldwide recession but potentially a worldwide depression. They all knew that you just could not risk that, ever.
They also had advisers in the National Security Council to warn of the risks. Trump got thick in his first term because they kept telling him not to do stupid things he wanted to do. So when he took office in January 2025 he sacked all the advisers on the NSC. Every one. The skills built up since the days of Truman when the NSC was created, were wiped out. All institutional memory, gone. He surrounded himself by imbeciles in cabinet, appointed the ultimate know-nothing imbecile as Defense Secretary. Then he bungled into a war every other President since Carter knew never to do.
In fact, presidents often said that the very first thing they are told by their predecessor when they meet is "don't go to war with Iran. It will close the Strait of Hormuz and that will destroy the international economy. Never do it." Carter told Reagan. Reagan told Bush, though Bush already knew from being his Vice-President. Bush told Clinton. Clinton told George W Bush, who had also been told it by his father. Bush told Obama. Obama told Trump - who tried to ignore it until the NSC, and his entire team told him no to do it. Biden knew it, but was reminded by Clinton, Bush and Obama. It was literally the first thing they were told.
Netanyahu has been trying to get US presidents to go to war for years. Every US president had the cop-on to say "no!" But he found he was dealing with a full-on unread, unadvised, clueless imbecile.
A French retired general put it succinctly. Being asked now to defend the Strait of Hormuz in the middle of a war, when it has been mined, is akin to being invited onto the Titanic as it is sinking. Nobody would be that stupid.
Trump is now throwing a hissy fit that NATO isn't coming to his aid, showing that he doesn't even know what NATO is. NATO is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. It never ever supports a member who has chosen to go to war with someone else. It did not do it with Turkey when it attacked Cyprus. When it was faced with Greece and Turkey going to war, and both were in NATO, it warned both that it would support neither.
It only ever supports a member state under Article 5 if Article 5 is triggered by a country that has been attacked, not one that initiated the attack. So NATO under its rules cannot support the US as the US started the war. It could only support the US if the US had been attacked, not the attacker. The rules could not be clearer.
But Trump, unread, ignoring all facts, surrounded by imbeciles, doesn't understand that - just as he doesn't understand wind turbines, cancer, how the economy works, how tariffs work, or pretty much anything. America has elected the stupidest president in US history who knows the least, and he has bungled into the world's stupidest war where he is likely to do catastrophic damage to America's and the world's economy, and he is now complaining that nobody is willing to be as stupid as he was.
He is the Basil Fawlty of international affairs. At least Basil had Sybil to get him out of trouble. All Trump has is the even stupider Hegseth.
⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.
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