Last week's NATO summit did not end as planned. President Donald Trump left early after a contentious press conference with the French President and world leaders were caught on a hot mic laughing at him.
Trump had a bad reputation in Great Britain where the summit was held long before this year's meeting. One sign of this is the actions taken by his British counterpart. The Prime Minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, asked Trump not to show him support when he came to London and even seemed to avoid taking pictures with him during the summit. Britain will be holding a general election on Dec. 12 between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. While Trump still holds his base of approval here in America, the voters of Britain dislike him practically unanimously. Johnson's move to distance himself from Trump was a smart one despite similarities in their policies and politics. Trump himself said he trusted Johnson to do well in the election saying "I think Boris is very capable, and he will do a good job."
A major goal of Trump's which he recently accomplished has been to pressure allies into contributing more to the cost of running NATO. This success gave him a positive message to present at NATO. More importantly, it was something he could brag about and use as proof that the U.S. is still the leader of NATO. As he said, "What I'm liking about NATO is that a lot of countries have stepped up, really, I think, at my behest."
This comes after President Emmanuel Macron gave an interview to the Economist in which he said that NATO is "experiencing brain death" as a result of a lack of leadership and cohesion. He argued that Trump is turning his back on NATO and complained that "You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None." Trump called his comments "very insulting" and "very, very nasty".
This made the Tuesday press conference between the two leaders a little tense to say the least. In a decided shift from their previously chummy relationship, President Macron went on the offensive. After reporters asked about his "brain death" characterization, Macron said he stood by his statement and acknowledged that it had "created some reactions". In an intense exchange about Syria, Trump said, "Would you like some nice ISIS fighters?" "Let's be serious." Macron retorted, and proceeded to condemn Trump's treatment of Turkey's President Recep Taytip Erdogan. Macron argued that Trump has made decisions that benefit Erdogan at his request. Macron has spoken out against Turkey's assault in Syria: "When I look at Turkey, they are fighting against those who fight with us. Who is the enemy today?" Political analysts see this new tone from Macron as a sign that world leaders are beginning to realized being nice to Trump doesn't get you what you want. After all, the two things that we most important to Macron for U.S. French relations were the Paris Climate accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal both of which Trump has left.
Tuesday's press conference was only the beginning of the drama at NATO. In a reception held at Buckingham Palace Tuesday evening, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau was overheard on a hot mic making fun of the way Trump conducts himself at these summits. He was in an informal group of world leaders including President Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and the U.K.'s Princess Anne. The French President responded animatedly to Trudeau but couldn't be heard, and Boris Johnson smiled on. When he was later asked about the video, Trudeau said he wanted to "endeavor to keep the focus on the substantive issues that were discussed." He also said he had a "very good relationship with President Trump and his team."
Countries normally like to stay on Trump's good side since he is still the President of arguably the most powerful country in the world, so we don't often hear world leaders expressing any sort of complaints about his behavior in this way. Even Kurdish Commanders went on Twitter to praise President Trump after he pulled U.S. troops out of Syria effectively allowing Turkey to begin an ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in the area.
In response to the video, Trump called Trudeau "two-faced" then almost immediately called him a "nice guy" (he was later caught on a hot mic himself). He decided to leave the conference early and canceled a press conference scheduled for later that day. When asked why he was leaving early, Trump said he'd "answered plenty of questions." As to how he thought the summit went, he said "We had a really good day and a good day yesterday." And, despite the hot mic tape, he's not wrong. The summit was productive and he did successfully cause other countries to commit to paying more. However, this may have hurt Trump politically back home. NATO was meant to serve as a positive distraction from impeachment.
Speaking of impeachment, last week marked the transition of the impeachment inquiry from the Intelligence Committee to the Judiciary Committee of the House overseen by Rep. Jerry Nadler, NY. The Committee held a hearing to determine what acts constitute an impeachable offense. They heard from four witnesses, three from the Democrats and one from the Republicans. The hearing itself resulted in little new information about the scandal itself.
The House Intelligence Committee released a report early in the week summarizing the information they had so far. They concluded that Trump had indeed attempted to pressure Ukrainian President Zlensky into announcing investigations into Trump's political rivals and a conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 election. At NATO, Trump called the inquiry "a joke" and said that Democrats were "unpatriotic" and may not "love our country". When asked about a potential censure rather than removal from office, he said, "you don't censure somebody when they did nothing wrong."
There is some good news for Trump this week: a strong jobs report may signal a potential way forward for him in the 2020 election. The report showed 266,000 new jobs were added in November and unemployment is at a 50-year low. In most cases, Presidents get blame when the economy is bad and credit when it's good whether or not they caused the change. Trump seemed to see the writing on the wall when he tweeted "Without the... Democrats, the Stock Markets and Economy would be even better... #2020"