Night three of the Republican National Convention promises to be another night of lies and misleading statements on the failure that was Trump’s four years as president.
Trump likes to talk about strength, but as president, he failed to make America strong through policy. Instead, America was routinely embarrassed on the global stage and isolated itself from its longtime allies — with international consequences.
In a second term, Trump is already committed to abandoning our international allies once again and emboldening our adversaries. Trump is proposing a two-tier approach to managing NATO members where only countries that met the two percent defense spending goal would receive the promise of collective security. Trump went so far as to say he would allow Russia to attack NATO states — such as Poland — that were not meeting their two percent goal.
Trump’s plans are par for the course for someone who praises the strength of brutal dictators and is desperate to re-join the club of authoritarian leaders across the globe.
Project 2025, the presidential transition plan backed by many of Trump’s conservative allies and embraced by other Republicans, goes even further in calling for the U.S. to withdraw from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Such a move would further isolate America on a global stage and jeopardize national and international security.
Learn more about Trump’s failure to make America strong on the global stage:
- Donald Trump was insufficiently supportive of Ukraine.
- During a 2018 NATO summit press conference, Trump left open the possibility that he would recognize Russian annexation of Crimea.
- Trump withheld $391 million in security aid to Ukraine. Trump’s own administration was caught unaware of the decision.
- Following an in-person meeting between the two, Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban said Trump would “not give a penny” in support of Ukraine against Russian aggression in a second term.
- Donald Trump repeatedly appeared uninformed and ignorant of foreign affairs or international law as president.
- After the killing of Qassem Soleimani, Trump stated that he may order attacks on Iranian cultural sites. The 1949 Geneva Convention outlines attacks on cultural sites as a war crime.
- Trump did not understand how NATO is funded and mistook Finland for a member of the alliance in 2018.
- Trump mixed up the “Baltics” and “Balkan” in a meeting with leaders from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
- Trump did not understand why the United States intervened on the side of the allies during WWII and asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?”
- Trump was laughed at by other world leaders.
- Prime Ministers of five Nordic countries posted a photo mocking Trump’s Riyadh “orb” photo op in 2017.
- In a 2018 speech to the United Nations, the audience audibly laughed after Trump claimed his administration “accomplished more than almost any administration.”
- At a closed-door media ball, then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull mocked Trump’s vocabulary.
- Donald Trump criticized and alienated U.S. allies.
- Trump said he did not “give a shit” about NATO, criticized it as “obsolete” and threatened to pull out of the alliance.
- Trump refused to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to NATO’s Article 5 provision outlining collective defense of member states.
- In his first term, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on steel and 10% tariffs on aluminum from Mexico and Canada, key U.S. trading partners.
- Trump threatened the U.S.’s allies in the European Union with a 10% tariff in a second term.
- Trump complained about the United States’ defense of South Korea and demanded they pay more to support U.S. troops.
- Trump threatened to withdraw troops and furlough employees at U.S. bases in South Korea.
- Donald Trump embraced autocratic leaders.
- Trump embraced autocratic leaders and expressed admiration and jealousy of them.
- Trump embraced Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
- Trump sided with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the American intelligence community regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
- Trump said Putin was “pretty smart” for trying to take over Ukraine.
- Trump praised President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China for being “president for life.”
- Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in front of a pastor who had been held in bondage by Erdogan for nearly two years.
- Trump called Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban a “fantastic leader.”
- Trump defended Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un from scrutiny regarding the death of Otto Warmbier.
- Trump said he wished for a world in which Hussein and Qaddafi were still in power.
- Donald Trump bungled his approach to the Middle East.
- Trump stated that, as president, he would withdraw troops from the Middle East. Trump failed to reduce the total of troops deployed in the middle east.
- Donald Trump’s hasty Afghanistan troop withdrawal complicated things for the next administration.
- Trump ordered a hasty troop withdrawal from Afghanistan despite being cautioned against potential violence from the Taliban.
- The Trump administration unilaterally negotiated with the Taliban, which led to a decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
- Donald Trump disregarded national security.
- Trump attempted to force the Chinese government-linked ByteDance to divest from TikTok due to national security concerns when he was president, but flipped on the issue in 2024 after a meeting with a donor who was invested in the company.
Published: Jul 17, 2024 | Last Modified: Jul 24, 2024