America on Its Back: The Total Collapse of Trump's Global Clout

Our global humiliation with Iran and NATO is brought to you by Donald Trump and his Republican Party.

Trump’s failures, lies, grift, greed, and narcissism, have at last drained the good will and respect that generations of Americans worked to build around the world. Our president is now openly mocked on the world stage, and our nation is humiliated. America isn’t back; it’s on its back, and Donald Trump and his Republican Party are to blame.

Jimmy Carter was a good man, a president who loved America, and a leader who paid attention to detail. That didn’t prevent Iranian revolutionaries from overrunning the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking 66 Americans hostage. Months of negotiations failed to bring those hostages home. Then Iraq invaded Iran, changing the calculus of the new Iranian government, and the Iranians began to negotiate in earnest. Those negotiations succeeded — the hostages came home on day Jimmy Carter left office. Throughout that terrible and deeply stressful time, the Strait of Hormuz was never closed.

Still, Ronald Reagan used the crisis to paint Carter as weak and ineffective.

Well, as Reagan would say, “There you go again.” Donald Trump is utterly spent, desperately weak, and entirely ineffective. Trump launched a war without the approval of Congress and without explanation to the American people. That didn’t make him strong. It left him exposed. Now at least 18 Americans are dead and zero of Trump’s many and shifting war objectives have been achieved. Nevertheless, Trump announced a peace deal. And now he’s announced that deal, too, is dead.

Carter, at least, knew how to negotiate a deal.

Today, because of Trump’s failures in strategy, leadership, understanding, attention, ability to stay focused, perseverance, cultivation of allies, and more, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s anti-American, terrorist-sponsoring government, once on the verge of collapse, appears stronger than ever. It has not abandoned its nuclear ambitions. Its propagandists regularly mock Donald Trump- and increasingly people everywhere are laughing at their videos. Partly in response, Trump orders more bombings. Each day this fiasco continues, Iran shows the world that the United States is as ineffective as it is destructive.

America’s utter and ongoing humiliation has been noted by others. China is now testing long-range, submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Russia continues to target civilians in Kyiv with ballistic missiles. Europe, not the United States, is leading the effort to help Ukraine fight back.

At the recent NATO summit, Trump took aim at Spain, saying, “I don’t want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade to Spain, please, including visits. They are hopeless, bad people.” The world yawned. Trump cannot cut off trade with Spain. His toughest words mean nothing on the world stage. Again, utterly humiliating.

Trump questioned NATO, insulted our allies, and even revived his demand to control Greenland. No matter. He ended up bowing to demands that he allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles.

Remember, Trump boasted that he would command the decisions of nations everywhere by using America’s economy as a coercive tool. He would impose crushing tariffs to bring the world to heel. He didn’t care about the inflationary impact on Americans. He didn’t care about the Constitution, which gives the tariff power to Congress. He thought imposing tariffs unilaterally made him strong. As with unilaterally going to war, it had the opposite effect. Even this Supreme Court told him his tariffs were illegal. In response, he said he would, wait for it, impose tariffs. Now he’s a paper tiger, and our government is an embarrassment with no clout, no credibility, and no ability to lead.

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Even fellow autocrats know Trump can’t be counted on. Mohamed bin Salman has now denied U.S. access to key military bases in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are moving ahead with a massive pipeline to ship oil to market through the Red Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. They are launching this hugely expensive project because they do not believe Donald Trump when he says the Strait is open or that American will keep it open.

Donald Trump’s unique achievement on the world stage is to have earned the distrust and disrespect of both Israel and its Arab adversaries. And it is not just governments that mock him. After America lost the World Cup, the Belgian team posted video making fun of Trump. The humiliation is everywhere.

Even the MAGA crowd at home feels it. They personally invested billions in Trump’s meme coin only to be proven suckers.

Trump’s ethnoreligious administration has destroyed our government’s ability to deliver benefits to Americans. Prices are going up. Access to quality health care is going down. Access to justice? That’s a question that simply has no meaning in this administration. Justice is just an idea. Indictments, investigations and imprisonment are tools they can use to shut us up. Yet, Americans are not shutting up. We are standing up. And for the administration, it is just another humiliation.

In communities across our nation, we’ve just celebrated our 250^th birthday. But our government subverted planned official celebrations to, instead, hold a series of Trump rallies. They all failed. The MMA match on the White House lawn? Embarrassing. The “Great State Fair” on the National Mall? Empty. The “biggest Fourth of July fireworks in history?” Delayed to the early hours of the Fifth of July by a Trump campaign speech.

It’s election season. Time to remember that every bit of our global humiliation is brought to you with the full and complete complicity of the Republican Party.

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