From Wallwritings
ame>On Wednesday, President Donald Trump approached the waning days of his first month in office with what he hoped would be a significant foreign policy event, his first White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At their joint press conference, the real estate tycoon now occupying this nation's highest office, became Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson), from the 2005 Coen brothers movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou. (see clip above).
In the film, Delmar and his pals, Everett (George Clooney), the dominant figure who evokes military occupier Bibi Netanyahu, and Pete (John Turturro), in the role of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, have escaped from a Mississippi chain gang.
Still linked together by the chains of Occupation, Everett and Pete argue heatedly over which of them should be the Decider of the future.
Ha'aretz writer Ilene Prusher analyzed Wednesday's Trump-Netanyahu press conference, under this harsh headline: Trump Is Delusional and Ignorant About Israel. His Meeting With Netanyahu Proved It.
Prusher opened her analysis by pointing to what she calls a bizarro moment: "Trump departed from decades of U.S. policy of all administrations, Republican and Democratic, when he said that America was no longer determined to reach a two-state solution to end the conflict."
Trump's exact words were:"So I'm looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like. I'm very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one."
The answer drew laughs. Delmar could not have said it better. Here are clips from the press conference:
When we elected Trump, we did this nation an horrendous disservice. We put an unqualified and unprepared man in the White House who is prone to making up stuff to suit the moment.
Veteran political journalist Elizabeth Drew, opened her critique of Trump for the New York Review of Books:
"When the most unpopular and least prepared president-elect in modern history took the oath of office on January 20, most of Washington, like most of the country and the world, had little idea of the turbulence and disruption that he intended to bring to the job. Nonetheless those who'd watched him closely over the past year and a half were aware that he was manifestly unfit for a job that's beyond the capacities of most people."
Examples of his turbulence and disruptions abound. Trump's Delmar moment with the Israeli Prime Minister, is only one of many.
His cabinet choices have consistently been rejected by Democrats, unfortunately not enough Democrats, since Republicans hold a narrow lead in the Senate.
Trump has selected no Team of Rivals, as Doris Kearns Goodwin described Lincoln's cabinet in her 2005 book of that name. Trump has no feel for how a divided government must serve a divided population.
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