You have to marvel at the combination of malice and incompetence that has led our new president to create a diplomatic incident with Sweden, that most neutral of nations. Apparently fired up by a tendentious anti-immigrant Fox news segment, Donald Trump suggested at his rally in Florida last weekend that a terroristic attack or other serious incident had occurred in Sweden the night before. A spokesman has since clarified that Trump was speaking not of a specific incident but of the news report. The ridiculousness of the president’s remarks shouldn’t blind us to the purpose and prejudice that motivated them: this is a man who hears what he wants to hear, and sees what he wants to see, which is all the easier when he feeds himself a diet that includes trash reporting from Fox News. Incident by incident, these stories about Trump’s ignorance amuse: but over time, and country by country, what essentially amounts to presidential slander and hostility towards American allies is going to erode our security in the world. The president is the loudest voice of the U.S., after all, and without someone with an equally large media megaphone cleaning up everything in his wake, the world is left with the sense that this is what the U.S. is all about now: anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and contemptuous of our allies.