This past week, we’ve had the non-privilege of not one but two significant and telling snubs of close U.S. allies by the Trump administration. First, in the White House’s continuing hapless efforts to defend Donald Trump’s false claims that President Obama had him wiretapped, Sean Spicer referenced a story from Fox News that claimed Obama had used British intelligence to do the alleged deed. The Brits have pushed back vigorously, although despite some muddled reports to the contrary, the White House has not officially apologized to the U.K. Angering our closest ally should be reckoned as collateral damage in the ever-more-deranged effort to slander Barack Obama for non-existent crimes, and another indication of how Donald Trump places the interests of Donald Trump ahead of those of the country.
The second incident was the one-two combo that happened in Donald Trump’s meeting with Angela Merkel. Trump initially was unwilling to shake Angela Merkel’s hand, which is a fine treatment for the leader of another country closely allied to the United States. More significant, though, was Trump’s comments later in the meeting that Merkel and Trump shared in common the fact that they had both been wiretapped by Barack Obama, alluding to the disclosures sparked by Wikileaks releases in 2015 that the U.S. had listened to Merkel’s phone conversations. Pretending to have found a point of commonality with Merkel, Donald Trump in fact re-visited a sore spot in U.S.-German relations for the purpose of impugning Obama in a guilt-by-association manner - the U.S. eavesdropped on Germany, so it did the same to him - in pursuit of his dangerous vendetta against the former president. Again, he chose to damage our relationship with an ally to serve his own personal, and delusional, purposes.
In both of these incidents, we need to constantly be aware that it is not just Trump’s reputation, but the reputation of the United States, that is being damaged. This may seem abstract to most people, but alienating friends can do immeasurable damage if it begins to affect their willingness to trust the U.S. and cooperate with us on issues that affect us all, from economic issues to terrorism and the environment. I worry we are still in the beginning stages of the damage that Trump is doing, when it all just seems like so many words to most people, with the concrete, pernicious effects to be seen months and years down the line.