Appearing on MSNBC with host Greta Van Susteren, contributor Howard Fineman said President Donald Trump seems to be under the impression that he can meet with the world's worst dictators and "cut a deal" with them like it was a business transaction.
On a day when Trump said he would be "honored" to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un --and a day after he extended an invitation to Philippines strongman Rodrigo Duterte to visit the White House -- Fineman said that Trump thinks dealing with dictators is like making a real estate deal.
"Donald Trump is analogizing world affairs to a real estate deal in New York," Fineman explained. "He's trying to get everybody in the room, however much he dislikes them, however much it's like the unions he didn't like or politics he had to donate to or whatever, and he's creating in his own mind a legion of dictator superheroes of some kind because he thinks it's a jungle out there."
"He was put off by what he regarded as Barack Obama's overweening idealism and he's going to go in just the opposite direction and he will literally go to every bad actor in the world," Fineman continued. "He thinks he's creating -- will get all the bad guys in the room at the same time and somehow cut a deal. I think that's his mentality."
"It's radically different than anything we've ever done and goes against the grain of the idealism of American foreign policy," he concluded. "It creates two policies: one is global where we're supposed to stand for something and one is in America where you can't sell foreign policy unless people agree with it. Americans happen to be pretty idealistic in our role of foreign affairs."
Watch the video below via MSNBC:
