President Donald Trump's response to a meeting of global leaders that he admires made him look like a "little high school kid," according to one analyst.
David Rothkopf, a national security expert and columnist for The Daily Beast, discussed Trump's response to the meeting between India's Narendra Modi, Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong Un, and China's Xi Jinping outside of Beijing this week on a new episode of The Daily Beast's podcast released on Wednesday.
"Trump may think it's all about him, and it's not," Rothkopf said. "His response, however, was like a little high school kid who is just feeling isolated and is coming up with his own truth social burn book, like in Mean Girls."
Trump has repeatedly expressed affection for leaders like Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong Un. He was just starting to build what looked like a meaningful relationship with India's Modi because Modi is a racist and does not believe in democracy, Rothkopf said. So, for those leaders to meet on a global stage and not include Trump must have been hurtful to Trump's ego, he added.
Modi declining to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize over the India-Pakistan war didn't help matters much either, Rothkopf continued.
"[Modi] is pulling the rug out from Trump's myth of himself as a peacemaker," Rothkopf said. "And this pissed off Trump. And so he imposed all these trade sanctions and tariffs on India. And India is like, 'Well, we may have hated China for the past several thousand years, but enough is enough.'"
"There are dozens of world leaders in China right now saying, 'We think the world's changing and we think it's going to be more China-centric,'" Rothkopf said. "Of course, Trump, who has no sense of geopolitics at all and sees everything in personal terms...I am sure this is crushing for Trump now, but none of that matters because what really matters is that China is on the rise and we are on the decline."
Watch the entire episode below or by clicking here.