'Poor negotiator' Trump buried over 'hare-brained scheme' going nowhere

Over at the normally Donald Trump-supportive National Review, the president was on the receiving end of a blistering takedown from longtime conservative Andrew McCarthy for his "breast-beating" proposal to take over the Gaza Strip.

As McCarthy explained, there is no way anyone was going to agree to let the U.S. force over 2 million Palestinians out of Gaza so Trump's administration could proceed with turning the region into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

To make his case, he noted that, despite Trump's frequent boasts, he is actually a "poor negotiator," as demonstrated by his recent tariff threats against Mexico and Canada both or which fell apart within days.

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According to the conservative McCarthy, "Once our neighbors readied [tariff] retaliation that would have caused real harm, once markets duly groaned, the president beat a swift retreat with, of course, a farcical declaration of victory," before pointedly adding, "Mexico and Canada made no actual concessions."

"Trump's schtick of chest-beating, name-calling bravado — which is already tired after two weeks (plus four years) — is scant veil for Trump’s craving of plaudits and respect from the progressive foreign policy blob that he denigrates for public consumption," he accused. "This is hard to see as anything other than Trumpian attention-grabbing."

Writing, "I don’t take the proposal seriously," McCarthy stated Trump has no understanding of Middle East geopolitics and culture and that he is traveling down the same "insane" path other presidents have followed when it comes to the region.

According to McCarthy, Trump demonstrated the same lack of understanding during his first term and has learned nothing since.

"Oh, he knows there are 'extremists' who carry out terrorist attacks, but he makes no effort to grasp why," McCarthy opined. "Doing so would interfere with his stubborn conceit — the same conceit shared by his predecessors — that the Palestinians and their allies in Sunni-majority countries share our belief (which is actually the transnational progressive blob’s uncritical belief) in what the West calls 'our common humanity.'"

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