President Donald Trump's reception at the G7 meeting in France demonstrates that America is no longer the leader of the free world, a top former Obama official explained on MSNBC on Monday.
"Donald Trump’s visit to the South of France for this year’s G7 summit ended earlier today with America’s closest allies essentially resorting to a strategy of speaking in soothing tones and sharing warm fuzzies with the American president to avoid stoking his ire," "Deadline: White House" host Nicolle Wallace reported. "So we will start with the summit in Donald Trump’s mind -- where he’s a great negotiator and the trade war with China is going really, really well."
For analysis, Wallace interviewed former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.
"Ben, I have to start with you. There’s so much madness and lunacy, you have to read some of these stories three, four, five times -- read Trump’s transcripts three, four, five times to see where he lands within a single soundbite," Wallace noted.
"Yeah, it's a pretty good window into the rotten, corrupt Donald Trump worldview on foreign policy," Rhodes noted.
Rhodes explained how out-of-place Trump's views were at the summit.
"It’s supposed to be a forum for likeminded democratic nations to get together and figure out how to deal with the threat of climate change, how to deal with the challenge from Iran, how to deal with China cracking down on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Russia has no place at that table. Russia would be at the table as a spoiler," he explained. "And it says everything about Donald Trump that he seems to prefer the company of dictators like Vladimir Putin to the leaders of democracies like Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau and the others at the G7."
"He is also someone who has created most of the crises being discussed at the G7, whether it’s Iran resuming its nuclear program or the accelerating threats from climate change," he continued. "So all of these leaders who are in the G7 are forced to be in a situation where they're moving on from America, they’re moving on from American leadership. They’re just trying to prevent Donald Trump from blowing up that summit so they can actually solve problems. You bring Vladimir Putin into that equation, and things just get worse."
"This marks a sea change in which the world has moved beyond U.S. leadership," he said. "The president of the United States is no longer viewed as the leader of the free world."
"They’re trying to come up with their own agreements and just prevent Donald Trump from coming in and flipping over the table and blowing up the summit. So what we are seeing is what the world looks like in a post-America leadership situation. The climate change session, probably the most closely watched session in most parts of the world, particularly with the Amazon on fire, Donald Trump wasn’t even there," he added. "I mean, if you want a metaphor for U.S. leadership in 2019, it is the empty chair at the table as world leaders deal with the biggest challenge to the future of the planet at the time the Amazon rainforest is on fire."
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