Newsom didn't do anyone any favors by blowing up at the European leaders [View all]

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...and like all macho displays in response to political challenges, the governor's ranting contained more heat than light.

Newsom torches ‘pathetic’ European leaders for bowing to Trump: ‘I should’ve brought kneepads’

California Governor Gavin Newsom tore into “pathetic” and “embarrassing” European allies for how they are responding to U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing them of “rolling over” as the White House upends NATO in its pursuit of control of Greenland from Denmark.

“I can’t take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have bought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders,” Newsom, a Democrat and potential candidate for the presidency in 2028, told reporters at the World Economic Forum‘s annual gathering in Davos.

He added: “I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage, at least from an American perspective. It’s embarrassing.”

“I’ve seen this in the United States, the supine Congress. It’s time to stand tall and strong, stand united”.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/gavin-newsom-european-leaders-pathetic-171337182.html


“This guy is a wrecking ball. I hope people are waking up to what we are dealing with. This is code red,” Newsom continued.

“You guys are still playing by an old set of rules, everybody in the globe is, with this guy. He’s unmoored. It’s the law of the jungle. It’s the rule of Don, and I hope it’s dawning on the world what we’re up against. This is serious. This guy is—he’s not mad, he’s very intentional. But he’s unmoored and he’s unhinged.”

The Democrat also accused leaders of saying different things in public and in private about Trump. “Everybody’s talking behind his back. They’re laughing at him. Meanwhile, they’re sucking up to him. It’s embarrassing…This is not diplomacy, it’s stupidity,” Newsom said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gavin-newsom-slams-pathetic-us-allies-over-donald-trump/ar-AA1UA51y

...while it's nice to see someone standing up to Trump, it has to be bemusing for the European leaders to see the governor bashing them for something that is rapidly spinning out of control in his own country, ignoring their own individual interests are just as rapidly turning away from America because of our voters' insistence in again elevating Trump back onto the world stage.

It's not the Europeans' responsibility to bring Trump to heel; not as much as they are charged with looking after their own interests; and now they're turning away from decades of cooperation on concerns which the U.S. is rapidly abandoning support for, both materially and rhetorically under Trump.

They can reasonably ask where they can rely on America right now for anything other than the inevitability of some arbitrary punitive action directed at them at the point of Trump's latest pique.

They don't need to growl at Trump or beat their chests like teenagers in a school fight. They have democracies which will determine whether negotiation or fighting makes sense to their interests.

And certainly on this world stage, at this world economic summit, cooperation between nations is meant to take precedent over the internecine squabbling that Trump would like everyone else to descend into while picking over the rubble he's caused.

Gov. Newsom should be careful imagining the Europeans don't know how to take care of themselves in the face of autocratic figureheads pushing their weight around. Their people know how to take to the streets to demand the changes they want; less so here in the States, albeit learning.

But more than that obviation, Europeans must have had their fill of Americans talking down to them right now, their countryfolk now at the mercy of political outcomes which Newsom and others in America have failed to effectively manage among our own people.

Personally, I've long had my fill of macho politics that substitutes volume for effect or substance.

If Newsom wants Europeans to do something more to confront Trump; if he has specific ideas beyond being 'tall and strong;' he should spell those out more succinctly than the full-throated deriding he offered them today for practicing diplomacy at a diplomatic forum - do the work of diplomacy with our European allies so that we can all as he admonished, "stand united."