Trump to Embarrass America at the U.N. [View all]

[orangecrush]

I think the world is still trying to take the measure of this president,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “For a number of leaders, this is going to be their first chance to see him, to judge him, to try to get on his good side…. How that goes off is unclear.”

If the U.S. government decides “that it doesn’t care about the U.N.,” he added, “the consequences for the U.N., which is running operations in dozens and dozens of countries with vulnerable people around the world, would be profound.”

The jittery anticipation of Trump’s first U.N. appearance stands in marked contrast to the prelude to President Obama’s maiden address in 2009. Received as something of a hero, he delivered an impassioned plea for international cooperation against global warming, which gelled seven years later into a historic climate accord — one that Trump has vowed to reject.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has sought to trim the State Department, initially planned to take a much smaller team of diplomats and subject experts to New York than his predecessors did. It is not yet clear how much smaller, given that the delegation has grown in recent days.


http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-un-trump-speech-20170918-story.html