US credibility squandered: Putin trumps Trump on trust

Even against the backdrop of US president Donald Trump’s sinister and shockingly inept implosion over events in Charlottesville, the news that people in 22 countries trust Russia’s president Vladimir Putin more than they trust Mr Trump seems to cross a Rubicon most democrats in the West never imagined even existed. 

Even if this poll, like America’s presidential election, represents a choice between awful and the terribly awful, this kind of shifting perceptions are a sobering and groundbreaking development.

Washington’s Pew Research Center found that the former KGB man is more trusted to do the right thing for the world than the New York playboy turned president among citizens of Japan and South Korea.