Trump’s latest affront - Arrogance, ignorance, and power

If in the years ahead, after leaving the White House and returning to civilian life, Donald Trump decides to write — or have ghost-written — another book, it could usefully bear the title How I made America Grate Again.

Almost every week, Trump appears to sink to a new low. He has now sparked fury in France and Britain by suggesting looser gun laws could have helped prevent deadly attacks in Paris in 2015, and linking a wave of knife crime in London to a handgun ban.

It is less than two weeks since French President Emmanuel Macron was enduring a comical bromance with Trump in Washington.

Macron’s state visit was intended as a charm offensive to challenge the US president’s ultra-nationalistic political

philosophy and world view. In particular, he sought to convince the Trump administration to support multilateral efforts to shut down Iran’s nuclear programme, to battle climate change and to safeguard free trade.

Overall, Macron wants to position France as the main conduit between the US and the EU, a process bolstered by Brexit and by German chancellor Angela Merkel’s weakened political position.

During the visit, the New York Times noted that Macron had “struck an apparent rapport with the mercurial American president, who has taken pride in testing, even alienating, some of the United States’ oldest and truest allies”.

He was prepared to endure touchy-feely moments with Trump, which he compared to the kissing, hugging and hand shaking that went on between US founding father Benjamin Franklin and the French philosopher Voltaire.

It followed a visit by British prime minister Theresa May, who went to Washington to cement the so-called special

relationship between the US and the UK. She too had moments of embarrassing kisses and hand-holding by Trump.

Far from showing any respect, understanding, or empathy with America’s oldest allies, Trump has alienated them further. Addressing a US gun lobby group, he caused outrage in the UK by suggesting that guns could help combat knife violence in London, and infuriated the French by imitating the 2015 Paris attackers and suggesting the carnage could have been halted if the victims had been armed.

The president cruelly mimicked the terrorists slowly killing their victims when, in reality, they were armed with automatic weapons and bombs.

It is hard to imagine a more grotesque parody of a world leader than the current occupier of the Oval Office. The problem, though, is not so much Trump’s burlesque buffoonery but his combination of arrogance and ignorance. In less than a week, he is to decide on whether or not to withdraw the US from the 2015 deal in which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

Macron has warned that war could ensue if he does.

It is worth remembering that the Americans were the first to use nuclear weapons in anger. The danger is that they could also be the last.