Il y a de la pluie
Trump’s trolling today is aimed at France and Macron.
The US president’s Tuesday morning tweet exacerbates his standoff with Macron following his visit to Paris over the weekend that was marred by his controversial behavior.
Trump’s outburst came as France marked the third anniversary of the 2015 Bataclan terror attack in which a coordinated wave of suicide bombings and gun attacks left nearly 130 people dead.
In the tweet Trump repeated his accusation that Macron had called for a European army as protection against the US – an apparent misreading of Macron’s earlier comments.
Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two – How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along. Pay for NATO or not!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2018
It’s shameful that he’s still lying about what Macron said, because he’s been told it’s a lie.
Then he complained about wine and tariffs. No, excuse me, not tariffs but Tariffs.
Guy Verhofstadt, the chief representative for the European parliament on Brexit, shot back at Trump.
“What Trump doesn’t seem to realize is that without French money, the USA would not even exist as France financed the American revolution. They even gave you the Statue of Liberty to celebrate this!” Verhofstadt tweeted.
Trump has also been riled by Macron’s warning on Sunday, at a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war, about the thrust of global politics. Macron, clearly with Trump partly in mind, denounced those who embrace nationalism and put “our interests first”, adding that “our demons are resurfacing”.
So Trump carries on like a brass-wigged Hitler by way of demonstrating that he’s no demon.
Macron is not the only French element engaging in a social media dispute with Trump. On Monday the French army waded in, expertly playing the US president at his own game – trolling him.
Like so:
https://twitter.com/armeedeterre/status/1061908742999027712
There’s a little rain, but it’s no big deal. We’re still motivated!
Isn’t getting the EU and NATO to pitch in more for their own defense one of the things Trump campaigned on? Wouldn’t an integrated European army be a fulfillment of that vision?
Seth, Seth, Seth. There you go with facts, logic and consistency again. Have you learned nothing?
Trump. Facts. Logic. Consistency. One of these things is not like the other – can you guess which one doesn’t belong?
And of course, this is something I was actually concerned about when Trump started making “make them pay” noises in the campaign. We ain’t in NATO to protect Germany from Russia–that’s a happy side-effect. We’re in NATO to keep Germany from having to protect itself from Russia–because in order to do that, it would have to build a massive military machine, and we’ve seen what build-ups of massive military machines in the relatively close confines of Europe lead to.
And of course, that was back when the EU included England. Post-Brexit, I can easily see a situations spiraling out of control a decade hence, wherein the EU has built up a massive force of Franco-Prussian troops as a defense against Russian interloping, and the British nationalists build up a ‘defensive’ force of their own, and then there’s some sort of pissing match–let’s substitute the Alsace-Lorraine with, I dunno, Dublin. And Russia stokes the tensions higher and higher because you can’t spell “Russian Rebuilding” without “Chaos”, and some sparking incident results in formal resolutions of War.
And then America gets drawn in the same way we’ve been drawn into virtually every regional conflict since the turn of last century, and we’re sending American troops over to die in Europe, instead of having just been sending them there for a few years of technical training before they muster out of peacetime duty,
Here we go again, being far too polite about the malevolent mango Mussolini.
It wasn’t ‘controversial’; it was boorish. Bloody rude and self-centred.
Freemage, exactly. I support globalisation and fair trade. Not because I have immediate financial gain from it. If anything the reverse. Parts of the New Zealand economy gain from open trade (our agricultural exports mostly), but others have been virtually wiped out (manufacturing and trade skills). Thing is, it’s very hard to get into an actual fighting war with countries that are actively engaging in substantial trade. It’s a lot easier to do that with countries you have limited contact with, share no institutions with and can therefore easily ‘other’ and feel you’re winning.