{"id":251408,"date":"2025-09-24T15:51:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T15:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/251408\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T15:51:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T15:51:21","slug":"the-worlds-brittlest-ego-meets-the-globes-biggest-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/251408\/","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s Brittlest Ego Meets the Globe\u2019s Biggest Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Kimmel, back on the air as of last night, is plainly a little bemused by his unsought role as Free Speech Hero. The cold open to his show showed a sequence of short, breathless clips from newscasts proclaiming his return to the air \u201ca marker in late-night show history,\u201d \u201ca huge moment in American history,\u201d and \u201cone of the most pivotal moments in broadcast history\u201d\u2014before panning the camera to Kimmel dressed as a giant rat and and sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez as a banana. \u201cMaybe we should change?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

He changed. And then he went on stage. And then he got emotional. \u201cThis show is not important,\u201d Kimmel said in his monologue. \u201cWhat is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

An admirable sentiment\u2014made all the more salient by the post the president had made just a few moments before. \u201cI can\u2019t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back,\u201d Donald Trump fumed on Truth Social last night. \u201cThe White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! . . . He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we\u2019re going to test ABC out on this. Let\u2019s see how we do.\u201d We\u2019ve only just begun. Happy Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>President Donald Trump speaks during the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on September 23, 2025. (Photo by Celal Gunes \/ Anadolu via Getty Images.)<\/p>\n

by Andrew Egger<\/p>\n

Watching Donald Trump\u2019s long, self-congratulatory, ridiculous, ominous address at the United Nations yesterday, it was hard to know what was more unsettling: What the speech showed about America under this president, or what the speech showed about Trump himself.<\/p>\n

Given his tendency to meander\u2014sorry, weave\u2014it can sometimes be difficult to sum up what a Trump speech is about. But at its heart, Trump\u2019s speech yesterday, which droned on for almost an hour, was ideological: a defense of his brand of lawless populist nationalism as the only solution for the challenges now facing the world, challenges against which liberal multilateralism doesn\u2019t stand a chance.<\/p>\n

Refugee resettlement programs, attempts to police borders while simultaneously abiding by the law, even efforts to fight climate change and diversify into renewable energy, which he called the \u201cgreen energy scam\u201d\u2014all these, Trump said, were self-sabotaging projects that \u201cthe English-speaking world\u201d needed to immediately abandon. \u201cBoth the immigration and suicidal energy ideas,\u201d he said, \u201cwill be the death of Western Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

America, he said, was showing another way\u2014one that, he implied, was setting aside petty concerns like wielding force only in accordance with the law in pursuit of the higher aim of results. Perhaps the speech\u2019s most unsettling moment in this vein came when Trump boasted of his repeated sinking of alleged drug-running boats from Venezuela\u2014attacks for which the administration has still given no justification under U.S. law, except by pointing, as Trump did yesterday, to \u201cthe supreme power of the United States military\u201d to destroy \u201cterrorists and trafficking networks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s put it this way: People don\u2019t like taking big loads of drugs in boats anymore,\u201d Trump leered. \u201cThere aren\u2019t too many boats that are traveling on the seas by Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this was abominable\u2014the latest demonstration that America, far from leading the charge toward a world based on orderly international cooperation, now actively seeks to supplant such a world with one based on a state-of-nature struggle between nations (or perhaps \u201cthe English-speaking world\u201d against the barbarian hordes outside).<\/p>\n

Somehow, though, I found myself even more unsettled by some remarks Trump made in passing, not about the world per se, but about himself. Trump, of course, has always been a braggart and a blowhard. But the levels of auto-hagiography he put on display before the world yesterday were remarkable even for him.<\/p>\n

To hear Trump tell it, the biggest problem with bodies like the U.N. wasn\u2019t that they were bureaucratic, ossified structures dedicated to a failing vision of international cooperation. The biggest problem was that they had never been able to understand that he, Trump, was the personal solution to all their problems.<\/p>\n

The U.N.\u2019s failure to appreciate him, Trump said, was a longstanding problem\u2014going all the way back to the time, he recalled, when they declined his bid to renovate their New York complex. \u201cI remember it so well,\u201d Trump lamented, sounding momentarily more like a jilted lover than a world leader. \u201cIt would be beautiful. I used to talk about, \u2018I\u2019m going to give you marble floors, they\u2019re going to give you terrazzo. I\u2019m going to give you the best of everything. You\u2019re going to have mahogany walls; they\u2019re going to give you plastic.\u2019 But they decided to go in another direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

These issues, Trump grumbled, have only persisted. \u201cI ended seven wars,\u201d he (spuriously<\/a>) claimed, without ever getting so much as a \u201cphone call\u201d from the U.N. offering to help out. \u201cIt\u2019s too bad I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them.\u201d After rattling off a long list of international wins, Trump said this: \u201cEveryone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, I laughed at this comment. But then I realized that this wasn\u2019t just bluster. Trump doesn\u2019t just think he deserves a stack of Nobels\u2014he actually thinks that everyone thinks this.<\/p>\n

Think of what it\u2019s like to go through life as this guy. You\u2019ve just spent a decade purging your party and personnel of all but the most pliable and spineless tongue-bathers and yes-men. You sit atop perhaps the largest and most powerful cult of personality the world has ever seen. You\u2019ve repeatedly demonstrated your love for retaliatory action against everyone who displeases you on any matter, no matter how petty\u2014business leaders, opposition politicians, international leaders. And recently, you\u2019ve shown zero compunction about wielding the entire U.S. government to settle those scores.<\/p>\n

The result is a life crammed with people, from sunup to sundown, who do absolutely nothing but kiss your ass. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re meeting with your staff, your congressional allies, business leaders in your country, foreign allies, foreign foes\u2014every single person you meet knows their best course of action is to spend the whole interaction buttering you like a roll. Add that on top of your preexisting lifelong egomania, and it\u2019s a wonder you haven\u2019t actually gotten around to proclaiming yourself Lord of the World.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a deeply stupid state of affairs\u2014it\u2019s dangerous. Trump\u2019s increasingly ironclad sense that everybody, more or less, worships the ground on which he walks strengthens his confidence that he has no need to triangulate on even his most controversial actions. Why seek consensus from across the aisle when you are convinced you\u2019re the consensus?<\/p>\n

As for those remaining foes and critics, in Trump\u2019s mind they don\u2019t represent alternative views so much as some dark and ominous agenda\u2014no doubt as bought-and-paid-for members of an elite conspiracy. It\u2019s not the headspace of a guy who\u2019s considering taking his foot off the gas, whether he\u2019s speaking at the White House or before fellow world leaders at the U.N.<\/p>\n

by Cathy Young<\/p>\n

Trying to keep track of all of Trump\u2019s<\/a> pivots<\/a> on Ukraine, Russia, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky is liable to make one\u2019s head spin, Exorcist<\/a>-style.<\/p>\n

But yesterday, we saw his toughest pro-Ukraine rhetoric yet. In a social media post<\/a> after a meeting with Zelensky at the United Nations General Assembly, Trump suddenly declared that Ukraine can \u201cfight and WIN\u201d all of its land back \u201cwith time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO.\u201d It\u2019s not clear whether Trump means the borders from February 22, 2022, when Russia already controlled seven percent<\/a> of Ukrainian territory, or \u201call of Ukraine back in its original form\u201d (which would include Crimea), or whether he even understands the difference. Either way, it\u2019s a remarkable turnaround from the time before the Alaska summit (a grand total of six weeks ago), when Trump suggested<\/a> that Ukraine would have to not only cede most of its occupied territories to Russia but give up more.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, at the sit-down with Zelensky in front of cameras and reporters, Trump hailed the Ukrainian president (you know, the \u201cdictator<\/a>\u201d who bilked the U.S. out of $350 billion and has \u201cno cards\u201d) as \u201ca great man\u201d who is \u201cputting up one hell of a fight.\u201d And there\u2019s even more: at the same meeting, Trump replied<\/a> in the affirmative when asked if NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft straying into their airspace. Marco Rubio now appears to be the dove<\/a> in this administration.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on? Was Trump playing golf with Finnish president Alexander Stubb again<\/a>? Did he get a nighttime visit from the ghosts of Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan? Barring such fanciful explanations, Trump\u2019s annoyance with being jerked around by Putin\u2014and being made to look like a weakling and a chump\u2014may be finally having an effect. But his shift is also likely due to the realization that, contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is not on a victorious march and Ukrainian defenses are not collapsing. His post refers to \u201cgetting to know and fully understand the Ukraine\/Russia Military and Economic situation\u201d and jeers that \u201cRussia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years \u2026 making them look like \u2018a paper tiger.\u2019\u201d He made similar points in his U.N. speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Phillips O\u2019Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland), notes<\/a> that \u201cTrump seems to finally be getting intelligence that Russia is not doing well and Ukraine has actually started to gain an upper hand in some areas.\u201d At the moment, Russian troops are making virtually no confirmed advances<\/a> (despite continued high-attrition assaults) while Ukrainian forces are retaking some ground. Ukraine is also continuing its successful campaign of long-distance drone strikes, targeting more oil facilities<\/a> inside Russia and military aircraft<\/a> in Crimea. Ukraine has also reached Moscow, where passenger airplanes were grounded<\/a> for hours, in an operation with a clear demoralizing effect. Some of us said<\/a> even before the election that Trump may well turn toward Ukraine if he decides that Putin looks like a loser.<\/p>\n

Of course, the question is what Trump is actually going to do with his epiphany\u2014provided it lasts beyond his next conversation with JD Vance. (It helps that Zelensky has mastered the fine art of stroking Trump\u2019s ego, praising him as a potential \u201cgame-changer<\/a>\u201d in the war.) For now, Trump\u2019s only concrete pledge is that \u201cwe will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them.\u201d Sanctions? Still at the \u201cwe can do them if necessary<\/a>\u201d stage, even though we\u2019re way past all of Trump\u2019s deadlines for a peace deal. Asked whether he trusts Putin, he replied<\/a> with yet another deadline: \u201cI\u2019ll let you know in about a month from now, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

On a larger scale, however, Trump\u2019s post does suggest that he\u2019s done with the peace effort. Former military officer and podcaster Andrew Fox writes<\/a> that this is \u201cprobably the least-worst outcome.\u201d It could be even better if he continues, at least, to talk the talk. Maybe now the bipartisan hawks in the U.S. Senate, who have two pending bills to sanction<\/a> Russia and repurpose<\/a> its frozen assets to support Ukraine, can start walking the walk.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Just announced: Rep. Sarah McBride will join Sarah Longwell on stage at Bulwark Live in D.C. on Wednesday, October 8.Plus: Mona Charen, Will Sommer and Andrew Egger will join Sarah, Tim and JVL for a super-sized Bulwark Live experience.<\/p>\n

Bulwark Live in D.C.<\/a><\/p>\n