Listen closely. That sound you heard at Wednesday’s joint news conference between the presidents of the European Commission and the United States was Donald Trump backtracking once again. This has become a familiar routine. It goes something like this: Begin by hurling insults at the other side, some of which have a basis in reality but are mostly wild exaggerations. Threaten extreme consequences. Then meet with the other side, backpedal and triumphantly announce that you have saved the world from a crisis that your rhetoric and actions caused in the first place. Call it the Trump two-step.
Think about Trump’s actions with regard to North Korea. He began by calling Kim Jong Un “a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people” and threatening “fire and fury . . . the likes of which this world has never seen before.” He solved his own crisis by making unilateral concessions to Kim and gushing about how the North Korean people “love” their absolute dictator and how he, Trump, trusts him. The same pattern applies with the European Union, which he only recently described as “worse than our enemies.” Now, he tells us, after meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, that the E.U. and America truly “love each other.” Expect to hear a similar climb-down on China one of these days.
