First Donald Trump remade the Republican Party in his own image, and now he is trying to remake America the same way – into a selfish, dishonest country with no close friends, totally unpredictable, free of any commitment to enduring values, ready to stab any ally in the back on Twitter if it doesn’t do our bidding and much more comfortable with mafialike dictators than elected Democrats.
God forbid we become the United States of Trump. That would threaten our future and the stability of the world. The world has come to rely on an America that, more often than not, has been ready to pay any price and bear any burden to do the right things, say the right things, model the right things and stand for the right things – when others were unwilling or unable to do so.
All the tangible and intangible benefits flowing from the global order we generated helped to make us the richest, most secure and most respected nation in history. We need to make that prosperity more inclusive, but becoming the Ugly America will make us only more insecure.
Fox News Chorus: That’s awfully churlish, Friedman. After all, Trump may deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for the denuclearization deal he just forged with North Korea.
I’m glad Trump sat down with Kim Jong Un – nothing else has worked. But Trump is so dishonest, so much better at breaking things than making things and such a chump for anyone who flatters him, it is way too soon to say what will be implemented out of this Singapore fling. If it’s the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, I’ll personally nominate Trump for the Nobel Prize. But let’s see.