SOMEBODY said, early on in this administration, that maybe Donald Trump was the only person who could have put this group together. He may have appointed the best Cabinet since Ronald Reagan surrounded himself with George Shultz, James Baker, Elizabeth Dole and Bill Bennett. Can anybody really imagine a President Rubio or President Kasich putting Betsy DeVos at Education, Rex Tillerson at State, or Alex Acosta at Labor?
Along those same lines, can anybody imagine a President Rubio or President Kasich or any of the other candidates in last year’s elections giving a speech like the one President Trump gave at the UN on Tuesday? Some of us more
genteel types - out the bluster, but given this president’s nature and constitution, that might have to come with the territory for the next three and a half years.
Usually, presidents leave the dirty work to their ambassadors at the United Nations. The pros at the august assembly know they’re surrounded by equivocators and shameless liars, many of whom work for despots and
shameless murderers. And sometimes our people snap. Some of us can remember Charles Lichenstein telling the UN in 1983 it could get the hell out of the United States: “The members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside, waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset.”
But can anybody remember anything a United States president has said at his UN addresses?
Here’s betting they’ll remember the one last week.
For the first few minutes of the speech, we thought maybe this president kept the last president’s speech-writer. But that proved very wrong when, 20 minutes in, President Trump stopped giving a speech and started saying something instead:
“The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens, nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.”
And he named names:
“No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea. It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans, and for the imprisonment, torture, killing and oppression of countless more.”
And he called out Pyongyang’s enablers:
“It is an outrage that some nations would not only trade with such a regime, but would arm, supply and financially support a country that imperils the world with nuclear conflict.”
The president then pivoted to Iran:
“It is far past time for the nations of the world to confront another reckless regime, one that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing Death to America, destruction to Israel, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room. The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy. It has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos.”
Television caught the delegates from Various regimes fidgeting in their seats. This isn’t the kind of stuff they’re used to hearing at the United Nations.
What, pray tell, are they used to?
Try, if you can manage it, to read through the previous president’s last speech before that congregation. We reread it last week. Trust us, you’ll need some
caffeine. The only time he
came close to calling out another nation might have come
here:
“If Russia continues to interfere in the affairs of its neighbors, it may be popular at home. It may fuel nationalist fervor for a time, but over time it is also going to diminish its stature and make its borders less secure. In the South China Sea, a peaceful resolution of disputes offered by law will mean far greater stability than the militarization of a few rocks and reefs.”
And they trembled in Moscow and Beijing.
YES, THE current president said some unpresidential things in his UN speech, vowing to destroy North Korea if Lil’ Kim & Co. took that country into a suicidal war. Sometimes we feel like Martin Sheen’s character in The Departed, when the old grizzled cop noted his young partner’s vulgar speaking style: “I’m afraid we all have to get used to it.”
But don’t most people understand that is certainly what would happen if Pyongyang started a war? How much can a president be criticized for saying out loud what is only a given?
And think of things from the Pyongyang and Tehran point of view: For decades they’ve been punking U.S. presidents, diplomats and Americans in general. Not to mention our allies and most of the West. And never paid much of a price. Not one that would deter them, anyway. Clearly they were walking a path toward war. If this president finally gets their attention, that might be a good thing for the world, including North Koreans and Iranians. As an Englishman named Churchill once put it, jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.
Presidents have said many of these things before, but usually in front of more friendly audiences, such as when George W. Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech at his State of the Union address before Congress in 2002. Maybe it’s time for the rest of the world to hear it with the bark off, too.