Kim Darroch learned the hard way what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Donald Trump’s grim Twitter feed. He should take solace in the fact that he lost his job for telling the truth.
Darroch, who quit Wednesday as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., found himself embroiled in a transatlantic spat after British newspapers reported on leaked cables he had sent back to the prime minister’s office. Among other things, he wrote that Trump is an “insecure” and “incompetent” leader who oversees a “uniquely dysfunctional” White House.
The president reacted characteristically. “I don’t know the Ambassador but have been told he is a pompous fool,” Trump tweeted. “Tell him the USA now has the best Economy & Military anywhere in the World” and so on.
Trump simply fails to grasp this self-evident point. As with Canada and Mexico, Germany and Japan, the EU and NATO, the pattern keeps repeating. The president is blind to the fact that alliances aren’t merely obligations; they serve America’s interests.
The friendship between the U.K. and the U.S. will no doubt endure. It’s based not on the fixations of any one leader but on decades of shared values and interests. This rupture is hugely damaging nonetheless: Trump has managed to alienate America’s closest friend over a trifling spat. “Uniquely dysfunctional” sums it up pretty well.