Trump and the US Government as an International Embarrassment is an Understatement

I’ve now been to a lot of countries in the last four months, and maybe met people from 50+ countries. It’s a common question to ask: “where are you from?” I say I’m from the US, and so some people ask about politics.

But talking to anyone I meet, it becomes painfully obvious that Trump and the US government are an international embarrassment. But even that is an understatement.

What are the sentiments people express? They think it is a joke. They think the guy is insane. They see the US is falling apart, and even some have expressed to me a sort of schaedenfreuede at the US political turmoil. Some have said the US is making itself irrelevant. Many have mentioned it as a dis, or a way to undermine credibility.

The British people I meet can relate. They have their own version with Brexit, but it seems at least some of the Brexiteers have woken up to the issues. Even more people in the UK than the US now will go out to protest Trump because the harm is so obvious.

People ask me critically, what do I think? — and I do my best to quickly distance from Trump, say that doesn’t represent most of the people, and in many ways, apologize. Because people living in the rest of the world deal with the consequences of this nutjob as well.

But as these people all live in other countries, they can view the situation more objectively. They see it for what it is, which many cannot recognize in the US, and also because it has a familiarity in many parts of the world where this type of leadership happens — and it destroys countries.

And it’s telling: no one thinks Trump as a president is good for the US, or good for the country they live in. If people in the US believe Trump is building up any respectability for the US overseas, they are sorely mistaken. This has generational consequences.

So I think it’s a weird time to travel being from the US.