Thank You for Your Inattention to This Matter
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture.
Sign up for it here.
One of Donald Trump’s current favorite riffs is to contrast how (in his opinion) the United States was seen under his predecessor, Joe Biden, and how it’s seen now.
“They didn’t respect us two years ago.
They laughed at us.
NATO laughed at us.
Everybody laughed at us,” Trump said at a summit in Turkey with allies last month .
“They don’t laugh anymore.
There’s no more laughing.” He’s right.
It’s worse than laughing—they’re ignoring the president of the United States altogether.
Trump styles himself as an heir to Theodore Roosevelt, but where Roosevelt said that America should speak softly and carry a big stick, Trump speaks loudly and carries a small one.
Roosevelt’s bully pulpit has been reduced to a bullshit pulpit.
This week, Trump made two announcements that, in the past, would have shaken the globe.
Speaking to Fox News’s Trey Yingst about negotiations with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said , “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” In an ordinary world, such a threat would be a huge news event.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.theatlantic.com — the content belongs to The Atlantic.
