Before a recap of President Trump’s escalator ride at the United Nations, let’s take a non-partisan look at America’s recent foreign policy record.
Yes, former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, brought peace to Northern Ireland through the Good Friday Agreement. He ended the war in Bosnia with the Dayton Accords.
Yes, President Obama, another Democrat, ended the U.S. war in Iraq, a fight based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism.
And, yes, former President Joe Biden, another Democrat, ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan. Biden also built an international coalition to resist Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — without committing American troops.
Yet over the years, polls show Americans saluting Republican presidents, not Democrats, as best at handling foreign policy and especially the use of America’s military might.
Well, take a look at Trump making history last week at the United Nations. Having promised to end the war in Ukraine “on Day One” of his presidency, Trump did an about-face on his embrace of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Trump said he now believes Ukraine can defeat Putin and the Russian military.
This reversal comes after Trump told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in February that he doesn’t “have the cards” to win the war.
It comes barely a month after he gave the Russian autocrat a red-carpet welcome to the U.S. and turned a deaf ear to international calls for a cease-fire. He said he preferred to negotiate a peace deal to end the fighting. Russia’s military forces immediately launched new attacks on Ukraine and subsequently flew fighter jets over Estonia and sent armed drones into Polish territory.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, dismissed Trump’s latest position as designed for “social media.” And the Russian government-run TV network mocked Trump. They compared him to a tarot card reader conducting a rip-off by promising a “divorced lady that she is going to meet that billionaire prince…[if] she buys the magic crystals.”
Further mockery of the president came from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier: “Mr. Trump, you might remember, he used a term, when he said I will finish the Russia-Ukraine war. Did it end? It still goes on. Similarly, he said I will finish the war in Gaza. Did it end? No.”
Trump tried to distract his U.N. audience from failed attempts to end those wars. Instead, he claimed to have ended “seven wars.”
He took credit for ending wars, some of which “were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Trump’s grab at glory came as a great surprise to the representatives of those countries. As CNN.com put it: “While he certainly contributed to brokering a couple of agreements between long-standing foes, his role in securing ceasefires …has been disputed by some of the countries involved. And then of course there are the wars that were not happening when he claims to have ended them.”
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in defiance of the U.S. president to have it “clearly conveyed” that the ceasefire resulted from negotiations between India and Pakistan, with no U.S. involvement.
History will be clear that since Trump took office, India has drawn closer to China, Russia, and even North Korea — an outcome U.S. presidents of both parties had worked for decades to prevent.
The rest of Trump’s speech at the U.N. devolved into a tirade more fitting for a boring guy at a bar. He used his time on the world stage to complain that an escalator malfunction, a teleprompter glitch, and audio problems were part of a sinister UN plot to sabotage him. He later posted a rant on Truth Social alleging “triple sabotage” and demanding an investigation by the Secretary-General.
Away from his troubling appearance at the U.N., Trump is risking damage to U.S. ties in Latin America by killing 17 people on boats in the Caribbean. He claimed they were drug trafficking but offered no evidence. The New York Times’ editorial board wrote that Trump has no legal authority to attack but “wants to achieve the illusion of dominance over drug smuggling even if his actions make little difference and even if he kills people…it is a moral stain on our nation.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Kushner — the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal accusing the French government of not doing enough to stop antisemitism.
French President Emmanuel Macron swiftly condemned the statement as a “mistake” and “unacceptable” for a diplomat, effectively rendering America’s ambassador persona non grata in Paris.
Trump’s “America First” populist foreign policy is an embarrassment on the world stage.
For most of my career as a journalist, Republicans have had remarkable skill in celebrating America as a world power.
In 1983, President Reagan’s plan for defense against missile attacks was famously labeled as “Star Wars.”
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush memorably spoke of the nation’s enemies as an “Axis of Evil.”
Today, Trump risks being remembered for his empty claim of “triple sabotage,” involving a broken escalator.
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”