8 Ways Leading European Officials Perceive America's Big Embarrassment in the Oval Office @alternet:
"1. He’s obsessed with Barack Obama. Since the moment he launched his political career, Trump has shown an infatuation with his predecessor. He used the birther lie, including questioning Obama’s academic record, to build his base of likeminded racist conspiracists. Since then, he’s continued to invoke the former president at every opportunity, proving Obama is always on his mind. He hated that Obama’s inauguration crowds dwarfed his, tried to pretend the obsession was mutual with wiretapping charges, and has attempted to blame his many political failures on a man who is no longer in office. And you know he just hates that his approval ratings will never match Obama’s, as evidenced by his pathetic retweets of obscure polls that give him the popularity edge. European diplomats have noticed this sad tendency, with one telling Buzzfeed that Trump’s primary motivation seems to be undoing Obama’s legacy. “It’s his only real position,” a European diplomat told the site. “He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.” 2. He’s viewed as a verbally limited international joke. Throughout his European tour in May, Trump acted like he was raised in a (gold-plated) barn, proving his ignorance, boorishness and social ineptitude at every stop. He hand-wrestled with Emmanuel Macron, physically pushed Montenegro’s prime minister and earned derisive snickers from fellow world leaders. For this reason (though there are so many, many more), most Americans are embarrassed to have Trump as a leader. At least one European diplomat told Buzzfeed Trump is seen as a joke at international meetups, mocked both for his general idiocy and his third-grade (or fourth- or fifth-grade, depending on who you ask) speaking skills, relying on five to 10 words kept in heavy rotation. “Everything is ‘great’, ‘very, very great’, ‘amazing’,” one diplomat said."
