Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed Columnist, Sunday Review, June 4, 2017<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 We\u2019ve been conditioned by Hollywood to see the president of the United States step up to the lectern to confidently tell us how he will combat the existential threat to the planet \u2014 be it aliens, asteroids, tidal waves, volcanoes, killer sharks, killer robots or a 500-billion-ton comet the size of New York City.<\/p>\n
So it was quite stunning to see the president of the United States step up to the lectern to declare himself the existential threat to the planet.<\/p>\n
And with a calming band playing us to our doom, just like on the Titanic.<\/p>\n
You know you\u2019re in trouble when beclouded Beijing, where birds go to die, replaces you as a leader on climate change.<\/p>\n
America is living through a fractured fairy tale, in the grip of a lonely and uninformed mad king, an arrogant and na\u00efve princeling, a comely but complicit blond princess and a dyspeptic, dystopian troll under the bridge.<\/p>\n
American carnage, indeed.<\/p>\n
On climate change, the troll, Steve Bannon, got control and persuaded Donald Trump to give a raspberry to the world. Bannon had better watch out or rising waters will wash out his bridge to the past.<\/p>\n
Even though Jared, Ivanka, Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson, Elon Musk, Bob Iger and Lloyd Blankfein pressed the president to stay in the Paris climate accord \u2014 which is merely aspirational about the inhalational \u2014 Bannon won the day because Trump loves to act like the fired Mr. Met.<\/p>\n
As his biographer Tim O\u2019Brien recalled on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week,\u201d Trump once pointed out a dozen six-foot-high speakers by the pool at Mar-a-Lago blasting classic rock and said: \u201cYou know, when I moved here to Palm Beach, nobody wanted me around. And I love cranking this music as loud as I can because it bugs the heck out of all of these so-and-sos and I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a familiar pattern. \u201cHe wanted to get out of Queens to come to Manhattan,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cHe wanted to be accepted by the real estate class in Manhattan, but then he thumbed his nose at them.\u201d He wanted to run for president as a Republican and get the G.O.P. establishment\u2019s approval, but then he thumbed his nose at it.<\/p>\n
The same with The New York Times, seeking favor and then dubbing us \u201cfailing.\u201d And now it\u2019s the turn of our aghast European allies.<\/p>\n
The more he is labeled a boor and a brute by his critics at home and abroad, the more Trump digs in, trying to drag America back to a time when black smoke belched, women scrambled for birth control, sick people were out of luck, reefer madness reigned and Cuba was shunned.<\/p>\n
In the year 2017, the American president is leading us into a bold new future, saying he can\u2019t wait to party hardy at \u201ca big opening of a brand new mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump was goaded in the direction of dropping out of the Paris accord by a couple things that irritated him.<\/p>\n
As Mark Landler and Michael Shear reported<\/a> in The Times, Cohn, the president\u2019s chief economic adviser, had told reporters in Sicily that Mr. Trump might be coming around. \u201cHis views are evolving\u201d on climate change, Cohn said. \u201cHe came here to learn. He came here to get smarter.\u201d<\/p>\n That smarted and made Trump want to blast classic rock.<\/p>\n Then the president read an interview with Emmanuel Macron in a French newspaper, bragging about how he had prepared to give Trump an Iron Man grip because it was \u201ca moment of truth\u201d showing that he \u201cwon\u2019t make small concessions, even symbolic ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Comparing Trump to strongmen Vladimir Putin and Turkey\u2019s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Macron made it clear that he was determined to face down the bully, pushing back hard on Trump, just as he would a few days later with Putin. He scolded the Russian president for his state-controlled media\u2019s \u201clying propaganda\u201d and warned that France would use military force if Putin\u2019s ally Bashar al-Assad unleashed chemical weapons on civilians again.<\/p>\n As Ashley Parker, Phil Rucker and Michael Birnbaum reported<\/a> in The Washington Post Thursday: \u201cHearing smack-talk from the Frenchman 31 years his junior irritated and bewildered Trump, aides said. A few days later, Trump got his revenge. He proclaimed from the Rose Garden, \u2018I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Whether Macron is being coached by his wife, whom he met when she was his drama teacher in high school, is not clear. But he understands the signs and symbols of power.<\/p>\n Trump is the president with a background in entertainment, but the 39-year-old French president is the one who has mastered theatrics, from the splendor of \u201cOde to Joy\u201d playing at the Louvre on election night as he made his slow victory walk, to his steely six seconds of arm wrestling with Trump, to his dramatic swerve to embrace Angela Merkel, leaving Trump nonplused and waiting to shake his hand, to his dressing down of Trump\u2019s pal Putin at Versailles, to his televised exhortation aux barricades on Thursday in English: \u201cMake our planet great again.\u201d<\/p>\n As The Times\u2019s Adam Nossiter wrote<\/a>, Macron has a \u201cdeeply held belief that France in some sense has been missing its king since the execution of Louis XVI on Jan. 21, 1793.\u201d And he has consciously cultivated a regal air as he champions \u201cradical centrism,\u201d globalization and protecting the environment. The Post dubs him<\/a> \u201cthe prince regent of Paris and Pittsburgh alike.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump, on the other hand, has rattled the world with his crude manner, cruel policies, chaotic management style, authoritarian love-ins and antediluvian attitudes, cementing his image as the highchair king.<\/p>\n For once, the French have a right to be condescending toward the United States.<\/p>\n