Local opinion: The world no longer takes Trump seriously

Donald J. Trump is an embarrassment to the Republican Party — if its leaders were still capable of shame. Trump exemplifies human shortsightedness, a decade-long dalliance with the corruption, incompetence and worldwide disgrace of his governance. Knowing that Trump has exploited them, Republicans remain incapable of invalidating their highly delinquent boss. Neither party contributes to the common good of American or world society.

The following are the verbatim, incoherent and humiliating words Trump spoke to NATO leaders, reporters and citizens of the world at the recent summit in Ankara, Türkiye. After deafeningly announcing the end of his Iran war ceasefire, Trump said, “Iranian leaders are ‘scum.’ They’re sick people, led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people. Far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars… There’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo!”

With that, Trump stole the show in Ankara. How embarrassing! He exasperated and exhausted European leaders’ patience. Now the world knows what Americans already know: You can’t take him seriously anymore. Trump is clearly drained of buoyant vitality, rational thought, and fundamental honesty.

This is Trump’s very own “Procedural Chaos” (my coinage), the anomalous term I use to describe how he shapes his message. Apparently, Trump’s big Memorandum of Understanding (“Memo of Misunderstanding”) with Iran was impossible to understand. Neither side ever stopped shooting. Oil prices have spiked again, shocking the stock market as Trump continued his verbal rampage. He acknowledged, “I think anything that happens is going to be over very quickly, and we’ll only make it safer, including for oil.” Pray tell, Donald, what is going to be over quickly?

Spewing more of his messy word salad, he told the world, “Oil is going to be very free, very easy, and it’s going to happen very fast. We have the Hormuz Strait: the boats have pulled out. I mean, there’s a gusher of oil right now; we have a lot of oil.” Wow, really!

In fact, Iran, not Trump, is in control of the war and the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians call the shots while, time and again, exposing this president's shortcomings. When Trump’s war started, he was eight months from the midterms; now it's less than four. Iran knows that timeline well and is using it to stoke Trump’s foolish, immature tendencies, leading to flawed, fatal decisions as his war rages on.

At the NATO summit, Trump’s incoherence remained painfully evident. He referred to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Japan” and to Ukraine’s president, Zelensky, as “President Putin.” Zelensky had to sit there and smile as Donald Trump called him “President Putin,” his arch-rival. Trump’s gaffe-filled speech once again raised concerns about 80-year-old Trump's mental health and stability. This is not healthy.

Amid so many disastrous errors, confusion, and presidential chaos, Trump moved on to jumbo geographic booboos and factual blunders. “We have 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan,” he said. “They were shot at the (USS Lincoln) aircraft carrier over a period of one hour,” according to Trump. Japan? Japan hasn’t attacked the U.S. in nearly 85 years. It has gotten to the point that the White House needs a translator to explain what Trump is struggling to utter in public.

The fate of America rests in the hands of someone who is completely irrational, reckless and rash, prompting renewed calls to invoke the 25th Amendment as Trump’s repeated public howlers become impossible to ignore. Is he suffering from dementia? It certainly sounds, looks and feels like it. We cannot leave the fate of the U.S. and the world in the hands of this man, who believes he possesses sovereign powers, intelligence and experience he lacks.