Surviving Trump: Who’s The ‘Sh*thole Country’ Now? [Op-Ed]

Welcome back for another episode of Surviving Trump, our regular round-up of President Donald Trump’s demonstrations of sheer MAGA idiocy, corruption, bigotry, and disrespect for the office he holds. Tracking Trump shenanigans is a job that never ends, but it’s not exactly the kind of thing one needs to break out the Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass for, as the president’s 24/7 MAGA marathon of absurdity is always right on the surface.

For this installment of Surviving Trump, however, I just really have one question to ask:

Who’s the “shithole country” now?

At this point, if one is still so delusional that they would deny that Trump has made the U.S. a global laughingstock, and that this president is regarded as the buffoon he is by world leaders of virtually every nation not named Israel, then one has decided that the best way to deal with how far this so-called great nation has fallen in the eyes of the world is by, well, not dealing with it at all. These people will stick their heads so deep into the sand that they’ll be coming up for air in China, only to find out they’re definitely laughing at us over there, too.

Speaking of which, for a president who has spent his entire second term and much of his first term taking shots at China, and, as of late, can’t speak for more than three or four minutes without bloviating about communism, Trump sure does seem to be low-key in love with the leader of the one-party authoritarian state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Don’t get me wrong: I think we all know that when Trump invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping to the White House East Room on Thursday night for a state dinner in his honor, that was a business decision to further his own agenda, which is why AI executives and some of our most prominent CEOs were there, too, according to the Washington Post, which also noted that the dinner took place “at a time when U.S. officials worry that Chinese systems are rapidly catching up with the Americans.”

So, maybe Trump was doing the “keep my enemies close” thing, but does that mean he had to love up on Xi the way he did?

I mean, there was one point during the visit where Trump was giving Xi a tour of the “Presidential Walk of Fame” part of the White House, where the framed presidential photos hang, and the president of the United States belittled a former president of the United States for a cheap laugh from the Chinese leader, who seemed to get a kick out of Trump referring to President Joe Biden as “the autopen.” 

Meanwhile, here’s Chinese media shading Trump for flinching during the B-1 flyover that he ordered for Xi’s visit.

Xi is out here looking stoic and unbothered while Trump looks like he’s ready to call the president of the HOA to do something about these darned kids riding their skateboards too fast through the suburbs. That couldn’t possibly be the photo-op he was shooting for. It wasn’t exactly the power fist in front of the American flag moment he had during his totally-not-staged assassination attempt, for example.

Of course, it would make sense that Trump would get along swimmingly with Xi when he’s not throwing tariff tantrums at China, because when it comes to authoritarianism — game recognize game, don’t it?

I mean, what is a shithole country if not a nation run by a leader who is all propaganda, no facts, openly denies certain people the right to due process, uses the military to attack U.S. citizens while ignoring state sovereignty, declares leftist groups that don’t exist to be terrorist organizations, deports people just for organizing or reporting on protests he disagrees with, openly encourages his party to engage in real election fraud to combat the fictional election fraud he’s been lying about for years, bans the media because of bad press he doesn’t like, and then starts his own state-run media platform so his propaganda platform can run on a 24-hour loop?

If we ain’t a shithole country, then what do you call this?

During Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly last week, he boasted that the U.S. economy is “the envy of the world” while speaking to — *checks notes* — the world.

Meanwhile, polls have consistently shown since the start of Trump’s second term that the overwhelming majority of the U.S. populace is fully aware of how bad we’re doing economically, and has no confidence that we’ll be doing better any time soon.

Does he understand that the world can see us? Does he know other nations can access our media and see how badly his trade war has backfired on him? Trump has U.S. citizens sharing Iranian propaganda AI videos, because our president is such an insufferable villain that Americans are looking at an oppressive Middle Eastern country like, “Hey, bighead.”

All over the globe, our enemies and allies alike are becoming increasingly aware that the U.S.’s “leader of the free world” status isn’t status-ing like it used to. We’re becoming the United States of the Global Ghetto, and the slumlord that is running us into the ground is trying to sell the nation as one of “Super Intelligence.”

Sad.

Anyway, here are a few more things you might have missed:

• Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to let it continue deporting undocumented migrants to “third world” countries they are not from after a lower federal court imposed restrictions on the practice.
• First Lady Melania Trump says she doesn’t read books and that she’d rather read her hubby’s “executive orders” as they drop.
• Trump’s advisers urge him to declare a national emergency in order to seize federal control of the midterm elections, because that’s not something an authoritarian leader of a shithole country would do at all.

SEE ALSO:

Surviving Trump: The President Misses The Media Attention [Op-Ed]

Surviving Trump: Trump Defends White House Media Ban [Op-Ed]