The founders of the United Nations must be rolling in their graves. This venerable world institution, now celebrating its 80th birthday, was born of the ideal that conflicts could be settled by dialogue rather than by force. The US was central to the UN’s founding, but on Tuesday its delegates were treated to a speech by an American president that should be cited in a future thesaurus as the opposite of “diplomacy”.
Donald Trump’s rambling monologue was a mixture of outright falsehoods, petty grievances and hectoring. He said he had personally ended seven wars – though it’s far from clear which seven they were. He railed against the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, denying the man-made warming of the planet that threatens the survival of our species.
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