Media frustrated by Trump's successful trip to Asia

Spectator:
It’s been a miserable two weeks for our Foreign Secretary. Not only did Boris Johnson trip up over the British woman held in Iran; not only did he find himself accused of puppeteering Theresa May to further his and Michael Gove’s Brexit ambitions; he also committed the most grievous PR sin any politician can commit: he praised Donald Trump in public. ‘What you’ve got to realise is that the American President is just one of the huge, great global brands,’ Boris told Fox & Friends. ‘He is penetrating corners of the global consciousness that I think few other presidents have ever done.’

That made people very cross. The Labour MP David Lammy called Johnson an ‘odious arse-kisser’ and countless others echoed that sentiment. Boris was a brown-nose, a buffoon, a national disgrace, and so on.

What nobody admitted was that Boris had, as he so often does, said something true. Donald Trump is a phenomenon the like of which the world has never seen, and while most political analysts are still struggling to accept his presidency, the rest of humanity is fast coming to terms with it. His approval rating at home hit 46 per cent this week, according to a Rasmussen survey, up from 38 per cent in August.

Abroad, too, after a very poor start, his stock is on the rise. His tour of Asia, which ended this week, is the first major foreign policy success of his presidency. Trump visited Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines without a major hitch. If 80 per cent of diplomacy is just showing up, Trump did that and more. He has improved his reputation in the region enormously.

Trump seems to connect with Asians in a way that Barack Obama never could. His suggestion that he broker talks to settle the disputes in the South China Seas — ‘I’m a very good mediator and arbitrator,’ he said — may have been brushed aside. Yet he was given the full regal treatment everywhere he went and his speeches were well-received. It’s partly thanks to language barriers: Asians are tone deaf to his mind-bendingly silly oratory. But it’s more than that. Trump is getting better at the global-statesman schtick. Aside from one tweet about Kim Jong-un being ‘short and fat’, he just about managed to behave like a dignified world leader throughout.

The western media, desperate for him to fail, made a fuss over two supposed gaffes in Japan. Both turned out to be what Trump calls fake news. One was the video of him dumping a whole box of koi food in a Tokyo pond while standing next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. This was widely circulated as evidence of Trump’s impatience, his short attention span and lack of manners. But the fuller and much less watched clip showed that, only seconds earlier, Abe had also dumped his fish feed in the water. Trump had merely imitated his host.

The other supposed blunder came during Trump’s speech to Japanese business leaders, in which he said: ‘Try building your cars in the United States instead of shipping them over.’ OMG! Japan already builds millions of cars in America, screamed the media know-alls. It turned out, however, that the know-alls were being stupid. Anybody who bothered to read the full quote could tell Trump was well aware that the Japanese make cars in the US. He even praised some of the automobile industry delegates in the crowd for doing so. The reason Trump loathers were quick to translate these non-events into howling gaffes was that they had little else to go on.
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There is more.

A media that hates Trump searches for gaffes rather than facts.  They seemed to be frustrated by Trump and his hosts in Asia.  Trump worked well with the leaders of teh host countries and was well received.  He should be given his due, but the hate is deep in the American media.

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