Trump wows the British media

Washington Examiner:

There may have been 29 NATO leaders in London, but there was only one star of the show.

President Trump turned three meetings with world leaders into solo news conferences on Tuesday as he answered questions on everything from impeachment, which he called “unpatriotic of Democrats,” French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent criticism of “brain-dead” NATO, which he referred to as a “nasty, nasty” statement, and the Jeffrey Epstein-related sex scandal engulfing Prince Andrew, which he described as a “very tough” story.

The result was wall-to-wall headlines across British media, where the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel were only an afterthought.

If the White House plan was to present a president hard at work on the international stage while Democrats press on with impeachment, then it may have worked. But it is difficult to know how much NATO work was done when each meeting became a one-man show.

Where other leaders might take questions for five minutes at the start or end of each “bilateral,” Trump spent 52 minutes, 39 minutes, and 30 minutes alongside first NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Macron, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, respectively, according to a Reuters tally.

Stoltenberg was a bystander at his own event as Trump was asked about the prospects of his friend British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in next week’s election.

“I have no thoughts on it,” he said, before saying Johnson is a capable leader. “It’s going to be a very important election for this great country. But I have no thoughts on it,” he said.

His promise that he has no interest in trying to buy up the country’s health service led British news websites.

“If you handed it to us on a silver platter, we want nothing to do with it,” he said.

The tabloids led with his words of praise for the heroes of London Bridge, who tackled a knife-wielding terrorist armed with a narwhal tusk and whatever else came to hand.

"I was very proud of those people who grabbed him and did such a good job between the fire extinguishers and whatever else, it was an amazing job they did," he said.

British journalists seemed to enjoy the spectacle, marveling at the way he even took questions from the “failing” New York Times or Jeff Bezos’s “Amazon Washington Post.”

“Mr. Trump is box-office gold, firing insults with cheery aplomb,” wrote Quentin Letts, political sketch writer for the London Times. “What made it all the more magnificent was that this was him on best behavior.”
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Trump was the most dominating leader in the room and the British press loved it.  The other leaders who disagree with some of Trump's policies were left to bitch about him out of earshot.