John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Donald “Maximum Pressure” Trump Left Hanging as France-Brokered Call With Rouhani Fell Apart
“Trump was sitting there holding a phone waiting for Macron to get Rouhani on the call” [This was in a New York hotel during the General Assembly gathering]
Macron is ineffective in almost everything he does, although he clearly believes the reality is otherwise.
He's a kind of a highly-polished French dilettante of a politician.
He frequently shows poor judgment, as when he thought he could become Trump’s close pal with lots of slaps on the back and hand-holding or when he had Paris police seriously injuring and even killing demonstrators in the streets.
His effort to put Trump and Rouhani in communication in New York demonstrates that same poor judgment. Perhaps, it's just an arrogant belief that a cute little scheme contrived by him [in this case, the installation ahead of secure phone lines and the attempt to start a three-way call, which went unanswered by Rouhani] should be able to overcome powerful real forces operating on others. It’s actually both naïve and arrogant.
Rouhani has made his reasonable conditions for talks public a number of times.
"Take off the sanctions and holster your guns. You are the ones who tore up a working treaty."
Trump's immense and empty ego, of course, cannot deal with that.
It would literally mean everything he has done on this file is useless, which of course is exactly the case.
Much like the whole, now-embarrassing effort of having encouraged Saudi Arabia to attack Yemen. Now, there was a gigantic blunder.
