After Tuesday’s home run, Trump’s victory speech relied very little on the actual speech and very heavily on the victory by using the phrase “presumptive nominee” to further inflate his permanently spray-tanned skull.
The aforementioned speech was full of casual slanders and quixotic, pseudo-political rhetoric.
When evaluating his off-the-cuff renderings and the foreign policy speech he gave Wednesday, the two appearances seem entire worlds apart.
Notably, in his foreign policy speech Trump strayed away from his established role of the haughty celebrity surrounded by bodyguards, appeasing the hurdling masses beneath him with a barrage of empty words.
No, instead of talking down to the sticky fingers and trucker caps, Trump took a far more traditional route.
Standing in front of two American flags, Trump poised himself in a room of politically enthused, gray-haired men, and for the first time ever he read the teleprompter verbatim.
Many criticized the speech for having the underpinnings of pre-World War II isolationism. Trump zealously spoke on the precipice of American hegemony by adamantly pressing for efforts to bolster the military and re-route future nation-building efforts across the seas.
We live in a globalized world. It is time for Trump to realize the debate between isolationism and internationalism is almost extinct.
In the New York Times transcript of Trump’s speech, when addressing counterterrorism, Trump explained, “We need a long-term plan to halt the spread and reach of radical Islam.”
Although Trump’s stature is of a man who’s delivered many business proposals to reach a deal, it’d be an injustice not to recognize this statement means nothing in terms of foreign policy and strategy.
It’s not as though Trump is giving Americans empty promises.
He’s not giving promises at all.
True policy is absent from his pomposity, and the little indication of future plans he does give us is rudimentary and ornamental.
Trump lamented, “The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends and when old friends become allies.”
Trump fails to recognize the paradoxical nature of this wish.
For instance, his plan to back out of the Iran nuclear deal would result in the exact opposite of maintaining allies.
We would not only be abandoning our allies, namely the United Kingdom, France and Germany, but also completely erupting the very careful relationship that the United States has built with both the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly.
Foreign policy, however controversial, stands on certain pillars of international law that need to be obeyed.
For Trump, who is apparently ready to take on the role of an international negotiator, it seems as though this position is merely part of the job.
Our country needs to see the fundamental holes on which Trump’s so-called policy is built.
Getting the Republican nomination is not something Trump can simply check off on his bucket list.
There is nothing casual about assuming the most powerful role this great nation has to offer.
jlkarl@indiana.edu
@jkarl26
