It’s pretty much an established trend at this point that you can count on President Donald Trump to insist that everything is coming along fine and dandy even if the sky is falling. This weekend, he touted a two-day summit in D.C. with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as great — and more specifically, praised a “quick round of golf” he played with the leader with whom he has met multiple times at this point.
As the president put it on Twitter alongside a photo of himself and Abe posing at the Trump-branded golf club in northern Virginia:
‘Great day with Prime Minister
@AbeShinzo of Japan. We played a quick round of golf by the beautiful Potomac River while talking Trade and many other subjects. He has now left for Japan and I am on my way to Wisconsin where a very large crowd of friends await!’
Trump will be holding a rally in Wisconsin as an excuse for avoiding the annual D.C. dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, which he’s made it his tradition at this point to skip, breaking with past presidents.
In line with the beaming attitude he’s maintaining approaching his alternative Saturday evening hate-fest, his glossing over of the trade issues he and Abe discussed does not represent the reality of the situation quite as much as Trump would have us believe. The presently unfolding trade talks stem from Trump having abruptly pulled the United States out of the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal the Obama administration set in motion that would have included almost a dozen nations along the Pacific Rim, including the United States and Japan. Trump preferred to blow that up and aim for something new, in line with his threats to abruptly withdraw the United States from the at this point decades-old North American Free Trade Agreement, claiming issues that aren’t there.
In line with his well-established stance that can be roughly summarized as “foreign bad, ‘Murca good,” Trump reportedly pressed Abe during their visit this Friday and Saturday to have Japanese automakers build more cars in the U.S. Trump has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported cars at times.
He will be traveling to Japan in May and June, first to meet the country’s new emperor among other things and then for the latest G20 summit of leading economic powers.
Check out Twitter’s response…
Featured Image via screenshot
