The second half of his big trip abroad is not going well.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/donald-trump-germany-evil{Begin block quote}
TRUMP DROPS THE MIC ON TRAINWRECK NATO MEETING BY CALLING GERMANS VERY EVIL
On Friday, Donald Trump set off for a nine-day road trip with stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome, Brussels, and Sicily. And, until today, things were actually going relatively well for the president, if were grading on a curve. Sure, upon arriving in Israel, he announced that he just got back from the Middle East, a comment that clearly left the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. wondering how many times Fred Trump had dropped his son on his head as a child. And yes, the Pope looked less than thrilled to pose for a photo with the twice-divorced, self-professed adulterer to whom His Holiness gifted a copy of his thoughts on climate change knowing full well Trumps views on the environment. Still, he got out of Saudi Arabia without insulting Muslims worldwide; he visited the Wailing Wall and didnt once complain about how unfair it is that everyone else gets a wall but him; and he got a great photo-op with The Orb. For a White House that has been absolutely plagued by scandal since Day One, the first half of the trip could arguably be chalked up as a win. And then Donny jetted off to attend a meeting of NATO (an alliance he recently called obsolete) in Brussels (a city he recently called a hellhole), where the deeply awkward moments quickly piled up, one after the next.
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Then there was Trumps NATO speech itself, delivered in front of the alliances new headquarters, during which the former reality-TV show host, who has repeatedly been accused of stiffing contractors who have worked for him, scolded our allies for not paying their bills.
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The worlds classiest man closed by thanking Germany for contributing a portion of the Berlin Wall, and the 9/11 Museum for a remnant from the North Tower, both of which now adorn NATO headquarters new grounds, before adding, graciously, I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost. I refuse to do that.
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In fairness to Trump, its possible that he was simply in a poor mood after Macron said bonjour to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before saying hi to him, a slight the 45th president presumably wants to bomb Paris over.
{End block quote}
Full article at link.
mucifer
(23,550 posts)iluvtennis
(19,863 posts)iluvtennis
(19,863 posts)Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer.
It is a story of plain looking, plain-spoken Homer Atkins. In other words, he wasn't particularly good looking, in fact he tended toward ugly. But he was a good person, who basically took on American foreign policy in Southeast Asia where he was sent as an engineering advisor, working hard to do the job he was sent to do in spite a foreign policy gone wrong, with misplaced priorities and self interests.
Somehow, the phrase has become, instead, an epithet for 'an ignorant belligerent dick'.
<sigh>
iluvtennis
(19,863 posts)...of the term ugly american. First discovered it when I first went to Europe (Holland) in the early 80's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_American_(pejorative)
"Ugly American" is a pejorative term used to refer to perceptions of loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior of American citizens mainly abroad, but also at home. Although the term is usually associated with or applied to travelers and tourists, it also applies to U.S. corporate businesses in the international arena