Wednesday on Good Morning America, an ABC journalist casually compared our president to a tyrannical dictator of a totalitarian state, and no one batted an eye.
The extreme comment came after ABC reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile this past weekend, that had the capabilities of reaching American soil. Though North Korea still hasn’t shown that its developed a nuclear warhead that could be mounted to that missile, the U.S. sent its own missiles in retaliation as a warning. Instead of praising Trump for taking the threat seriously, ABC’s Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd used the situation to bash Trump as being just like Jong Un.
After reports on the North Korean situation, the discussion moved on to the upcoming G20 Summit, where Trump will meet with several world leaders. Much of the discussion was centered on Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and whether or not he would bring up Russia meddling in the presidential election. Dowd and George Stephanopoulos gushed that it would be “astonishing” if Trump did not bring that up.
Cokie Roberts even compared the “high stakes meeting” to one President Kennedy had with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, after which Kennedy was viewed as weak by the Soviets. In response, Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall and secretly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. Roberts touted the “very severe consequences” the U.S. could face again if Trump didn’t “really back up” his threats to Russia for interfering in our election. That led anchor George Stephanopoulos to ask Dowd what he thought about Trump “confronting someone who’s been taking him on across the globe.”
Instead Dowd hyped how unpopular Trump was overseas, even asserting that Europe was as worried about “erratic” “unpredictable” Trump with nuclear weapons as they were about Kim Jong Un.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Matthew, we know the president likes to have successful meetings and wants to say he achieved something but there's some real tension there because he does also have to confront someone who's been taking him on across the globe.
DOWD: Well, George, I think there's real tension. You take Vladimir Putin on one but there's real tension with a lot of members of the G20. If you look at the recent polling in the international community, Donald Trump is not believed by most of the people in the European community to be trusted to do the right thing and you take with that with Vladimir Putin and now with what's happened in North Korea, the European community is worried about unpredictable erratic leaders not only one in North Korea but one in the United States of America.
After this hyperbolic comment, Stephanopoulos ended the discussion and the broadcast moved on to a different subject.
