The Los Angeles Times reads like a Democratic rag with this headline: “Trump claims he's boosting U.S. influence, but many foreign leaders see America in retreat.” Naturally, that means “many foreign Obama fans and socialists don’t like where Trump is leading.” It took three Times reporters to assemble this “news” report/"news analysis":
China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has taken over Syrian peace talks, also once the purview of the American administration, whose officials Moscow recently deigned to invite to negotiations only as observers.
France and Germany are often now the countries that fellow members of NATO look to, after President Trump wavered on how supportive his administration would be toward the North Atlantic alliance.
And in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S., once the only mediator all sides would accept, has found itself isolated after Trump’s decision to declare that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Times reporters Tracy Wilkinson, Alexandra Zavis, and Shashank Bengali used the old “many leaders and experts” line when they meant to say “many liberals and Trump bashers.”
One year into his presidency, many international leaders, diplomats and foreign policy experts argue that he has reduced U.S. influence or altered it in ways that are less constructive. On a range of policy issues, Trump has taken positions that disqualified the United States from the debate or rendered it irrelevant, these critics say.
So eschewing a largely phony Paris climate-change treaty (where few countries will meet their actual stated emissions goals) or moving the embassy to the actual capital of Israel is “disqualifying” to “many.” For example, Nicholas Burns of Harvard’s Kennedy School is not a fan:
Nicholas Burns, who served as a senior American diplomat under Republican and Democratic administrations, said the administration’s strategy was riddled with contradictions that have left the U.S. ineffective....
Trump’s “policy of the last 12 months is a radical departure from every president since WWII,” Burns said in an interview. “Trump is weak on NATO, Russia, trade, climate, diplomacy. The U.S. is declining as a global leader.”
The Times does not inform readers that Mr. Burns wrote a piece for USA Today in February of 2016 headlined “Hillary Clinton is the president we need.” In it, he proclaimed “A Trump victory would be disastrous for America’s reputation and leadership of the international order. His gross bigotry toward Mexico and the Muslim world, and open admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, have made him a scandalous figure internationally.”
This is the kind of "served under both parties" bureaucrat the liberal media can get behind.
