Donald Trump Is Embarking on What Will Surely Be a Disastrous Trip Around the Globe
Welcome to WHAT NOW, a morning round-up of the news/fresh horrors that await you today.
What begins with an all-male Toby Keith concert and almost certainly ends in the United States being made to look like an idiot nation on the world stage?
Why, Donald Trump’s first overseas trip in office, which begins today with a flight to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and ends with the G7 Summit in Taormina, Italy.
The nine-day, five-country, three-major-religions mega-trip by Trump—who is, to put it mildly, hardly a student of culture or geopolitics—should be like something out of National Lampoon’s.
Other notable events aside from the Toby Keith concert (which is definitely not a joke) include a visit to the Western Wall in Tel Aviv (which already created some controversy after a Trump aide accidentally described the holy site as being in the West Bank) on May 23, and a meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican City a day later.
Will Trump call the Pope “disgraceful” to his face? Will he elbow Netanyahu in the ribs at the Western Wall and ask, “So, you can tell me, is this Palestine or what?” Only time will tell, and I truly cannot wait to find out.
WHAT ELSE?
- Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a man with entirely too many jobs, reportedly added “arms dealer” to the list when he helped push through a more than $100 billion sale to the Saudis earlier this month.
- Another fun Times scoop reveals that Trump’s attempts to get chummy with former FBI Director James Comey made him so uncomfortable that he once tried to blend his nearly 7-foot frame into the curtains.
- Swedish authorities are dropping the rape investigation into Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, which led him to seek asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, where he’s been holed up ever since.
- Anthony Weiner, the disgraced, almost rehabilitated, and then again disgraced former congressman, will plead guilty to a charge of transferring obscene material to a minor on Friday, which stemmed from sexting with a 15-year-old in North Carolina.