Whenever Donald Trump travels, I write it up as a series of “The Idiot Abroad” moron adventures. I do that to keep from crying, honestly. As bad as it feels to be an American watching Trump’s idiocy within our borders, it’s a million times worse to see him interact with foreign leaders or to hear about what goes on during any of his conversations with world leaders. We’ve heard many, many times that his meetings and phone calls with other leaders are often treasonous and awful. In John Bolton’s new book, he details how Trump asked for China’s help to get reelected, and how Trump prefers the company of dictators and fascists. Did you also know that Trump would call democratically elected (female) leaders “weak” and “stupid” in phone calls?

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

…By far the greatest number of Trump’s telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America’s principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was “stupid.”

Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia’s autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, “great” accomplishments as President, and the “idiocy” of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources. In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him — Trump — would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. “They didn’t know BS,” he said of Bush and Obama — one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders.

[From CNN]

Who would have thought, except for literally everyone, that Trump would disrespect our allies so thoroughly and cozy up to autocrats, dictators and murderous pieces of sh-t. This is related to the story about Russia giving bounties to the Taliban for murdering Americans – Trump will not believe American intelligence briefings. He will not believe our NATO allies. He will believe Vladimir Putin. He will choose Putin over our allies any day of the week. And not only will he always choose Putin over our historic allies, he’ll massively disrespect our allies to everyone. Oh, and Trump bitching about George W. Bush and Barack Obama when he’s on the phone to his dictator buddies? My God.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Avalon Red.