Donald Trump’s big foreign policy speech was a little Dangerfield, a little Tan-ZAYN-ia. | The New Republic

Donald Trump’s big foreign policy speech was a little Dangerfield, a little Tan-ZAYN-ia.

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Attempting to sum up Trump’s foreign policy vision is an impossible task. He declared that America is “finally going to have a coherent foreign policy,” but literally nothing could be less coherent than the rambling, uncharacteristically telepromptered speech he gave today. He is against the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya; but he also complained that there was no intervention to assist persecuted Christians in the region suffering at the hands of ISIS. President Obama is a global puppet-master who installed the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt following the fall of Hosni Mubarak; yet he is also an impotent fool who lets the world humiliate the U.S. at every turn, a Trumpian obsession that my colleague Michelle Legro calls the Dangerfield Doctrine (“that’s the story of my life, no respect!”). He nodded to Republican foreign policy hobbyhorses: the U.S. sailors taken “hostage” by Iran in January, Obama’s alleged reluctance to name the “real” threat facing America (i.e., Muslims). But he subtweeted George W. Bush as often as he did Hillary Clinton, bringing up his opposition to the Iraq War over and over again.

He said America should resist “the false song of globalism.” He referred to Tanzania as Tan-ZAYN-ia. He made sense only in snatches, and even these rare moments of common sense were contradicted. Will his supporters care? They don’t seem to:

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