Ashamed. There is no other word for the feeling that washed over me when President Donald Trump hectored our NATO allies over something as small as money and dues paying – on false grounds, by the way. He was the skunk at the garden party. The consequences may soon be very real.

The new French president, Emmanuel Macron, gave Trump a sign of Europe's disdain in a crushing handshake that made Trump's knuckles go white. "A moment of truth," the 39-year-old leader said.

Trump treated the distinguished NATO heads of state, literally our best friends in the world, with the same shocking disrespect that he displayed on the campaign trail toward Hillary Clinton, the woman who bested him in the popular vote, let us not let him forget.

In sharp contrast to presidential bonhomie, Trump seeks to humiliate, alienate and make others hate him. That is his job. Riding a wave of anger and vitriol is all he knows. He is "a very good hater," a phrase coined by the 18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson. Fellow critics, let's pick our jaws off the floor and realize what a ruthless force we're dealing with.

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Just as excruciating was that Saudi Arabia was the president's first and favorite stop. He signed an arms deal worth billions and seemed right at home. The cruel desert kingdom represses women like no other place on the planet and is a breeding ground for radical extremism and terrorism. To see the president kneel and bow his head down to a Saudi ruler showed me he has no idea about upholding the dignity of democracy.

Speaking for me, never have I felt so ashamed of the American president before on the world stage. I thought George W. Bush was rockbottom, but he had a hearty, genial side along with being a wrongheaded "war president."

Bush was chummy with Tony Blair, then the British Prime Minister, and invited him to a weekend at Camp David, a woodsy retreat that Trump regards as slumming. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton knew well how to make friends and influence other leaders – particularly Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain and Helmut Kohl of Germany.

Statecraft is, just like politics, an alchemy of personal relationships.

On his first foreign trip, Trump's churlish small-town sheriff act may have played well to his base in Iowa, Texas, the entire Southern United States. But you could almost see and feel the curdling disgust and anger in our allies' eyes. Soon after, the new leader of the free world, Chancellor Angela Merkel, made it clear she was done trying to pacify the ogre.

Europe should "really take our fate into our own hands," she stated. That post-war NATO alliance, nice while it lasted, is in jeopardy. Merkel was frustrated that Trump refused to follow Barack Obama's allegiance to the Paris Accords on climate change. He also refused to renew the traditional pledge of the alliance: that all would come to the defense of one.

When I was a girl, Richard Nixon resigned, glory hallelujah. My mother drove to San Clemente to witness him emerge from Air Force One for the last time, a disgraced former president. But now Nixon's domestic policy looks so fair and square, I'll take it. Never mind the burglary of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate. That's small stuff compared to Russian ambassadors and espionage.

Nixon had zero personal charm, and I was never proud of him for anything. But at least he was a moderate politician on domestic policy and knew the folkways of Washington. The Environmental Protection Agency was created on his watch.

Trump's sketchy son-in-law, the brash Jared Kushner, is a younger version of himself, raised under the thumb of a dominant father who built a real estate empire, brushing against the law. That's the reason why Trump has empowered Kushner, despite his novice status.