This week, we learned that Donald Trump’s screen addiction can no longer be viewed as a simply an eccentric hobby.

Trump’s fixation with screens, on TV, on the iPad, on his smartphone, helped alter the course of international diplomacy this week — most certainly in Canada-U.S. relations, but perhaps in North Korea as well.

It was seeing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a television screen that set Trump off on a tirade against Canada and trade last weekend. As Trump himself reported, he left last week’s G7 meeting in Quebec feeling pretty good about how things had gone. Then he hopped aboard the technologically well-appointed presidential jet.

“I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions,” Trump told reporters. “And I see the television, and he’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States.”

Trump was talking at a press conference after his historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which also included some screen time. The U.S. president walked into that meeting armed with a bizarre, movie-trailer-like film, all about the glorious days that could come for the world if North Korea was better behaved.

When reporters asked what was with this strange video, Trump explained: “We had it made up. I showed it to them today. Actually during the meeting. Toward the end of the meeting. I think he (Kim) loved it.”

Well, who wouldn’t have loved it? For a screen addict like Trump, this might well have been a moment of sincere, absolute connection — two world leaders, staring at the same tiny screen.

“We didn’t have a big screen like you (reporters) have the luxury. We had it on cassette. An iPad,” Trump said.

Trump has made no secret of his screen addiction since assuming the presidency. In an Oval Office tour he gave to Time magazine reporters in early 2017, he showed off a huge, new flat-screen TV he had installed in the presidential dining room. Michael Wolff’s insider book about the Trump White House, “Fire and Fury,” released earlier this year, revealed how Trump also had more TVs installed in his bedroom, so he could watch and tweet at all hours.

Where past world leaders might have displayed intimidating weapons of war on their walls, Trump has TVs on his. As his remarks about Trudeau indicated, Trump regards his array of televisions as his arsenal of power; as well as his window into other leaders’ thoughts, even their souls. By extension, too, those who don’t have televisions, or know about Trump’s TVs, are at a disadvantage.

“He assumed I was in an airplane and he thought I wasn’t watching.” Trump said of Trudeau this week. “He learned.”

Psychologists have been given a lot to study in the Trump presidency, but this screen fixation surely merits some further attention.

In a U.S. podcast about “Politics and Screens,” recorded in the spring of 2017, former TV Guide editor Michael Schneider talked about Trump’s relationship with TV as different from what we’ve seen with past presidents.

“For the most part when they showed up on television, it was more in an entertainment capacity; they were trying to humanize themselves,” Schneider said. This reality-TV-star-turned-president, however, is governing largely through what he sees on the screen, he said — actually making policy and strategy in screen interactions.

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It’s true — screens are so vital to Trump that he keeps them close at hand all the time, even on the rare occasions he leaves the United States. This week, the presidential screens were crucial in making new friends (North Korea) as well as new enemies (Canada).

What we may never know is how these diplomatic relationships would have unfolded this week without the screens — or whether Trump recognizes any reality at all if it doesn’t happen on screen.

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