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His record is impressive, even if his public utterances sometimes are not

I commend to skeptical Canadians the comments in a recent London interview of the greatest foreign minister of any Great Power in the 20th century, Henry Kissinger. He said that President Trump “is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven’t seen before … Liberals and all those who favour (Hillary) Clinton will never admit that he is … a true leader … After eight years of tyranny (of declinists and willful fantasy), … every country now has to consider two things: One, their perception that the previous president, or the outgoing president, basically withdrew America from international politics, so that they had to make their own assessments of their necessities. And secondly, that there is a new president who’s asking a lot of unfamiliar questions. And because of the combination of the partial vacuum and the new questions, one could imagine that something remarkable and new emerges out of it … Trump puts America and its people first … When he boasts that he has a ‘bigger red button’ than Kim Jung Un does, he transcends the mealy-mouthed rhetoric of the past, thereby forcing a new recognition of American power.”

He transcends the mealy-mouthed rhetoric of the past, thereby forcing a new recognition of American power Henry Kissinger

The American and Canadian and European media can afford the luxury of judging the Trump phenomenon by its often grating exterior, but the geopolitical facts are as Henry Kissinger described. Thuggish charlatans like Putin are made to look strong by the weakness of Obama and fragile governments in Britain and Germany, but the U.S. is withstanding the domestic pressure to drive Putin into the arms of China and Iran, and is gathering strength to resist the challenge to the West presented by China, even if the population of the West is still steeped in snobbery toward Trump and his followers as a gang of loud-mouthed boobs.