While world blasts Trump, Panagariya rejoices over Modi-Trump talk

An “uneasy, lonely figure” who has “no desire and no capacity to lead the world.” A damning critique of Donald Trump by a high-profile Australian journalist on Sunday has caught the pulse of observers worldwide.

Reporting from Hamburg, the host city of recently concluded G-20 summit, Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) political editor Chris Uhlmann tore into the US President for “pressing fast forward” on the decline of the US and ceding ground to “authoritarian states like China and Russia.” Uhlmann’s observations on Trump were viewed many thousands of times, finding takers across the world, including in the US.

“Some will cheer the decline of America, but I think we will miss it when it is gone. And that’s the biggest threat to the values of the West, which he claims to hold so dear…,” Uhlmann said.

Uhlmann is not the first high-profile Australian conservative to take down Trump. Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had last month roasted the US President in front of a crowd of politicians and journalists at an annual event in Canberra.

Known to hold right-to-centre political views, Uhlmann’s critique of Trump hints at growing impatience with Trump, who contested polls with backing of the Republicans.

Meanwhile…

In complete contrast to Uhlmann’s critique of Trump’s political ways, India’s representative at the G-20 summit, NITI Aayog Vice-President Arvind Panagariya, seemed to rejoice over the fact that Trump walked up to PM Modi for an “impromptu interaction.”

“In an impromptu interaction at G20 Summit, POTUS waves to the PM, walks to him, other leaders gather around. Gr8 moments,” Panagariya, a Sherpa for India at the leaders’meeting, tweeted.

Panagariya’s tweet, apparently meant for consumption of the domestic constituency, attracted praises for PM Modi’s networking skills.

Full text of Chris Uhlmann’s reportage on Trump:

What we already knew Barry, that the President of the United States has a particular skill-set, that he’s identified an illness in Western democracies, but he has no cure for it and seems intent on exploiting it.

And we have also learned that he has no desire and no capacity to lead the world.

The G20 became the G19 as it ended. On the Paris Climate Accord, the US was left isolated and friendless.

But given that was always going to happen, a deft president would have found an issue around which he could rally most of the leaders. And he had the perfect one -- North Korea’s missile tests. So where was the G20 statement condemning North Korea which would have put pressure on China and Russia? Other leaders expected it, they were prepared to back it, but it never came.

There’s a tendency among some hopeful souls to confuse the speeches written for Trump with the thoughts of the man himself. He did make some interested, scripted observations in Poland about defending the values of the West. And he’s in a unique position. He is the one man who has the power to do something about it. But it is the unscripted Trump that’s real -- a man who barks out bile in 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the West’s institutions like the judiciary, independent government agencies and the free press

He was an uneasy, lonely figure at the G20 gathering, and you got the sense that some of the leaders are trying to find the best way to work around him.

Donald Trump’s a man who craves power because it burnishes his celebrity. To be constantly talking and be talked about is all that matters and there is no value placed on the meaning of words. So, what said one day could be discarded the next. So, what did we learn?

We learned that Donald Trump has pressed fast forward on the decline of the United States as a global leader. He managed to isolate his nation, to confuse and alienate his allies and to diminish America. He will cede that power to China and Russia, two authoritarian states that will forge a very different set of rules for the 21st century

Some will cheer the decline of America, but I think we will miss it when it is gone. And that’s the biggest threat to the values of the West, which he claims to hold so dear...