Tom Nichols of The Atlantic published an article that explained why Trump is a laughing stock among other world leaders. The recent meeting of the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea, and India was convened to celebrate the victory over Japan in 1945. Trump was not invited. He proceeded to write whiny complaints on social media about being left out.
They laugh at him. They saw how Putin played Trump like a violin when they met in Alaska. The meeting was supposedly about Putin agreeing to a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump rolled out a red carpet for Putin. Waited for him, clapped his hands in excitement as Putin approached. At the meeting’s end, Putin spoke first, which is not customary. Then he departed, skipping a lunch that Trump planned in his honor.
Putin made a fool of Trump.
The next night, Russia bombsrded Kyiv with an unprecedented number of drones and missiles, aimed at civilian targets.
Putin and the others know that Pete Hegseth is an empty suit. Trump busies himself redecorating the White House and its grounds. Trump is not a serious man. He can be ignored.
The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea are not good men. They preside over brutal autocracies replete with secret police and prison camps. But they are, nevertheless, serious men, and they know an unserious man when they see one. For nearly a decade, they have taken Donald Trump’s measure, and they have clearly reached a conclusion: The president of the United States is not worthy of their respect.
Wednesday’s military parade in Beijing is the most recent evidence that the world’s authoritarians consider Trump a lightweight. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korea’s maximum nepo baby, Kim Jong Un, gathered to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. (Putin’s Belarusian satrap, Alexander Lukashenko, was also on hand.) The American president was not invited: After all, what role did the United States play in defeating Japan and liberating Eurasia? Instead, Trump, much like America itself, was left to watch from the sidelines.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Or maybe the Tianjin meeting had nothing to do with Trump or the U.S. at all? Why are Americans such narcissists that they make everything about them? https://consortiumnews.com/2025/09/09/patrick-lawrence-a-nation-of-narcissists/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=5493d784-610e-4a22-abc6-97b622f3fcbb
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The meeting celebrated the defeat of Japan in 1945. The Japanese emperor and military surrendered to the American military–not to Russia, China, or North Korea.
Excluding the U.S. from the event was a very loud snub.
Noticing that the U.S. was not invited is not narcissism. It’s reality.
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Over 100,000 Americans died fighting to defeat Japan during World War 2.
The number of Russians who died in that war was much smaller because the Soviet Union did not enter the war until August 1945.
Korea was occupied by Japan and did not have its own military, although Koreans were conscripted by Japan to fight for them, many were slave laborers, women were compelled to be “comfort women” for Japanese troops.
Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki–at a horrendous cost of Japanese lives–and the entry of the USSR into the war persuaded the Japanese to surrender. They surrendered to the U.S.–not to China or the USSR or Korea.
The formal Japanese surrender took place on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. American forces were represented by General Douglas MacArthur.
To leave the U.S. out of a ceremony commemorating the Japanese surrender was absurd.
Yes, I did read the article you sent. It’s filled with hatred for the U.S. and a woeful lack of knowledge of history.
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The Russians were recently left out of a Holocaust remembrance day ceremony even though 25 million of their people died fighting the nazis and they liberated almost all of the camps. Maybe if the U.S. wasn’t constantly threatening war with half the eastern world, they’d be invited more. But instead they’ve made it plain they have no intention of working equitably with other powerful countries. The U S. insists on trying to control the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is getting tired of it.
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Could it be that the Russians were left out of the Holocaust remembrance because Stalin murdered millions of his own people and was anti-Semitic?
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All of Europe was anti-Semitic. That’s why Zionism was originally a European project – it was a way to get the Jews out of Europe.
In any case, Stalin has been dead for quite some time and the fact remains that it was the Russians who liberated the camps and get the lion’s share of the credit for defeating the nazis, at great cost to themselves. That should be recognized.
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Russians were virulently anti-Semitic. Pogroms were frequent occurrences. That’s why bbbhh huhu so many Russian Jews fled. Stalin entered the war not to help end the Holocaust but a thug because Hitler attacked Russia, breaking a “friendship pact” that the two tyrannies signed in 1939. Hitler’s biggest mistake. Stalin and the USSR deserve zero recognition for ending the Holocaust.
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You’re a good American, Diane.
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Thanks, Dienne, I love this country. I always have. That’s why it makes me so angry to see Trump destroying it.
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Thank you for this insightful analysis of the orange toddler’s global missteps. Trump is bluster and bravado with little substance which makes him a clear and present danger to our country and people. He is a shallow, performative clown, and the rest of the world including the EU that must humor him because of our wealth and power, understand this.
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I have no doubt that many or all world leaders are laughing at Trump or thinking he is a thug, a troll, a bully and an ignorant fool.
Still, Trump is a danger to the entire world as long as he is in the White House.
The Toxic T is a malignant narcissist and sadistic sociopath, who will do anything to get what he wants in addition to revenge for anyone who tries to get in his way. Even if that means starting WWIII. It wouldn’t surprise me that the family crime lord, lifelong cheater and serial liar ordered nuclear strikes on cities in Blue States refusing to do what he wants.
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Trump is the laughingstock of the globe but the joke is on us. I am not laughing at the almost daily malfeasances of the horror clown in the Casa Bianca.
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