Saturday, May 3, 2025

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pissed off just about everyone without even leaving his weekend resort.

Trump is once again spending the weekend resting at his Florida result, with no events on his schedule. It's a light day even by Trump's famously casual schedule: the 78-year-old is not golfing, or—remarkably, for him—even posting to his private microblogging site.

That said, he did manage to make sure people were talking about him. Among the ways Trump found himself in the news today:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called him out for his "offer" to use American troops on Mexican territory. Trump had been trying to portray himself as taking a tough line with Mexico, accusing Sheinbaum of being "very, very afraid" of Mexican drug cartels. But in a speech today, Sheinbaum flatly and without diplomatic nicety rejected any possibility of allowing an American military incursion, calling it a violation of Mexican sovereignty: "We will never accept the presence of the United States Army in our territory. I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable, our sovereignty is not for sale.'"

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also scored domestic political points at Trump's expense, winning re-election for his center-left Labor Party after campaigning directly against Trump. In his victory speech, Albanese said, "Our government will choose the Australian way because we are proud of who we are. We do not seek our inspiration from overseas. We find it right here in our values and our people."

This was a direct dig at both Trump and the conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton, who modeled himself and his party after the MAGA movement, only to watch a substantial poll lead evaporate after Trump returned to office and alienated Australian voters. This is the second foreign election Trump has lost single-handedly for the party associated with him, and much like in the Canadian elections on Monday, the leader of the pro-Trump party failed to even keep his own seat.

European leaders marking V-E Day used the occasion to lament the United States' decline on the world stage, and Trump's apparent abandonment of American allies in favor of personal enrichment and fealty to the Putin regime in Russia.

Trump recently "hereby declared" that he was renaming V-E Day as "Victory Day for World War II," in a post that seemed to forget some basic facts about the war—for example, that it didn't end with surrender of Germany. As with his attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico, Trump doesn't have any real authority to do this, except that people may want to humor him by playing along.

American Catholics, including arch-conservative church leaders who normally offer Trump their political support, were infuriated by a Trump posting a picture of himself as the pope to White House social media accounts. In perhaps the most direct rebuke to a sitting president American Catholic leadership has ever made, the archdiocese of New York bluntly told Trump, "Do not mock us."

Trump made no secret of his dislike for the late Pope Francis and trolled him in life as well as in death, at one point fantasizing about Francis's death at the hands of the Islamic State and suggesting that Francis would be sorry he didn't have Trump's protection then.

Why does this matter?

  • Presidents who needlessly piss off strategic partners, military allies, and major world religions hurt the United States.