Heard funniest backhanded slap at Trump today on radio

[CitizenBBN]

Don't really have time to post this, but I've been laughing all day.

The slap was one of those subtle digs that you hear in headlines where the way something is worded can lean one way or the other. Now in this case it was a local station with good people, I know them all, and it was being read as a newsfeed headline I'm sure from one of their feed sources, but I thought it was funny.

It was about Saudi Arabia and the journalist situation. It said that Trump had "defended" Saudi Arabia, and had received criticism for "taking a position contrary to America's traditional foreign policy values based on human rights." I think that's pretty close, not exact, was in the car, but really close.

Guys, I burst out laughing. Does anyone, right or left, really think that the US has a tradition of human rights based foreign policy and that Trump, in deflecting (not defending but deflecting) for a despotic regime that is also a key ally, has done anything at all inconsistent with past US Presidents or US policy in general?

Are they serious? I'm as pro America as anyone, and believe the Leftist self hatred of their race and nation is absurd and dangerous, b/c America has done many great things for the world. But we have also no doubt been very real politik at times, supporting numerous vicious regimes over the decades b/c we needed them as allies.

Iran withe Shah, Marcos in the Philippines, countless Latin an South American dictators, Saddam, countless more African dictators, even back to Stalin in WWII. It's a long dang list.

Trump is doing the right thing. We need Saudi Arabia. They are not to be trusted, but we need their support and we need hegemony against Iran right now. We can use this to get more support and concessions from them, but we can't end our relationship over even this kind of barbaric act. One man cannot undo the work we must do to isolate Iran.

Trump is once again right, but he's just being a lot more forthright about it than some past PResidents, who would call for moral outrage but then sign a new arms deal to make sure that same dictator stayed in power.

FWIW, the few times we've really pulled support due to human rights concerns, it's rarely worked out in our favor, even though you'd think it would. IN general they just found support from other sources and we lose what influence we did have with them.

But the way that was said really made me laugh. Like somehow Trump is breaking with US policy in supporting a ruthless foreign regime. lol. We support dozens of such regimes at any point in time, and in the past supported 100s.

[CitizenBBN]

BTW, the last President to try a human rights based approach was Carter, who is widely considered one of the weakest foreign policy Presidents of the post war era. Only his willingness to pay Egypt huge sums of aid to secure their settlement with Israel is a feather in his cap, everything else was either moot or a debacle. And ironically that required him to pay a military dictator (Sadat) who routinely repressed speech, the press, etc. in Egypt.