NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: Trump ‘Doesn’t Read, Doesn’t Absorb Facts, Not Reality-Based’

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” network host Andrea Mitchell accused President Donald Trump of not reading, absorbing facts and was “not reality-based” when discussing his foreign policy moves.

Partial transcript as follows:

SCARBOROUGH: Andrea, you have talked before how Donald Trump thought he could personally charm the Chinese leaders, and we’ve seen this happen before throughout history. Famously FDR thought he could charm Stalin at Yalta. George W. Bush thought that he could charm Putin, talking about, you know, seeing into his soul, but Donald Trump, this has happened time and again, and he appears to be more susceptible to this mistake than most other presidents.

MITCHELL: Well, it’s partly because they don’t have a process in place. They don’t have deputies and principles committee meetings to work through this, as Jeremy just said. Partly that he doesn’t read, doesn’t absorb facts, is not reality-based.

So his vaunted deal making in real estate, which is transactional in a different way, does not translate into what he needs to do as a foreign leader, and look at the Riyadh summit and the unintended consequences of empowering the Saudis to the extent he did through the Riyadh summit, going there first, questionable decision, and then we see rapidly the succession, which may have been accelerated by what he did in various signals, putting his finger on the scale, if you will, between the two rivals, the Crowned Prince and Deputy Crowned Prince.

Now the former Crowned Prince is reportedly under house arrest with his personal security guards changed overnight to be loyal to the new Crowned Prince, his much younger nephew. King Salman is not going to the G-20, neither is MBS, the new Crowned Prince, so they are sending a deputy Finance Minister.

Clearly, the new Crowned Prince wants to stay at home and not risk leaving the country, not yet secure in his own hold on power. This is — plus what we see with the threats against Qatar and the continuing disaster in Yemen that this young man has helped foster. There are a lot of unintended consequences that this president has not considered and not be resolved by tweet.

But I still keep focusing on Angela Merkel. The key to so much in terms of our own economy, our huge market in Europe, and she is very careful with her words. She’s a scientist. She does not make grand pronouncements, but she has now twice in the last few weeks dismissed Donald Trump in very clear language. They no longer rely on the U.S.

(h/t RCP Video)

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