NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT GOES INTERNATIONAL.

Trump's "I will kill you all" speech at the U.N. pleased the expected parties -- his anti-immigration twaddle thrilled the overt racists, the Believers in the Three Magic Words got what they came for ("Trump called out radical Islamic terrorism BY NAME"), and his general belligerence excited chest-beaters such as Florida Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis, who declared, "This is the international UN version of 'draining the swamp'" -- though, to be fair, seeing how draining the swamp has turned out domestically, maybe DeSantis was trying to tell us this speech was bullshit, too. And maybe Trump's brutish base, to whom I suspect it was pitched, liked that he was tellin' off them furriners, if they even remember what the United Nations is (the wingnut operatives in the White House seem to be working from an antique Bircher playbook).

The funniest ones were those who tried to make Trump's rant seem thoughtful and philosophical, like Sohrab Ahmari at Commentary:

If your default vision of liberal order looks like Barack Obama- and Angela Merkel-style transnationalism, you were probably disappointed with Trump’s speech. The features of the Obama/Merkel model are endless diplomatic processes for their own sake; the expansion of transnational “norms” and institutions, usually at the expense of democratic self-government; and a general disdain for anything redolent of nationhood and nationalism and particularity.

Translation: If you have to power to kill and don't announce your intention to use it, preferably in the crudest terms and while wearing a flag pin, you're a weakling. Trump's "alternative vision of liberal order," Ahmari claimed, "would have looked familiar to a Ronald Reagan or a Daniel Patrick Moynihan." I'm sure it would be familiar to them -- from their buddies the Contras. But as little as I think of those two, I don't think they would have wanted America itself to become a banana republic, and its President a caudillo.