Two stories emerge as Trump stumbles up to the world stage

There are two stories knocking around in my brain this week following faux-president Donald Trump's stumbling, bumbling, humiliating trip overseas.

Story No. 1:

Trump starts off his foreign policy nightmare by flying to Brussels, Belgium, where he trashes NATO, trashes Germany, insults other NATO countries and implies that they owe us money, when, in fact, nobody owes anybody anything. In truth, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have until 2024 to contribute 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) toward their own defense operations as part of their respective NATO commitments.

They do not owe Donald Trump anything, and never will, which proves that Trump attended an important NATO summit without even knowing how NATO works.

Then he goes to England, where he insults their prime minister, trashes the European Union, calls the EU our “foe,” disrespects the queen and tells a reporter that England “has many names,” including the UK, United Kingdom and Great Britain, proving that he doesn’t know anything about our longest and most important ally and can’t even read a map.

Then he doubles down on the stupidity by flying over to Scotland, where he claims to have “left the United Kingdom” despite the fact that Scotland is very much a member of the UK. He reportedly claims that everybody in the UK loves him, even as tens of thousands of people jam the streets to protest his racist, fascist, xenophobic, misogynistic and nationalistic policies.

To top it off, after a day of golf, he jets over to Finland where he cozies up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, refusing to call out Putin for hacking into the 2016 presidential election and taking Putin’s side against his own intelligence community. He cuddles up to Putin like a frightened puppy dog cowering at the feet of its master, trashes the Mueller investigation and strays off into another recounting of his Electoral College numbers when asked during a press conference why he didn’t press the hacking issue with the Russian.

He gave Putin exactly what he wanted – domination over the United States in clear view of the entire world and a step toward regaining the status Russia lost after the breakup of the Soviet Union. If there was any doubt before today that Donald Trump was a Putin puppet whose campaign colluded with Russia to win an election, Trump has now erased all doubt.

Story No. 2:

While all of this is going on, Republicans in Congress don’t appear to care. Instead of condemning Russia after 12 Putin operatives were indicted for their election interference, all some conservatives want to do is impeach the assistant attorney general who had the audacity to deliver that news.

With the exception of a few brave soldiers and some members who are retiring this year (and thus have nothing to lose), the rest of the Republican Party is sitting back and doing nothing except watching the show. This is not patriotism, statesmanship or anything resembling integrity. It may not be treason by the strictest definition, but it’s a whole lot closer to treason than I ever thought I’d see.