Public Broadcasting Service journalist Yamiche Alcindor declared during an interview on MSNBC this week that European leaders are still nursing “deep scars” that may take “several election cycles” to heal after being “traumatized” by the “elbowing” of former President Donald Trump.
Alcindor said Thursday that “when I’ve been talking to experts, I’ve been trying to explain to them, I covered the NATO and the G7w hen President Trump was there. Those were the only summits as a reporter that I got to cover, and I said, ‘Well, what does a normal summit look like?’ And they said, ‘Well first, it doesn’t look anything like what you’ve experienced.”
“There, the, the, [sic] the impulses of President Trump, former President Trump, the elbowing of leaders, the calling into question not what should be done in these organizations but whether or not they should even exist,” Alcindor continued. “European leaders were frankly scared, a lot of them were traumatized, there are deep scars in these relationships, and that’s why we’re seeing President Biden really leaning in to what we’re calling the Biden doctrine…”
It is nothing short of hilarious to hear a US reporter speak with such concern about the "trauma" and "scars" of European leaders from Trump's policies. Maybe we need a Marshall Plan to send psychologists and therapy dogs to the halls of power in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. https://t.co/fWAHOCVQWH
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 10, 2021
While an incident in which Trump appeared to shove aside the prime minister of Montenegro while at a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium did draw media attention in May 2017, the prime minister did not appear upset, nor were any criminal charges filed or medical records detailing deep scars or trauma released.
National File also could not find any footage of Trump attacking world leaders with elbow strikes. In fact, when the former president appeared at a World Wrestling Federation “Battle of the Billionaires” event in 2007, he elected not to elbow Vince McMahon and instead floored him with a shove to the chest.