How do you handle a sporting event when you honestly care less who wins?

When it comes to the World Cup, I find the world of international soccer to be interesting – moreso than the hype we have surrounding the Super Bowl or NBA playoffs that seem to last forever.

Yet with the world of international soccer reaching a peak this weekend – and the World Cup tourney bringing a month’s worth of activity to an end with a championship game Sunday, I have to admit I’m not all that enthused.

WHEN THE NATIONAL teams of France and Croatia take to the pitch to try to stake their claim to having the best football club in the world, there will be those thousands of fans packing their way into a stadium in Moscow, and many thousands more gathered around television sets for a lifetime experience.

I’m likely to be watching on television, hoping something will happen to make the game itself memorable.

But I honestly can’t say I’m rooting for either side. The idea of France vs. Croatia brings about a bit of a “blah” in me.

I’m sort of glad to see that in the semi-final match on Wednesday, England fell short of Croatia. Mainly because I can’t think of anything less interesting than the idea of an international championship coming down to a brawl between England and France.

I KNOW THE history.

I don’t doubt that to the English (and only the English, not anybody from Scotland, Wales or Ireland), it would be a moment of great historic significance if they had been able to win a World Cup championship against their historic arch-rival. Instead, they’ll settle for playing in a consolation game Saturday against Belgium – a match I won’t be able to watch, because I’ll have to do reporter-type work that day.

But perhaps I have too much of an all-American Yankee Doodle Dandy in me. I was interested in the World Cup this year for the vision it gave us of the rest of the world. Not to see the one-time world powers try to pretend that history remains the same and that the world revolves around a London/Paris axis.

While some might think that makes me a natural to root for Croatia to win come Sunday, I just don’t see it happening.

LARGELY BECAUSE I have had friends in my lifetime who are of Serbian ethnic origins. Somehow, I suspect they’d pay me a “surprise” visit and feed me a meal of knuckle sandwiches if they thought I was somehow rooting for their nation’s historic rival.

I know for some people who think of themselves as soccer fans, their interest in World Cup ’18 diminished last autumn when the U.S. national team couldn’t even qualify to be among the 32 teams that played this year.

Trinidad and Tobago will be places that get demonized in their minds, what with how it was their team that managed to knock the United States out of the running, and which spared fans the world over the sight and sound of the “American Outlaws” group leading “U-S-A” chants all over the one-time Soviet Union.

For me, I am a fan of el Tri, the national equipo de futbol of Mexico, and usually find myself taking interest in all the teams from nations that are a part of the Americas. When Hirving Lozano (nicknamed “Chucky”) scored the lone goal against Germany, that was my personal highlight of the 2018 version of the World Cup.

SO WHEN MEXICO got knocked out of the running by Brazil, then Brazil lost in the quarterfinals to Belgium, my own intense rooting interests in this year’s World Cup declined. They diminished altogether when Uruguay lost to France – who may wind up winning their third World Cup tourney ever come Sunday.

Putting them behind Brazil (with five titles) historically, but well ahead of anybody else in the Americas.

The World Cup is one of those periodic athletic events. We’ll get it again come 2022 in Qatar. We’ll get to see Middle Eastern sheiks staging the event in all the opulence possible for matches played out in the desert.

Yet I don’t doubt there are those fans of soccer who already have shifted their attention to 2026. That’s the year we’ll get to see World Cup activity in the United States – the first time since 1994. Along with Mexico (which had it in 1970 and 1986) and Canada (never before). We’ll have to see if the nations of North America can play nice with each other while the world watches.

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NAFTA talks have something about it for just about everyone to hate

When it comes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, it seems we truly have a policy meant to unite us – since there’s something in it that arouses the ire in just about everybody.

The logo that expresses hostile concept to many

The deal that was supposed to bring the United States into a sense of unity with the other two major nations that comprise the North American continent seems to do little more than tick people off.

TO THE POINT where it has President Donald J. Trump finding every excuse he can come up with to say he’s going to kill the trade deal off. While Mexico’s newly-elected president is going about saying he fully intends to keep the deal in place.

Which means we have yet another issue upon which the two nations can’t agree upon.

As things stand, the United States is negotiating these days with Mexico and Canada to supposedly come up with a new trade deal for the North American continent to abide by. Supposedly something that will be more equitable than the current deal – which dates back to the Clinton presidential administration.

Although if you’re old enough to remember back that you, you’ll know that it really wasn’t Bill Clinton who came up with the idea for NAFTA.

THE TRADE DEAL was the goal of former President George Bush (the elder, not his son). Yet his one-term presidency managed to come to an end before he could get Congress to go along with ratification of the deal.

TRUMP: Won't sign off now

In a sense that the Clinton Administration wanted to start off with a sense of bipartisanship, it took over the lead on NAFTA, which ultimately got it passed by U.S. officials – thereby making us a partner in the deal that was meant to keep nationalist concerns from interfering with the ability of goods to be shipped across the three North American nations.

Almost as though we were one with Mexico and Canada.

Which is an ideal I’m sure people who back this Age of Trump we’re now in absolutely despise, and which is the big reason the current U.S. president is so eager to back us out of the deal.

LOPEZ: Wants NAFTA to remain

OR ELSE FIND some sort of terms that will allow U.S. interests to think of themselves as the preeminent power and the other nations as subordinate.

Keep in mind that the original ideal behind NAFTA was to keep our local regulations from interfering with inter-American trade. None of those pesky union contracts meant to protect workers’ powers were allowed to interfere with trade.

All those environmental regulations we have developed to protect our eco-system but which other countries have no equivalent for themselves? They’re also bad, very bad, in terms of thinking of trade.

Which is why organized labor has always hated NAFTA; it was perceived as a way of undermining their influence. While also making them question the sincerity of Clinton’s “liberal” political credentials.

CLINTON: Gets the credit/blame

YET THE IDEOLOGUES amongst us always thought that the idea of trying to promote the North American nations as equals and boosting trade amongst us was somehow a subversive thought. The fact that it came up during the Clinton presidential years was all the more reason to mis-trust it.

Hence, we had Trump say recently that he’s not going to sign off on any renegotiated NAFTA deal until after the Nov. 6 elections – probably hoping that a change in political partisanship will strengthen his hand so he can be even further hard-headed in his negotiations tactics.

BUSH: His administration's idea

Yet Andres Lopez Obrador said Monday he’s going to do everything he can to keep the current NAFTA deal in place – largely because he’s the guy whose campaign’s ideology has been compared to that of failed presidential dreamer Bernie Sanders, and who sees himself as the anti-Trump.

Oddly enough, Trump’s refusal to act soon may play into Mexican interests – because Lopez’ presidential term doesn’t actually begin until December. Which makes it very likely that cheap rhetoric about NAFTA will join all the stupid talk about a border wall that will clutter up the political rants we’ll hear the rest of the year – on both sides of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo del Norte.

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Korean summit? It’s all about the ‘spin’

U.S. and Korean leaders will try to talk...

Assuming someone doesn’t say or do something stupid in the next few hours that causes somebody to go storming out of the room and bringing the summit between the United States and North Korea to an end – this is the week that the two sides will talk.

The nations that were at war back in the early 1950s and which ended in a stalemate that for decades has created the potential for the shooting to start up again are going to have their leaders try to talk out their differences.

... about peaceful relations in coming days

WHAT WILL COME out of all this? Who’s to say!

If anything, it doesn’t matter one iota what is actually done or said by officials of either side.

This truly will be an event about the political spin. Both sides are going to be looking for some sort of occurrence that they can distort into a story putting themselves in the best light.

When it comes to the officials from North Korea, I’m sure they want something to happen that they can claim to be the end of the war – with the North prevailing. It won’t matter that nothing will actually change. They want to be able to say they defeated the attempt of capitalism and Western imperialism to chase them out of power.

AND IF NOTHING truly occurs along those lines, they’ll want to be able to say it does.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have their own agenda going into this gathering (which will take place in the early hours of Tuesday – our time). It may be over and done by the time we wake up Tuesday morning.

Or maybe the sides will talk late into the night (which will be about lunchtime, our time, on Tuesday)?

Remember how the 'Laverne & Shirley' stars both used to claim top billing because of how their names were positioned? This weekend will be filled with lots of equally ridiculous rhetoric by both Trump and Kim

What President Donald Trump wants to gain out of all this is something that he will be able to spin into stories of what a high-and-mighty, all-powerful negotiator he truly is.

TRUMP WANTS US to think that he’s the guy who was able to sit down face-to-face with North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un and knuckle under to his almighty aura.

On the surface, Trump says he wants to get North Korea officials to abandon the arsenal they have built up throughout the years of nuclear weapons – which, quite frankly, are the only reason anybody pays attention to the impoverished Asian nation whose attempt at Communism is so isolationist that there’s really no reason any other part of the world would want to be bothered with it.

Yes, it really is about his ego and that Nobel Prize – he will forevermore be bitter that his predecessor, Barack Obama, received the prize for his efforts to try to bring peace to the Middle East. I’m sure if it were possible, Trump would order the prize’s revocation from Obama.

Since that’s not possible, he’s out to get his own. His backers already are proclaiming him the man who “ended” the Korean War, and I’m sure the ideologues here will be more than willing to distort whatever actually happens into a story that backs their pre-summit rhetoric.

IN ALL HONESTY, I’m skeptical that anything of significance will happen as a result of the talks taking place in Singapore in coming days. Even Trump himself has made statements warning that long-term change will take years to achieve.

The kind of image Trump dreams he can make a part of the past in Pyongyang

Meaning we can’t proclaim him the ultimate failure if nothing has changed by Friday. Although nothing will stop the smarty-pants-types amongst us from pondering which of the two world leaders has the most ridiculous hairstyle.

This week’s activity is about talk. And talk is good. It’s better than isolationism keeping the sides apart to the point where our ignorance of each other results in somebody doing something stupid (always risky when nuclear warheads are involved).

And if it really is nothing but talk, I can’t help but remember the old cliché; “Talk is cheap!”

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Trump has long way to go before we ought to think of him as Nobel winner

Reading through all the rhetoric being spewed in recent days with regards to the Koreas, one has to wonder how delusional the conservative ideologues amongst us truly are.

Lots of ritual in last week's meeting of the 2 Koreas leaders. Any substance?

Either that, or just how insecure are they in the degree to which they will say anything intended to try to legitimize this Age of Trump that our society is now in.

IT WAS REGARDED as a significant event last week when the leaders of the two Koreas – Moon Jae-in of the South and Kim Jong Un of the North – actually met, engaged in a lot of ceremonial ritual, talked for about 30 minutes, then signed off on an agreement that technically ends the Korean War of the 1950s.

Or at least says that neither North nor South Korea regarded the war as ongoing,

As far as any gunfire or bloodshed is involved, that conflict between the two Koreas (with the sides propped up by the United States and China) ended with a cease-fire in July 1953.

The fact that there was never a formal agreement signed has always been regarded as more of a quirk of history, rather than one of significance. Although for those who cite the instability of Kim and his relatives who have governed North Korea for decades, it has had some fear that a moment of stupidity on someone’s part could resurrect that Cold War-motivated military conflict.

BUT INSOFAR AS our own political scene is concerned, there are those who are seriously suggesting that the headline ought to have been, “Trump Ends Korean War.”

Many of them also are suggesting that the U.S. president ought to receive credit for bringing the two sides together and ought to get a Nobel Peace Prize.

They think history ought to be crediting Donald J. for bringing an end to a conflict that I honestly suspect most people today only think of as the motivation for the M*A*S*H film and television series. Actor Jamie Farr’s “Corporal Klinger” in drag might be the war’s lasting image.

TRUMP: He really believes it's all about him

If you get the impression I think President Trump is spewing a whole lot of nonsense on this issue, you’d be correct.

IT SEEMS THAT the ideologues remain seriously miffed that the Nobel Committee back in 2009 gave their Peace Prize to then-President Barack Obama. Perhaps they think it’s a matter of “equal time” that their guy get the same prize as well.

Admittedly, that prize to Obama was one that has questionable merit. Obama had engaged in significant rhetoric about nuclear nonproliferation and the merits of peace between the Western world and the Muslim world. It had been hoped that giving Obama the prize would add credibility to his talk.

Although what happened was the distaste ideologues had for Obama meant they became openly hostile to the idea (just like they despised everything he proposed), and little of lasting value came out of that era.

But anybody who’s serious (which the ideologues amongst us rarely are) has to admit Trump has had very little to do with any lasting peace in that region of the world. If anything, his trash talk about North Korea has escalated tensions, and his general attitude toward the rest of the world may be what keeps any lasting peace from being achieved.

KEEP IN MIND that the agreement formally ending the Korean War would still have to be approved by U.S. and China officials. It could take months, if not years, before the Korean conflict (1950-53) is officially over.

There’s also the fact that the Koreas agreement does not include a resolution of one long-significant issue – the degree to which the North ought to have its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. Although the Washington Post reported Sunday that the North said it would dismantle its main nuclear test site sometime next month. Whether that can be settled in the yet-to-be scheduled talks that Trump hints he’ll have with Kim.

Sad that some may think this is real

So while the ideologues amongst us are writing chapters celebrating Trump in history and trying to strongarm people into giving him the Nobel Peace prize, I think the head of North Korea’s national intelligence service may have a more accurate perspective.

While acknowledging “changing norms,” Kim Yong Chol said, “It feels embarrassing to be applauded just for shaking hands.”

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Vulgar? What the f@#% else is new!

When I first learned that President Donald J. Trump went about spewing obscene trash talk about select African nations, I can’t say I was surprised.

'Da winnah' among front pages

Heck, when I first heard he was using a phrase related to caca to describe them, my first thought was that Trump was on another one of his nonsensical rants about Mexico. It would have been totally in character with his line of stupid talk.

SO I DO find it a little interesting to learn that Trump, in talking with Congress members earlier this week about various issues related to immigration policy, let his inner potty mouth run rampant.

Seriously, I’ve lost count of the number of newspapers on Friday that felt compelled to put Trump’s vulgar rant on their front pages. If you question use of the word “vulgar” to describe the president, it was in the front page headlines of the Chicago Tribune and the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill. – just to name a couple.

Which makes me wonder why people feel compelled to make an issue out of political use of profane terms. Such as the New York Daily News putting “S**t” on its front page Friday to describe what it was Trump felt compelled to say.

Trump 'vulgar' in both Chicago ...

But very few would dream of going that far in expressing what it was Trump said.

IT’S THE OLD-SCHOOL attitude toward profanity in the newspaper – all that talk of a “family newspaper” that we’re supposed to pretend people don’t speak crudely – even when they happen to have crude thoughts and behave in a crude manner.

Which causes us to dance around with the English language when describing what happened. It may be the one time reporter-types think it appropriate to fudge with the facts.

... and in Springfield, Ill.

Personally, I’m of the belief (I’ve argued with editors about this many a time) that if a profane word is really essential to a story, you ought to just spell it out. Otherwise, just delete it altogether. Find other quotes to flesh out copy.

That wouldn’t work in this case, because there’d be no story to report IF NOT for the profanity. The idea that Trump thinks in derogatory ways toward nations that aren’t of a white racial mix is so in character with our president.

I WOULDN’T BE surprised to learn that Trump backers are totally supportive of their political idol for further reiterating he has the same crude way of viewing the outside world as they do.

Which is why the rest of our society is thinking these days what a rube Trump is. The man who thinks his garish casinos, hotels and other overbuilt structures around the world somehow equate with class and sophistication.

The lede story in D.C.

The Daily News, with its cartoonish pile of poo emoji on its front page, may wind up becoming the “collectible” image from this particular moment. Although perhaps it should be noted that the Washington Times and New York Post – a pair of newspapers that pride themselves on providing a conservative spin to the world’s happenings rather than straight reporting – managed to ignore this issue for their own front pages.

Down in the corner in Gary, Ind.

I’m sure they’re spouting high-minded rhetoric about not peddling trash by reporting news based on profanity. Although I’m sure they’d eagerly report the story if it reflected their news biases.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of Trump’s trash talk – the one that has inspired Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to name a couple, to respond critically?

Like I’ve already written, he’s made so many hostile comments about foreign lands that my original suspicion was to think this was another Mexico rant. I’m sure he’ll find an excuse to add our neighbor nation to the south to his list – which does include El Salvador and Haiti along with parts of the African continent.

It reiterated his belief that is shared by many of his ideological allies that certain types of people have no business thinking they have a place in our country. A part of me wonders if Emanuel has a point when he compared Trump’s talk to the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler during Germany’s Nazi era when it came to Jewish people.

Because Trump talk certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the “American Way” of viewing life.

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With TPP, Trump pleasing some; mostly those who were already satisfied

TRUMP: First Asia, next Mexico?

I have heard from countless labor union locals who, in recent months, have been pushing a campaign to urge local governments across the nation to pass resolutions condemning the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

That is a trade agreement between the nations of North America and Asia, and its pursuit was something strongly desired by now-former President Barack Obama.

SO NATURALLY, THE knee-jerk reaction of President Donald J. Trump is to want to do away with it.

And considering that this was a deal that had not yet been ratified by Congress (which was the point of all those local resolutions – to urge Congress not to support this), it was an easy move for Trump to be negative on.

Unlike the Affordable Care Act which will take significant legal steps in order to back away from because it was approved by Congress and signed into law by a president, this merely took a presidential signature on a document. Which is action he took on Monday.

Now it seems the Trans-Pacific Partnership does not include the United States, which is a major step toward causing it to wither away into irrelevance. It will become the historic similarity to the old League of Nations, which U.S. officials pushed for in the days following the end of the first World War to try to maintain peace, but then never formally joined because of the dominance of the isolationists who prevailed in this country.

NO ONE REALLY knows what will happen in coming years with regards to trade between North American and Asian nations. The agreement was meant to erase many of the issues that complicate business dealings – which often come from people who want their parochial concerns placed above all else.

OBAMA: All his accomplishments must go!

Which includes many of the labor unions that fear these trade deals are meant to further encourage the transition of physical labor jobs to countries where physical labor works cheap.

I get that labor unions are out to preserve existing jobs for their members. But I’ll have to admit to having always thought of the general concept of the TPP as being a sound one – we ought to be working together for our mutual benefits.

Now, it seems that Trump has followed through on his “Make America Great Again” pledge as being the equivalent of turning back time – literally trying to revert back to a sense of isolationism that will wind up dragging our nation into the gutter of the world’s society.

WHILE ALSO UNDERMINING our nation’s ability to assert its authority over the world. Asserting oneself also means making some sacrifices for the benefit of the global economy.

Will Bill Clinton get full NAFTA blame?

I’m sure the labor unions that were fighting the TPP are now pleased with Trump,

Of course, now they’ll move forward to a similar cause – the North American Free Trade Agreement that says Canada, Mexico and the United States work together as one entity on trade policy.

NAFTA has long been an opposition cause of the same labor officials, who resent that former President Bill Clinton approved it into law (stealing the idea from previous President George H.W. Bush who was unable to get it approved during his presidency). Which means revoking it will entail complicated talks almost as detailed as the mess it will take to erase the Obama healthcare reform initiatives that the people want – BUT the ideologues do not.

SO NATURALLY, TRUMP has already begun his efforts there – although there’s no saying how long it will take before anything can be accomplished. For what it’s worth, NAFTA revocation under Trump is likely to focus on the same xenophobic sentiments that Trump-backers express whenever Mexico is the subject of conversation, and Bloomberg News reported that Canada officials are largely focusing their efforts at trying to stay out of the crossfire likely to occur.

Will George Bush share NAFTA blame?

Dump NAFTA and “Build that Wall!!!” are likely to be the simple-minded slogans tossed about by Trump-ites with regards to U.S./Mexico foreign policy. One who tries thinking logically about this might wonder if it winds up hurting Trump with the growing Latino population that might take this cheap rhetoric as evidence they’re being singled out for Trump abuse.

Which, my guess, is something he doesn’t care about. Consider the Washington Post reported that Trump said some 3-5 million people who shouldn’t have been able to vote in last year’s elections did so against him. Meaning in his “alternate facts” mentality, he really won the popular vote.

Meaning he probably thinks becoming “President Xenophobe” will gain him politically. And yes, I strongly suspect that Trump himself would have to have the meaning of that label explained to him by one of his aides who, in his mind, spent too much time with “book-learnin’” and not enough using his methods of chasing girls.

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Will people who once would have deplored U.S./Russia tie now be Trump's biggest partisan backers?

It seems that President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked a corporate executive-type person to be secretary of state, and now we’re hearing the allegations that this person is a Russian sympathizer, of sorts.
 

Who's who in this relationship?

Which also combines with the weekend news reports that say the Russian government, in what seems to be its own warped idea of a prank meant to display the inferiority of the Democratic way of life, managed to cause enough havoc with computer hacking to alter the Election Day results of a month ago.

WE’RE NOT SURE just how, or to what degree. But the implication being that some will now believe that Russian premier Vladimir Putin had more of a say in Trump being able to defeat Hillary Clinton than did the will of the voters.

If this were the old days, I’m sure we’d be hearing all kinds of hostile rhetoric and threats calling for the impeachment of Trump before he could even be formally confirmed by the Electoral College and Congress as U.S. president.

We might even hear talk of “commies” and all the other Cold War-era trash talk. Except that technically, Russia isn’t Communist any longer.

Heck, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hasn’t existed in decades. There are young people who cast their first ballots in this year’s election cycle who would have no first-hand concept of what the Soviet Union was.

AND AS FOR some older people, they are inclined to think there is no real difference.

Particularly since Russian head Putin does date his own government service back to the USSR (which wasn’t just the subject of a Beatles song that itself was a takeoff on all-American Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.”).

If Trump/Putin are Robin/Batman, was Clinton some sort of Catwoman turned good?,

For Putin was a one-time head of the KGB and an intelligence official within the new Russian Federation.

My point being that it astounds me that the ideologues of our society who once would have been scared out of their wits out of the very mention of Russian influence within our government are now going to be the ones who will speak out the loudest in Trump’s defense.

 

CONWAY: Does she believe anything she says?

AFTER ALL, HE’S the guy with the “Make America Great Again” vision that mostly consists of ignoring anything that white people don’t particularly feel like addressing.

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway officially denounces the talk of Russian influence over the elections as “laughable and ridiculous.” Because I’m sure the last thing that she’d want to admit is that Trump is more than capable of falling for the nefarious pranks of a potentially-hostile nation.

As for the new secretary of state, he’s the former head of Exxon-Mobil. Rex Tillerson has been CEO since 2006, and Trump says he likes the idea that he has negotiated deals for that company with foreign governments – including Russia.

Of course, he’s been used to negotiating deals that could focus on a certain bottom line that would benefit the stockholders of his own company – and certainly didn’t have to take into account the concerns of the United States of America as a whole.

ALTHOUGH IT SHOULDN’T be a surprise. If you think about it, Trump is a corporate-minded person who is inclined to think government gets in the way of his own business dealings. Why shouldn’t he be expected to pick a batch of corporate-minded people.

That’s what the people who managed to give Trump a majority of the Electoral College vote should have realized they were creating for this country’s leadership when they marked their ballots for Trump accordingly. They voted for “Robin” to Putin’s “Batman.”

 

CLINTON: Did Russia "fear" her?

I’m sure the ideologues, now that it suits their partisan interests, will claim that the past is the past and that we’re all friendly with Russia, even though British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Saturday to the BBC that Putin’s interests are in propping up his own nation and that the U.S. shouldn’t be so eager to treat it as an equal partner.

Then again, a Trump presidency was eager to aggravate China by talking openly with Taiwan just a few weeks ago and now says he doesn’t feel bound by the “One China” policy the U.S. has held for years – making me wonder if that was merely because the Chinese government didn’t offer similar assistance in his desire to beat Clinton. And whom we should now think of as the “real American” whose presence the Russians would have feared!

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Pure political posturing, is all that Trump visit to Mexico ever was

Fact: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has targeted Mexicans in the United States as a way of gaining the votes of nativists come Election Day, was in Mexico City on Wednesday and appeared with President Enrique Peña Nieto.

TRUMP: Talking tough, or trash, with Mexico

Fact: There are no other facts. Or at least none that matter.

BECAUSE THE WHOLE point of the event was for everybody involved to be able to tell stories about how tough they were in the presence of the enemigo.

What really happened? Who knows!

In reality, probably nothing of substance happened. The meeting was purely about creating a situation that would allow everybody involved to tell stories meant to make themselves look great.

Which means the relations between the United States and Mexico aren’t likely to be impacted in any significant way by this meeting. It might as well have not happened.

THERE ARE THOSE who want to believe that Trump went to Mexico to try to temper the hostile rhetoric he has spewed throughout the campaign season – from the fact he kicked off his campaign by making denigrating comments about Mexicans in this country to his constant stupid talk about wanting to erect a barricade along the U.S./Mexico border.

It is very clear that the Mexican-American segment of the electorate is all riled up to vote against Trump, and will also include those of other Latin American ethnicities in solidarity against The Donald.

Peña Nieto was more than willing to have a meeting with Trump so he could say later how he told him off and stood up for his people – even those expatriates now living in the United States because the opportunities for a worthy life in the home country were just too lacking.

PENA NIETO: Smacking down, or wimping out to, Trump

While Trump wants to be able to say how he faced off with the Mexican president and told him in no uncertain terms how Mexico WILL BE PAYING to build that Trump-desired wall and how he had better learn to like the idea.

WHAT AMUSED ME about this event in Mexico City was that there really wasn’t an effort for the two men to talk. The language barrier was in place.

The press conference format was in Spanish, and Trump didn’t make any effort to speak en Español. They were talking past each other. They could just as easily have been talking about Mexican League baseball batting averages or the measurements of the latest Miss Mexico in the Miss Universe competition, and it would have had the same significance as any talk about the issues.

I found it interesting that Peña Nieto made a point of saying Trump never brought up talk of “the wall” during their time they were face-to-face. While Trump insists he did.

Of course, he waited until after he was back across the border and in Phoenix – speaking English again and talking to a gathering of electoral fanatics who will want to believe anything Trump chooses to tell them.

BECAUSE THERE WERE those people who complained how Trump didn’t bring along any of the reporter-types who have been traveling about the country to cover his campaign. Likely, Trump didn’t want any outside observers trying to interject fact into the tale he wanted to tell.

Which was of a weak, meaningless nation being put in its place by none other than Donald Trump himself.

While Peña Nieto wants it known that Trump is nothing more than a loudmouthed Yanqui, an out-and-out blowhard and un gringo pendejo.

Which makes it seem that the sad truth of this confrontation is that U.S./Mexico relations are probably about as low a priority for Trump if he were to become our nation’s president, no matter how much nonsense rhetoric he spews about the issue in coming weeks.

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