"One other lie that struck me, although it may not matter much to voters, was Trump’s insistence that the world admires what he’s doing: “America is respected again, perhaps like never before.”

Trump’s desire for external validation is, frankly, pathetic. And the truth is that we are despised like never before. You can see this in surveys:

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Source: Pew

And foreign leaders have completely lost faith in America: We’ve become a country whose word can’t be trusted, a country that betrays its allies:

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Source: Kiel Institute

It’s true that in some ways the world fears us in a way it didn’t before — in the same way that one steps carefully around a belligerent drunk in a bar. But we haven’t been this weak on the world stage since before World War II.

Anyway, that speech won’t pull Trump out of his downward spiral. Time to attack Iran?" —Nobel laureate Paul Krugman