Pulitzer-winning presidential historian Jon Meacham says President Donald Trump, who on Wednesday lashed out at NATO allies during a summit in Brussels, exhibits the nation’s ugliest traits.
"Donald Trump is the most vivid manifestation of the least attractive characteristics in the national character. We haven’t been captured by Donald Trump. We have had our worst instincts affirmed, exacerbated, and put in front of the world," Meacham said Wednesday on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."
"I think to suggest that somehow or another he has hijacked the country, lets the rest of us off the hook because right now the kind of courage you’re talking about is required not simply of people who are in elective office, but all of us ...
"[Thomas] Jefferson said men should be participators in Congress not only in Congress or elections only but every day."
His remarks came as Trump combatively blasted the defense spending of NATO allies and had a testy exchange with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Trump has previously called NATO "obsolete."
Meacham said the United States is an "hour of crisis … The country has fully the capacity to do the wrong thing. The wondrous thing about then country is at least 51 percent of the time when we have actually let those better angels win.’’
In 2009, Meacham won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his book, "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House."
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