Eddie Baza Calvo, governor of Guam, spoke to President Trump Friday about North Korea's threat to launch a nuclear missile at the island by the middle of August. Calvo had the president on speaker phone, and posted a video of the exchange to his Facebook page.
Trump assured Calvo that "We are behind you 1,000 percent."
He continued, "We're going to do a great job for you. Don't worry about a thing. They should have had me eight years ago, somebody with my thought process, because that was the time. And frankly, you could have said that for the last three presidents."
To that point, the president's comments were appropriate coming from someone in his position - but with a typical addition of Trump braggadocio. Then things got a little weird as the president said:
"I have to say, Eddie, you’re going to become extremely famous. All over the world they’re talking about Guam and they’re talking about you.
“And your tourism, I can say this, your tourism is going to go up like tenfold with the expenditure of no money, so I congratulate you. It looks beautiful, you know I’m watching…it’s such a big story in the news. It just looks like a beautiful place. So beautiful."
Calvo concurred, giving Trump a tourism pitch and describing it as "paradise." (Our own Matt Vespa agrees - he interviewed the governor in his office in June.)
After the tourism discussion, the two talked more about North Korea and how to deal with someone like Kim Jong Un and about partisan rancor and obstructionism in Washington, D.C.
We all know Trump has an odd way with words, but for him, at this crucial moment, to even think about tourism and how famous the governor might become due to his island being targeted for nuclear destruction by a narcissistic man-child dictator is...odd. For him to voice them in a call to the governor shows a lack of impulse control and feeds his critics.