* "People who know the U.S. are shocked it’s going on so long…. I'm beginning to worry." Michal Baranowski, of the German Marshall Fund.
* "It’s been a source of puzzlement and bewilderment. It’s on the level of, what on earth is happening? It’s definitely a more challenging place to explain." Barry Eidlin, a sociologist at McGill University in Montreal.
* "People have big expectations of the U.S. as a good, functional democracy. Therefore, it is astonishing that we experience this kind of mistrust from a president when the U.S. is the leading country in the world regarding democracy." Kari Henriksen, a Norwegian election observer sent from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
* "The great lesson that U.S. allies have drawn from the past four years is that the American ideals of democratic freedom and openness rest on a fragile basis. American political institutions have proven more delicate than most international observers thought. As a result, we are always one election away from U.S. commitments coming undone."
Krzysztof Pelc, Canadian political science professor.
Are you proud, Trumpeteers? This is what you have helped make of America's standing in the world. America First? Rather, America Disgraced, America Humiliated, America the Rogue. Seventy years of a respected democratic template and an institutional world order that stabilized the post-fascist era trashed in a mere four by a narcisistic buffoon who cares not one whit about allies, this country, or you.
I just hope the globe's other inhabitants come to see that you buffoons are but a minority among us, and you're becoming more of a minority with each "passing" day.