This week, we learned that Donald Trump’s screen addiction can no longer be viewed as a simply an eccentric hobby. Trump’s fixation with screens, on TV, on the iPad, on his smartphone, helped alter the course of international diplomacy this week — most certainly in Canada-U.S. relations, but perhaps in North Korea as well. It was seeing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a television screen that set Trump off on a tirade against Canada and trade last weekend. As Trump himself reported, he left last week’s G7 meeting in Quebec feeling pretty good about how things had gone. Then he hopped aboard the technologically well-appointed presidential jet. “I think that Justin probably didn’t know that Air Force One has about 20 televisions,” Trump told reporters. “And I see the television, and he’s giving a news conference about how he will not be pushed around by the United States.” Trump was talking at a press conference after his historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which also included some screen time. The U.S. president walked into that meeting armed with a bizarre, movie-trailer-like film, all about the glorious days that could come for the world if North Korea was better behaved. When reporters asked what was with this strange video, Trump explained: “We had it made up. I showed it to them today. Actually during the meeting. Toward the end of the meeting. I think he (Kim) loved it.” Well, who wouldn’t have loved it? For a screen addict like Trump, this might well have been a moment of sincere, absolute connection — two world leaders, staring at the same tiny screen. “We didn’t have a big screen like you (reporters) have the luxury. We had it on cassette. An iPad,” Trump said. Trump has made no secret of his screen addiction since assuming the presidency. In an Oval Office tour he gave to Time magazine reporters in early 2017, he showed off a huge, ...
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