Putin and Xi talk 'hot mic' immortality amid Trump's 'demise' and an emerging new world order

While Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping walked side by side on their way to view the most ostentatious military parade in modern memory, a hot mic caught their mind-blowing conversation about immortality.

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Putin talked about organ transplants, while Xi spoke about people living to 150 this century. It sounds like those two despots aren’t going anywhere soon.

When you are ruthless, narcissistic dictators, fantasizing about living to 150 feels natural. Why worry about history’s judgment when your goal is outliving history itself? Why fear accountability when you imagine your reign stretching across generations?

If they live to 150, presumably with brand-new organs harvested from teenagers, both men, who are now 72, will be ruling for another 68 years. Because ruthless and narcissistic dictators don’t give up power on their own fruition.

As Putin and Xi mused about eternal life, Americans were asking a different question. Was Donald Trump even alive? His wobbly steps, swollen ankles, bruised hand, and incoherent spoken thoughts suggest not strength but imminent collapse. Throughout Labor Day weekend, social media and online forums buzzed about whether Trump was dead or alive.

While Xi and Putin imagine cheating death, America’s Dear Leader struggles to cheat time. He doesn’t look like he’ll see 150. He doesn’t look like he’ll see the end of his term.

The contrast was brutal as Xi hosted the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit that featured over 20 leaders of non-Western countries. Xi also projected terrifying might with tanks and missiles aligned in mechanized precision, ostensibly to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II; however, there was no denying the overt message of Xi flexing Chinese strength.

Putin was there strutting like a man reborn on the world stage, reveling in his renewed relevance, thanks to his laughable — to him and the world —- summit with Trump in Alaska last month. By appearing with Trump, Putin gained legitimacy despite being iced out by the world because of his inhuman invasion of Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was there too. He was gleeful to be included, smiling like the kid who finally made the varsity team. Also there was India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who held hands with the ruthless Putin, sending a message to Trump that basically said, “Screw you! He’s my friend, not yours.”

I would like to have been a fly on the wall as they spoke to each other, no doubt each taking their turn lambasting Donald Trump. But to Trump, they were doing something else.

Trump sounded like a paranoid child (What else is new?) on social media, hissing that Putin and Xi were “conspiring against the United States of America.” As though that weren’t already obvious. As though he hadn’t practically invited them to do so.

Trump’s military parade in June was a global joke. It looked like Trump was remote-controlling Tonka trucks on a big-city street. That is not an insult to our military, which remains unmatched. The military is being used as a political prop by Trump. It is still the best among the best, despite how much Trump is trying to degrade it.

The parade was a commentary on and example of Trump’s breathtaking impotence. He cannot match the power his rivals choreograph. He cannot match their imagery. He cannot even match their stamina. And, I’m sure he’d be the last person they want to hold hands with.

In less than a year, Trump has taken the United States from atop the world order and turned it into a pariah. Our country is loathed and disrespected as never before, as Trump himself might say. All the while, China’s image is improving.

Xi, Putin, Kim, and Modi are ganging up against him. They see what is obvious and what we see too, that Trump is woefully ineffective, dangerously inept, and endlessly self-absorbed.

He is a man out of his depth, pretending to swim among sharks, only the sharks that are Putin, Xi, Modi, and Kim are swimming around him, and that should make every American extremely uncomfortable.

You can almost picture Putin regaling Xi with stories about Trump’s obtuseness when they met in Alaska. How Trump crows about deserving the Nobel Peace Prize for “ending” the war in Ukraine, while doing nothing as Russia hammers away at a beleaguered nation.

You can imagine Modi chiming in, smirking as he recounts Trump’s false claim to have ended decades-long tensions between Pakistan and India, and how Trump tried to coax him into a Nobel nomination for accomplishing absolutely nothing.

For these men, Trump is not a rival. He is a punch line to a poor joke.

The old joke went that European leaders laughed at Trump behind his back. They are our allies, so at the end of the day their jocularity is harmless. But this is darker. Now the world’s most ruthless dictators are laughing at him, and laughing together.

Because it’s not enough that Trump is dismantling American democracy at home. He has also destroyed American leadership abroad. And into that vacuum march the tyrants, ready to usurp America’s role.

As the pictures and meetings coming out of Beijing proved, our adversaries are emboldened not by their own genius, but by Trump’s stupidity. They smell weakness. They sense decline. And they know that when push comes to shove, Trump cannot push back. This is not a slap at America’s fortitude,.It’s a call-out of Trump’s ineptitude.

So what happens when these four ruthless men start pressing the buttons of a president so unstable, so thin-skinned, so incapable of strategy? Will Trump retaliate with his usual tantrums? Will he lash out in ways that endanger the world? Are these four goading Trump into a fight?

The terrifying truth is that Trump fails at everything he touches. Real estate. Business. Diplomacy. Alliances. Peace. Parades. Steaks. Universities. He fails, and he fails continually. The dictators know this. They’re counting on it. And that puts the United States at a profound disadvantage.

Perhaps the hot mic moment between Putin and Xi talking about living forever was intentional. It wasn’t really a “hot mic” moment. Perhaps it was deliberate. A signal. A reminder that while Trump staggers and deteriorates, they are plotting, scheming, and yes, "conspiring," imagining a world where America has been sidelined.

A world where their regimes last forever and ours crumbles in real time.

This is the new world order that we are looking at, and we must start to face the reality that dictators are dreaming of immortality, America wondering if its leader is even conscious. Once we were the anchor of stability, the defender of freedom, the voice of strength. Even with an ailing Joe Biden was by far better than the mystery behind Trump’s regression.

If all Putin, Xi, Modi, and Kim did together in Beijing was merely “conspire,” that would be a blessing. The real nightmare is that they were planning much more, while America’s president teetered about in irrelevance. The dictators dream of eternity. Trump looks like he’s already halfway gone.

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