(CNN) Not long after his city was hit by a horrific terrorist attack, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, announced that "Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. No reason to be alarmed — one of the things the police and all of us need to do is make sure we're as safe as we possibly can be."
Within hours, the President of the United States was trashing the mayor on Twitter.
When his Tweet caused widespread outrage across Great Britain and beyond, Donald Trump had every opportunity to backtrack, thereby defusing a completely needless confrontation with America's closest ally. Instead, as might only be expected on the sad record of the last months, President Trump decided to double down. "Pathetic excuse" by the mayor, he tweeted today.
This latest storm in a teacup shows just how dangerous Donald Trump's utter disregard for the most basic norms of democracy (not to mention international diplomacy) is. For his reaction to the terror attack in London is a deeply disturbing augury of how he might react if a real crisis erupted back here in the United States.
And yet, as I've been trying to digest the President's consistently unpresidential behavior, I've become obsessed with three crucial questions.
Would Donald Trump tell the truth about a terrorist attack on American soil?
Will Americans believe what Donald Trump tells them in an emergency?
Will Donald Trump refrain from using an emergency for partisan purposes?
