Australian reporter takes apart Donald Trump's G20 performance in scathing monologue

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An Australian reporter has delivered a scathing analysis of Donald Trump’s performance at the G20 summit.

Chris Uhlmann, political editor of the government-funded Australian Broadcast Corporation, argued the US President was “isolated and friendless” at the international summit and “has no desire and no capacity to lead the world”.

During the searing takedown, which was delivered on the ABC’s political program Insiders and rapidly went viral, he claimed his disastrous foreign policy had “pressed fast-forward on the decline of the United States”.

Speaking on Sunday from the G20 conference in Hamburg, Mr Uhlmann said President Trump was “the biggest threat to the values of the West”.

“He was an uneasy, lonely, awkward figure at this gathering and you got the strong sense that some of the leaders are trying to find the best way to work around him,” the journalist said in the two-minute clip.

“Where was the G20 statement condemning North Korea which would have put pressure on China and Russia? Other leaders expected it, they were prepared to back it, but it never came.”

Mr Uhlmann said Mr Trump was fixated with “burnishing his celebrity” and had “diminished” his own nation to the benefit of Russia and China.

"We learned that Donald Trump has pressed fast-forward on the decline of the United States as a global leader. He managed to isolate his nation, to confuse and alienate his allies and to diminish America," he said.

“It’s the unscripted Trump that’s real: a man who barks out bile in 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as President at war with the West’s institutions like the judiciary, independent government agencies, and the free press.”

The reporter added: “Mr Trump is a man who craves power because it burnishes his celebrity. To be constantly talking and talked about is all that really matters ... and there is no value placed on the meaning of words, so what is said one day can be discarded the next.”

Before joining ABC in 1998, Mr Uhlmann was a seminarian, security guard, and a journalist with The Canberra Times.