The Washington Post editorial board met with Donald Trump on Monday for what would turn out to be a very timely interview, particularly in light of the Brussels attacks. Some of the interview dealt with foreign policy, and it shows to anyone with a modicum of awareness of our dangerous world how disastrous a Trump presidency would be.

He was asked about China’s incursion into the South China Sea:

HIATT: So what do you think China’s aims are in the South China Sea?

TRUMP: Well I know China very well, because I deal with China all the time. I’ve done very well. China’s unbelievably ambitious. China is, uh… I mean, when I deal with China, you know, I have the Bank of America building, I’ve done some great deals with China. I do deals with them all the time on, you know, selling apartments, and, you know, people say ‘oh that’s not the same thing.’ The level of… uh, the largest bank in the world, 400 million customers, is a tenant of mine in New York, in Manhattan. The biggest bank in China. The biggest bank in the world.

China has got unbelievable ambitions. China feels very invincible. We have rebuilt China. They have drained so much money out of our country that they’ve rebuilt China. Without us, you wouldn’t see the airports and the roadways and the bridges; I mean, the George Washington Bridge is like, that’s like a trinket compared to the bridges that they’ve built in China. We don’t build anymore, and it, you know, we had our day. But China, if you look at what’s going on in China, you know, they go down to seven percent or eight percent and it’s like a national catastrophe. Our GDP is right now zero. Essentially zero.

I am reminded of this quote from 1964’s Dr. Strangelove: 

I’ll tell you what China has been doing in the South China Sea, and it has nothing to do with the Bank of America. China has been building islands on reefs, where they already have constructed port facilities, military buildings, and an air strip, with other airstrips in the works. It’s such a threat that the Pentagon has just authorized the military to deploy conventional weapons in the Phillippines for the first time in decades. But Trump is clueless about this incursion by China that has been ongoing for some months.

Near the end of the interview Trump was asked about how he would plan to knock out ISIS.

RYAN: You [MUFFLED] mentioned a few minutes earlier here that you would knock ISIS. You’ve mentioned it many times. You’ve also mentioned the risk of putting American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS?

TRUMP: I don’t want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me. That’s putting [MUFFLED]…

RYAN: This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?

[CROSSTALK]

TRUMP: I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?

So he stated that he doesn’t want to use battlefield nukes, then he launched right into how he’s a “counterpuncher,” how he punched Rubio and Jeb Bush . . . and, wow! your journalists are good-looking people, and SQUIRREL!

Then Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski rescued the in-over-his-head Trump and closed the interview, saving his boss from further display of his foreign policy ignorance:

HIATT: Sure, then I’d like to let a couple of them get in questions.

LEWANDOWSKI: We have got five minutes, hard out.

HIATT: Okay.

TRUMP: Oh is it?

CORY: Yeah. You have a meeting you have to get to.

TRUMP: Okay we do.

Remember, Trump was stumped when asked about the nuclear triad in a debate last year. . .

. . . and didn’t know the difference between the Kurds and the Quds Forces.

Trump’s answers to foreign policy and, well, any policies, make about as much sense as those of Chance the Gardener, the simpleton played by the late Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie Being There.

Being There was a comedy. The idea of Donald Trump being in charge of foreign policy as well as the mightiest military force on earth is no laughing matter. It’s deadly serious.