From Iran, he got a contemptuous rejection of his extraordinary offer to enrich uranium for it.
History is replete with examples of strategic miscalculations in which an over-reach - usually born of contemptuous disdain for a foe - led to disaster for the aggressor.
And they adopt a posture of contemptuous moral superiority over those who disagree.
"The TFG is a joke, " he said, wearily contemptuous of what he saw as the clan interests that masquerade as a national government.
In the latter regard, it is hard to imagine a more blatant and contemptuous dismissal of U.S. concerns about Russian involvement in the transfer of missile technology (in direct contravention of the Missile Technology Control Regime and bilateral agreements with the United States) than the reported involvement of former Soviet air transport assets to deliver North Korean Scud-C missiles to Syria.
When using complaint as a tool to keep the social conversation going and foster a fond, if sometimes contemptuous, loyalty to the organisation, nobody, from the lowliest employees upwards, expects anything to come of it.
His mien is that of the contemptuous guerrilla fighter, mixed with that of a truculent teenager.
Filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter depicted Rolland as a self-important popinjay, contemptuous of any palate other than his own.
He responded by drawing his finger across his throat in a gesture that seemed dismissive and contemptuous rather than threatening before more mundanely asking the judge for bathroom break.
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"I know a lot of tutors who are almost contemptuous of the families, " he added.
But at the end of the 20th century let alone from a senior American official such contemptuous indifference to the 200-year old struggle for freedom and democracy is utterly inappropriate.
For a museum of design, MAD seems oddly contemptuous of the design elements that went into these commercial products.
Still, his highhandedness when it comes to the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to play a real role in treaty-making seems particularly contemptuous, and contemptible.
Then again, its most clamorous supporters are also contemptuous of the Second Amendment, and they are explicitly hoping for a fifth Justice to overturn the Supreme Court's landmark gun-rights rulings.
This is a lousy time to have a president in the White House who is, apparently, contemptuous of Winston Churchill.
This includes a priceless one on whether journalists, who are usually "contemptuous of bourgeois morality", should "fool around in the office".
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The ruling mullahs' contemptuous handling of Iran's presidential election was their response to "the Cairo effect" announced a tad prematurely by the White House.
But to come up with a few declarations or protocols and ask the Irish to vote again would not just be contemptuous of democracy: the turnout and margin of defeat also suggest that it might fail.
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