The first Trump presidency showed there are always two parts to Trump’s political persona — the lazy, incompetent, malicious man who actually governs, and the brilliant performer who distracts from his inept government with a ceaseless provision of spectacle, usually via outrageous statements and smears. The media, and many of Trump’s progressive critics, appear unwilling to focus on the former and treat the latter as the political tactic it is.
The inept Trump has been on display over the past week with a tariff announcement that precipitated a stock market meltdown, only for Trump to hastily reverse himself after claiming “wins” over Canada and Mexico — with neither country offering more than token concessions. It seems Justin Trudeau and Claudia Sheinbaum have worked out how to play Trump: offer his ego something he can portray as a “win”, then get on with business as usual. One wonders what an altogether more ruthless and canny operator like Xi Jinping will extract from Trump, given he seems happy to punch on in a tariff war — including by targeting Google.
The spectacle was on offer yesterday, during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — one of the few world leaders as corrupt as Trump himself — during which the US president repeated, and expanded on, previous comments that he’d like to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and redevelop it, this time suggesting the US would occupy the territory itself.
This continues Trump’s recent vein of engaging in speculative empire-building: Greenland, Canada, Panama and now Gaza, all to provide lebensraum for US capital — particularly capital affiliated with Trump and his coterie. The isolationist Trump who once (falsely) boasted he’d opposed the Iraq invasion is long gone, at least in rhetoric.
But as often happens with such statements by Trump, they were quickly undercut by his own people walking them back: suddenly, just hours later, his administration insisted Trump never said he wanted to permanently relocate Palestinians, nor that he would send US troops in as a colonial occupation force.
Nonetheless, his proposal triggered global outrage (having made a somewhat smaller splash when he first uttered such sentiments a week ago), which was precisely the point, or prompted more of that “Trump’s playing 4D chess” guff. (Peter Dutton: “He’s a big thinker and a deal maker.”)
Here, Nine papers engaged in performative outrage that the leader of the free world would demand ethnic cleansing — ironic given they have reliably backed Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and demonised critics of Israel (The Australian demanded that Trump’s idea “not be dismissed out of hand”).
As always, the focus should be on what Trump has done, not on his words carefully intended to excite reaction.
He has hosted an accused war criminal in the White House, once more demonstrating US contempt for international law, and signalled full support for a leader who perpetrated a genocide and has undertaken ethnic cleansing. He has legitimised many on the far right of Israeli politics who have also demanded ethnic cleansing and the nuclear bombing of Palestinians and the colonisation of Palestinian land by Israel. He has backed the side of Israeli politics committed to a state of permanent colonial oppression of Palestinians, and thus permanent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas and other extremist groups among Palestinians must be delighted; Trump has ensured their business model will continue for years to come.
Perhaps the media will never stop playing Trump’s game on Trump’s terms — manufacturing outrage over yet another wild statement, offering froth-mouthed commentary on his latest insult or crazed example of “out-of-the-box thinking”, letting him set the agenda for what they report, rather than doing the harder job of examining what he and his administration are doing and analysing its impacts on the real world.
They’ve been doing it since 2015, only now they do it fully aware of why they shouldn’t be. But they’re just too addicted to the Trump political tactics to stop enabling him.
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