Opinion in the US on the Gaza war is perfectly clear. For the far-Right, the Hamas attack on Israel is a tragedy, but it’s not our tragedy, so why sweat it? The far-Left thinks it’s a tragedy, but a bigger tragedy for the Palestinians. The middle, including both the Democratic and Republican establishment, is putting it among the great tragedies in Israel’s history and is all in for avenging it. And then there is Donald Trump.
On the most emotional issue of the day, an issue which imperils world stability, and which defines, perhaps like no other, political sense and character, Trump is out there on his own — and, as always, happily so.
His cranky position first and foremost involves a grudge he’s held against Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu for several years. Bibi was early out of the gate to congratulate Joe Biden on his 2020 victory — that is, he accepted Donald Trump’s loss. Can you believe it? In the world of quid pro quo, and the great favour bank, Trump believed himself to have over-delivered for Israel. Hence, Bibi was screwing him by not acknowledging the debt. No matter that Bibi is facing an existential crisis now, he’s still a chiseller —and Donald Trump doesn’t forget!
What’s more, if he were still president — and Bibi’s support might have helped him (pay no attention to the fact that it certainly would not have helped) — this would never have happened. This has become basically the Trump foreign policy doctrine: he has a special affinity for the world’s tough guys, and they understand him, tough guy to tough guy. So, therefore, they don’t provoke him. Everybody understands the lines. The fact that he was not seriously tested while he was in office is proof that no one would ever be stupid enough to seriously test him.
Then, he hates losers. If everyone else is putting aside blame for Israel’s intelligence and military failures that allowed this invasion in the interests of dealing with the immediate crisis, he is not. John McCain was taken prisoner in Vietnam, making him, in Trump parlance, a screw-up not a hero (a blasphemy that no one ever thought Trump would get away with — and yet he did). A tough team owner — and Trump has had more experience in sports than world affairs — doesn’t excuse unforced errors. So? Israel choked. Disgraceful. What else would you call it? And he’s certainly able to acknowledge the other team’s strength. Hamas — which Trump pronounces like hummus — is “smart”. And Hezbollah — every syllable getting its due — is also “smart”. By implication, Israel is not.
And then, Jews don’t vote for him anyway. This too is a grudge he’s held. He did all this for Israel. Everything. He put his son-in-law — “the biggest Jew, a full kosher Jew, Bibi’s personal friend” — in charge of it all. And what did he get for it? Zero return on his investment. The Jews are even more against him. So why bother trying to be nice?
All this is so much outside of the boundaries of political behaviour, language and sentiment (hardly even a nod to the massacred), that it once again makes one wonder what Donald Trump knows that the rest of politically attuned and sensitive America does not.
Trump’s own regard for the world, beyond his specialised interests in it — a branding deal or golf course here and there — is virtually nil. When matters arose in the White House about non-Western European nations, there were often questions about whether he knew or had ever heard of the country or region at issue. He would not have been able to find Ukraine on the map — nor the other “shithole” countries he sometimes had to deal with. When generals and wonks came in with PowerPoint presentations he left the room.
Donald Trump, quite eschewing all other skills, talents and virtues, has a singular ability to find America’s unacknowledged currents
From his own lack of interest, he leapt to an obvious assumption — one that almost all politicians might agree with but for reasons of professionalism and pride otherwise resist — that most Americans have no interest in the world nor could they find their way around the map. But his disregard for foreign policy problems, his waving away of the threat of bad men, was arguably just what so many Americans wanted to hear: don’t worry about it!
There is too a media point which is never far from Trumpian rhetoric. The point is being heard — breaking through the clutter. In this, Trump’s astounding, often insulting, frequently moronic, blather has only ever been positively reinforced. He knows that shooting from the hip, saying exactly what comes into his mind, employing no filter, and to just keep talking until he finds the most unexpected and frequently most objectionable formulation, is to get the headline. And to do it often enough is to replace yesterday’s headline with today’s, turning it all somehow into fearlessness and shtick, beyond accountability.
And then, he has never found an issue, a controversy, a complicated and complex problem, that he could not make directly about him. The real issue is neither the tragedy of the attack nor the intractable nature of the conflict, but how he figures into it. This is boorish and we all personally know execrable people who constantly do just this. But, somehow, on a public level, it has the effect of reducing the abstract and imponderable to a human level — personalising it. A confusing narrative is now a simple one: if they had only listened to me. And Bibi disrespected him. And it is sports — everything is — and Donald Trump, the commentator, will say it: the Israelis were over-confident and gave away the win. He’ll say it, even if no one else will.
And then there is the further, extraordinary point, that Donald Trump, quite eschewing all other skills, talents and virtues, has a singular ability to find America’s unacknowledged currents. He may be the only politician in the nation with this ability. In essence, he is saying to that part of the country that he seems to understand as well as anyone ever has: how much do you really care about Israel? Really?
This challenges all other politicians for their decades of making Israel such a dominant and unquestioned topic in American politics. At the same time, it also belittles the passionate Right and Left views in opposition to Israel. What he is really saying is that if I were president, I’d be the topic and the controversy. Nobody would even bother with anything else.
That is the show that Trump continues to offer — and the lines are yet around the block.
