IF you watched TV news over the past week, you’ll have seen and heard President Trump lose his rag with Israel and Iran. Or at least President Trump pretending to lose his rag. ““We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f**k they’re doing”. This was in the wake of both countries breaking the ceasefire he had encouraged.
This outburst got a lot of media attention and appeared to castigate both sides (Trump almost always is to be found on Israel’s side). People liked this fit of exasperation and suggested he had his finger on the pulse of public opinion.
Anyone believing that Trump is an exasperated peace broker should check his actions. Trump, like his predecessor Joe Biden, is very firmly in the Israel corner, funding them with rockets and drones and any other death-dealing armaments the Israeli government may have ordered up. But is the US President complicit in the execution of a war crime? (Yes, he is.) Or might he walk away if they didn’t make up and get on with the business? (No, he won’t.)
Was it a spontaneous potty-mouthed outburst or a carefully planned attention-getter? You can bet your life it was the latter.
We Irish above all peoples should spot the impression Trump wants to convey: that he is a patient, hard-working politician doing all he can to keep the peace between two sets of crazies. Wasn’t that exactly the impression Britain struggled might and main 24/7 to impose on the British and Irish public? Supported by the media on both sides of the Irish Sea and both sides of the Irish border, successive governments were successful in peddling the Big Lie. D. Trump is currently doing his damnedest to follow suit.
And it’s not just Trump. Keir Starmer is busy trumpeting his involvement, explaining he has had conversations on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, discussing the ‘war’. All this is his effort to sell the line that maybe, dontchaknow, he’s finding ways to bring peace to the area, while in fact he is talking to a war criminal who is only half-listening. And so Truth struggles desperately to put on its boots, while the Big Lie is helped by Western leaders to traverse the world.
Within the US, Trump is repeatedly making a mockery of freedom of speech. We’ve got information that this guy was involved in demonstrations at Columbia university? OK, time to show him and Columbia who’s boss. Get some masked men in plain clothes to put a hood over his head and bundle him off to a hell-hole prison in South America. He may claim that he’s entitled to a judicial ruling on such actions, but don’t hold your breath because it’s not coming. And if you’re from Venezuela and you’re caught in a peaceful demonstration, you might find yourself deported under a 1798 Alien Enemies Act which Trump is a fan of and which federal judges have tried and failed to block as unlawful. And if you’re a senator and you ask the wrong kind of question at a press conference, you better be ready for people to jump you and put you in handcuffs – and being a senator won’t save you, buddy.
The danger involved in these incidents goes beyond the injustice done to the individual. It’s impressing on the American public in general that the President simply can’t be giving time and attention to all these claims that he’s breaking the law.
He's a busy man and simply doesn’t have time for all these niceties and legalities that might restrain him.
It’s a frightening thought. Trump respects the American constitution the way a Twelfth marcher respects the wall (preferably attached to a Catholic church) against which he’s relieving himself.
