Sorry for the click-bait title, but hey, this is the age of new media and you've gotta work the system, right?
I loathe Trump, and pretty much anyone else who thinks dripping themselves in gold is a good look. However, I saw the recent meeting where he and Vance ambushed Zelenskyy, and my 'take' on what went down seems very different from most commentators on the left. I thought I'd share my opinion and take the brickbats as they come.
Trump is a performative president. What you see isn't a logical person behaving in a predictable manner. It's arguable that all people in power, to some degree or another, have to do this because politics can be like poker—you’ve gotta hide your cards. Trump takes this to the nth degree. His modus operandi was exposed to me in the book Hate Inc. by Matt Taibbi, which is an excellent read explaining in detail the dynamics of digital media.
Matt followed Trump around on the first campaign trail and describes how he and other journalists were dumbfounded by the things that came out of Trump's mouth. He goes on to explain how he came to realise that Trump was taking his cues from sports—particularly professional wrestling—and the way that really basic human emotion is leveraged to co-opt and polarise opinion.
Trump knows that in order to get things done, hate works. He knows that to get a crowd to unite behind a cause, you get more reaction from being Captain Hook than Peter Pan. When I saw Trump and Vance gang up on Zelenskyy, my hackles went up, and I thought back to Hate Inc..
Pro wrestling pivots on the relationship between two polar opposites: the bad guy or "heel," and the good guy or "face." The heel comes out jeering at the crowd, getting as big a rise out of them as possible. As the heel’s jeers rile up the crowd, their support for the face erupts like a volcano. In our meeting, Zelenskyy played the face while Trump and his tag partner Vance were the heels. By the end, the global hatred of Trump and Vance was visceral, but look at how advantageous that has since been for Zelenskyy and US interests.
Hours after the meeting ended, social media was filled with posts from European leaders pledging their united support for Ukraine. They waved their cheque books, vowing to increase their own defence spending and to extend more military assistance. Also, I think this is more than a knee-jerk reaction. My guess is that this will inform European policymaking for a generation. It’ll be a cold day in hell before we see the election of another politician like Merkel, who argued there was more peace to be gained by trading with Russia, buying their oil and resources. US interests are being served by the likely further severing of EU/Russian commerce. This is probably why we've heard so few words of protest from the Bush/Clinton/Obama/Biden axis.
While Trump obviously took a lot of flak, what does he care? He’s not running for re-election. So am I saying he's a good guy? No, of course not. What I am saying is that while Trump's primary driver is his own wealth and power, he does this while maintaining an alignment with 'US interests' far closer than his rogue persona suggests.
If we accept this tenet, what do we make of Trump's relationship with Israel? We've seen in British politics that anyone who aligns with Palestine and criticises Israel gets cancelled. The most high-profile example is how Jeremy Corbyn was tried and convicted of anti-Semitism by the British press, demolishing his chances of winning an election. Trump knows the fallout of criticising Israel is far too dangerous, so he would never pull a trick on Netanyahu like he did on Zelenskyy. However, perhaps his over-the-top claims about building a Gaza Riviera and the reposting of that stomach-churning AI video with the gold Trump statue were deliberately meant to have the polarising effect that they did.
Now that the demolition of Gaza has been achieved, perhaps US interests are best served by deposing the Netanyahu government and returning the country to a more human-friendly, liberal administration. Maybe by embracing Netanyahu—making him and Trump the heels—we're anticipating the appearance of a new face who will rise phoenix-like from the ashes of Zionist destruction, enabling the smooth passage of US corporations into Gaza to realise the long-term plan: the exploitation of the offshore Gaza Marine gas fields and the execution of the Ben Gurion canal project. Call me cynical, but I don't think anything happens by accident, even an apparent car crash like the Trump administration!