Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Donald Trump's threat against a "whole civilisation" has exposed a vulnerability he has not faced before. (Reuters: Evan Vucci)
Of the thousands of words US President Donald Trump posts on social media, often in the middle of the night, one sentence is coming back to haunt him: "A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
Trump was talking about Iran, and the message was posted on his Truth Social account this week to pressure the regime in the hours leading up to his deadline that if they did not open the Strait of Hormuz he would destroy their civilian infrastructure including desalination plants and power plants.
Americans, and the world, are no longer easily shocked by what Trump says. He's survived what may have brought down many presidents before him.
He came out unscathed, for example, when he recently re-tweeted a post which portrayed former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes. And only a few days ago he survived, unscathed, when he told Iran to "open the F***in' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell." He finished that post by mocking Islam: "Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP."
He truly has been the Teflon President — until now.
But the "end of civilisation" posting, as it's become known, has exposed a vulnerability he has not faced before.
Even a generally compliant White House press pack has fired up, with several questions in a row this week challenging Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about how the US can take any high moral ground against Iran when its own leader threatens to destroy an entire civilisation.
The posting comes at a time when polling shows that the Republicans are in serious danger of losing the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, at the mid-term elections, and when many Americans are asking what the Iran war was all about.
It's become clear to Americans — despite the public relations efforts by the White House — that the same hardline regime of the Islamic Republic remains in power in Iran, and that Iran has gone from not controlling the Strait of Hormuz before the war began five weeks to now having full control over it and considering charging tolls for ships to pass through it.
Donald Trump threatens "complete demolition" if Iran and US cannot reach a deal, in a press conference held before the ceasefire.
Trump begged to act like 'normal human'
The chaos of the White House messaging was exacerbated yesterday when Trump said he would consider having "a joint venture" with Iran in terms of charging ships to travel through the strait.
Just like the "civilisation" tweet, that comment has raised eyebrows.
Here is a president going from threatening to bomb Iran into "the stone ages" and saying their whole civilisation will die to suggesting he may enter "a joint venture" with them. As is so often the case, Trump supporters, when asked about these sorts of contradictions, claim that the president is joking. But there was no suggestion that he was joking about this, just as there was no suggesting he was joking when he said the US might invade Greenland or that Canada was not a real country.
For the last year since he was re-elected, Trump supporters have argued that whatever wild or seemingly unhinged things the president might say, everything should be forgiven as he gets results. He's the master negotiator and deal-maker, they say, and results are all that matter.
But even that is now being questioned.
Democrats have suggested the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which could allow Congress to vote out Donald Trump, should be invoked. (Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)
Traditional Trump supporter and former Fox presenter Megyn Kelly asked on her podcast how good the president actually is at negotiating if he has to "threaten a bunch of war crimes".
"His negotiating tactic is to kill an entire country full of civilians — men, women and children?" she asked. "An American president? So that the Strait of Hormuz would be open?"
She added: "Can't he just behave like a normal human?"
Kelly has a huge social media footprint, with more than 4 million YouTube subscribers.
Significantly, Republicans who until now have kept any criticism of the Trump White House to themselves are now beginning to speak openly — the "civilisation" post appears to have created a crack in an edifice which until now has been solid for Republicans.
"I don't want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure," Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson said yesterday. "We are not at war with the Iranian people. We are trying to liberate them."
Alaskan Republican Lisa Murkowski said: "The President's threat that 'a whole civilisation will die tonight' cannot be excused away as an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations with Iran. This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold and promote around the world for nearly 250 years."
Democrats, unsurprisingly, are going further — and questioning Trump's fitness for office, suggesting that the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution should be invoked.
That amendment states that, should a vice-president and a majority of the cabinet resolve that a president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office", Congress can vote to remove him.
Current Vice-President JD Vance is highly unlikely to try to muster the numbers inside the cabinet to move against his boss, whose endorsement he needs if he wants to run as the Republican candidate at the 2028 presidential election.
A former Middle East negotiator says Donald Trump's threats to bomb civilian infrastructure could amount to war crimes.
A landmark moment possibly awaits Vance
Vance is currently walking an exquisitely difficult line. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is seen as a serious competitor, something amplified by Trump's frequent praising of him. Often Vance and Rubio are sitting at the same meeting, and Trump will frequently praise Rubio at length and barely say a word about Vance.
At one recent cabinet meeting, after giving the floor to Rubio, Trump asked, as the meeting was winding up, if Vance had anything to say. The vice president declined, saying "I'm just here for the free coffee".
JD Vance will play a key role in negotiations in Pakistan. (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst/Pool)
The role of vice-president at any time is a challenging one. For four years, the VP needs to be seen to be completely supportive of the president but, somehow, they also need to try to carve out their own political persona without being seen to be distancing themselves from the president.
One of former vice-president Kamala Harris's most damaging moments in her quest to defeat Trump came when she was asked in an interview during the presidential campaign how she was different from the man she'd worked with for four years, then-president Joe Biden.
Harris was flummoxed. Clearly, she wanted to be seen to be loyal to Biden, but on camera this presented the impression that she had very little of her own vision. That was seen by many Americans as the moment when Harris damaged herself out as a serious contender.
Adding to the subtle power play within the White House is the fact that Vance has had a very different view on the Iran war from his boss.
According to much reporting in the US, including this week in The New York Times, Vance argued against the war on the basis that its intended outcome was not clear and that Trump had campaigned to return to the Oval Office on the basis that he would not be taking Americans into any new wars.
Once the war was underway, Vance was also reported to have had a hostile phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to US-based Israeli journalist Barak Ravid in Axios, Vance argued to Netanyahu that many of the predictions which Israel had made to the White House had proved untrue, including the claim by Israeli intelligence that once a war began Iranians would come into the streets to demand an end to their regime, leading to regime change.
It's significant that Vice-President Vance has now been nominated to travel this weekend to Pakistan to lead the US side of negotiations with Iran.
He takes to Islamabad the authority of the second-highest office in the US, as well as the credibility of someone who reportedly disagreed with his own boss against the war. He can now set himself up as someone who can bring this conflict to an end.
For a vice-president under all sorts of pressure, including from his own boss, bringing a sustainable end to the Iran war could prove a landmark moment for him.
No comments:
Post a Comment