Tom Nichols
Donald Trump loves to speak extemporaneously, and usually, he makes very little sense. (Sharks? The Unabomber? What?) Trying to turn his ramblings into a coherent message is like trying, as an old European saying goes, to turn fish soup back into an aquarium. But he is the president of the United States and holds the codes to some 2,000 nuclear weapons. When he speaks, his statements are both policy and a peek into the worldview currently governing the planet’s sole superpower.
This morning, the commander in chief made clear that he does not understand the largest war in Europe, what started it, or why it continues. Worse, insofar as he does understand anything about Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine, he seems to have internalized old pro-Moscow talking points that even the Kremlin doesn’t bother with anymore.
The setting, as it so often is when Trump piles into a car with his thoughts and then goes full Thelma & Louise off a rhetorical cliff, was Fox & Friends. The Fox hosts, although predictably fawning, did their best to keep the president from the ledge, but when Trump pushes the accelerator, everyone goes along for the ride.
The subject, ostensibly, was Trump’s supposed diplomatic triumph at yesterday’s White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European leaders. The Fox hosts, of course, congratulated Trump—for what, no one could say—but that is part of the drill. A Trump interview on conservative media is something like a liturgy, with its predictable chants, its call-and-response moments, and its paternosters. Trump ran through the usual items: The war was Joe Biden’s fault; the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax”; the war never would have happened if Trump had been president. Unto ages of ages, amen.
But when the hosts asked specifically about making peace, the president of America sounded a lot like the president of Russia.
No comments:
Post a Comment