Why is the world shocked by Trump ... being Trump?
While the world questioned and condemned the US President’s decision to meet with Vladimir Putin, it seems people are forgetting the path he has chosen is simply on-brand, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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In a stunning development, the world has been shocked over the past few days by Donald Trump… well, being Donald Trump.
The difference is that this time even his supporters are among those left reeling.
The issue is of course Trump’s decision to hold talks on how to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.
The unusual feature of this summit is that the talks are not between Ukraine and Russia but between the US and Russia, which looks a lot to outside observers like Russia simply telling the US what it wants and the US effectively giving it to them.
Needless to say this has alarmed many European countries, not least of all Ukraine itself.
Would-be Trump supporters were also concerned and in some cases downright confused.
Former PM Tony Abbott and aspirant PM Peter Dutton — both of whom have shades of Trump’s muscular populist conservatism — publicly criticised the US president.
Meanwhile a high-profile journalist friend of mine appeared to be in genuine disbelief that Trump was suddenly embarking on a path they vehemently disagreed with.
“What is he doing?!?” they asked me.
I offered the only reply I could because it’s the only honest one.
“He’s just being Donald Trump,” I said.
And this is the problem with being all aboard the Trump train. It’s a hell of a ride but chances are you’re going to pick up some passengers you really don’t like.
One of them is Vladimir Putin.
Now I have very close friends who insist with great authority that Putin is right to fight back against NATO expansion and point to history ranging from the establishment of the Kievan Rus in the 9th century to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
This is all well and good but none of it changes the fact that Putin is a very dodgy dude who very clearly started the war in Ukraine.
But Trump obviously has a great deal of time for Putin and, self-evidently, none whatsoever for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
Again, this has confounded some Trump backers, especially conservatives with a very clear sense of right and wrong who see Trump as having suddenly flipped from one to the other.
In fact this is a misreading of Trump in the first place. Just as elements of the left were painfully deluded in painting Trump as Hitler, so too are elements of the right deluded in seeing him as the messiah.
The truth is, to quote Brian’s mum, he’s just a very naughty boy.
Trump’s admirers might like to project on him the persona of a moral crusader but nothing could be further from the truth: Trump’s value system isn’t based on righteousness, it is based on strength.
His mission is not to make America pure again, it’s to make it great again.
And Trump himself has no pretence of moral authority — it would be laughable if he did. In fact he openly expresses a complete disdain for it.
When talking about why he was meeting with Putin and excluding Zelensky, Trump did not even attempt a moral argument. Instead he said it was simply because Russia was in the stronger position.
Worse still, Zelensky had tried to play hardball with a weak hand — the ultimate mark of shame in Trump’s eyes.
“He has no cards,” Trump said.
For a man whose religion is the art of the deal this is the most unforgivable of sins — to not have anything to deal with.
Indeed, it now appears that America’s approach to Russia may have been the mother of Trumpian power moves to force Ukraine to sign a deal giving the US access to rare earth minerals, which Kyiv had previously been resisting unless it was offered security guarantees.
Again, such attempts to extract leverage from a position of weakness seem to almost offend Trump, like an amateur hacker demanding a round with Greg Norman.
Needless to say that deal is now expected to go ahead very shortly.
Thus all the hand-wringing about whether Trump is good or bad completely misses the point.
As a historian once said about Alexander the Great, he is simply an apex predator. It is like trying to ascribe a moral code to a tyrannosaurus rex or great white shark.
And so whether you are on the side of right or wrong means nothing in Trumpworld.
All that matters is whether you are in his way.
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