The soft bigotry of Trump expectations
We've already forgotten the former - and maybe future - President's response to the Hamas attack against Israel.
Like many commentators, I’ve written a lot about the far-left response to the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Second World War, for several reasons:
People marching in the streets to celebrate antisemitic violence is a big deal, whether they’re carrying tiki torches and wearing MAGA hats or carrying Palestinian flags and wearing Birkenstocks;
Many of the most unhinged apologists for Hamas are the same people who’ve spent the last decade arguing that words are literal violence; and,
Most ominously, “settlers aren’t civilians” is one of these phrases like “Black people can’t be racist,” which was a laughable fringe belief until it’s suddenly everywhere.
On the flip side, it has been heartening to see thoughtful left-wingers, including commentators sympathetic to and even largely supportive of the Palestinian cause, fighting back against this illiberal, antisemitic, and frankly genocidal rhetoric.
I’m glad they recognize this is a potentially serious problem, and we have to stop it from getting worse before the rot - already pervasive in our universities, if the number of professors openly celebrating a pogrom is any indication - gets worse.
Also…the former President of the United States and front-runner for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2024 responded to the October 7 terror attacks by insulting the Prime Minister of Israel and talking up fucking Hezbollah.
And everyone has been kind of, “whatever, that’s just Trump being Trump again, LOL.”
Israel and the White House on Thursday condemned remarks by former U.S. president Donald Trump in which he praised the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a deadly attack by Palestinian Hamas militants.
Trump is the current frontrunner to become the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee.
In a speech in Florida Wednesday, he called the Lebanese Hezbollah group, a sworn enemy of Israel, "very smart," and accused Netanyahu of being "not prepared" for the Hamas attack, which also killed 22 Americans.
Okay, he’s not wrong about Netanyahu, who was much too preoccupied with culture-war bullshit to notice a massive terrorist operation being planned right under his nose.
But this isn’t about his policies or military and intelligence strategy, such as it is, but because Bibi hurt Trump’s fee-fees when he was in office:
Trump and Netanyahu had a close relationship during Trump's time as president, though cracks have appeared in their once ironclad rapport. Trump was annoyed when Netanyahu called to congratulate Biden on winning the 2020 presidential election against Trump, an election Trump still calls fraudulent.
Speaking to supporters in West Palm Beach, Trump said he was disclosing for the first time that Israel decided at the last minute not to take part in the U.S. assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, killed in Iraq in a drone strike on Jan. 3, 2020, which was ordered by Trump.
Trump said Israel relayed to the United States on the night before the operation that it had decided not to participate. He said Israel officials did not explain why they came to that decision.
"I'll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing," Trump said, using Netanyahu's nickname.
It’s at times like this I realize it’s not so much that Donald Trump is a fascist or an extreme right-winger or anything else which implies any kind of guiding ideology.
He’s a narcissist and a gangster. It’s all about what you’ve done for him or can do for him or what you say about him.
Frankly, that might be even worse. With a doctrinaire communist or fascist, you can at least make an educated guess about what he might do next. But Donald Trump? He’s likely to change his mind five times before his first Diet Coke and everyone else is scrambling to make some sense out of it all.
Mind you, the Trump Administration was strongly pro-Israel. But most of the officials responsible for these policies have spoken out against Trump and won’t (er, likely won’t) come back in 2025. If, God forbid, Trump is re-elected, I hope you’re ready for Secretary of State Nick Fuentes.
That Trump responded to the Oct. 7 pogrom like this isn’t at all surprising. After all, this is the guy who on September 11, 2001 was crowing (and lying) about how he now owned the tallest building in New York City. Trump is Trump and he’s always been Trump. He won’t change.
But we have. His comments after Oct. 7 should have suicide-bombed his political career.
Actually, no. His political career should have crashed and burned about 500 different times since Trump descended the golden escalator.
It’s not like Americans have no standards for politicians anymore. Many of them, including other Republicans, have since 2015 destroyed their careers through stupid gaffes and cover-ups and criminal offences. If Andrew Cuomo or Roy Moore launched campaigns for the Presidency in 2024, they’d be laughed out of the room. (Hopefully Moore’s room wouldn’t have any girls under 18 years of age in it.)
But Donald Trump? It’s like he exists in a bizarro political universe where things like getting indicted and praising Islamic extremist groups actually make him more popular, at least within his own party.
How does he get away with it? Being one of the most famous people in the world for decades before he ran for President doesn’t hurt. More importantly, he lurches from gaffe to cover-up to felony to unhinged stream-of-consciousness rant so quickly that we’re left with no time to process what we’ve just seen and heard.
It’s like the “firehose of falsehood” model used by Vladmir Putin’s government, where Russian state media pummels viewers and listeners with so many half-truths and threats and blatant lies - with the occasional fact thrown in once in a while - that the audience just gives up and figures no one can ever really know what’s true.
Trump’s best chance of winning next year isn’t getting a majority of Americans to love or even tolerate him. Compared to every other major candidate, Trump has the highest floor of support in a Presidential election - but also the lowest ceiling.
Voters actively supporting him isn’t what I’m worried about. It’s voters becoming numb to him which scares me.