Trump is Fumbling the Bag

By A.A. Byron

Trump is fumbling the bag

I had some major hopes for Trump after the removal of Maduro; people were saying he was abandoning the rules-based international order. To me? He was reinstating it. Who else is going to remove tyrants and despots? Jesus? The UN? Jesus is more likely than that.

However, Trump has fumbled a clear win regarding Venezuela. He was literally gifted a Nobel Prize by the woman who should be leading Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado. She’s popular, she was an enemy of the Venezuelan state and a friend to Western states, yet she was left out. Why? God knows.

Things aren’t the same as they were under Maduro, but they’re not exactly better. Democracy hasn’t been restored, unfortunately.

Trump has been a busy boy. Iran, Venezuela and Greenland? Naughty boy.

The Greenland situation was just stupid. What exactly was the point? He had serious political authority on the world stage post the removal of Maduro, as he was showing that America was willing to remove foreign anti-Western despots, and they were willing to do it right in the face of their greatest foes, for example, the Chinese, who were in Venezuela. However, the obsession Trump had with Greenland lost its comedy once he started tariffing European countries, and European countries had to send the few troops they had (regretting those low military budgets now, aren’t you?) to Greenland. It was such a strange situation. Denmark was more than willing to let Trump use Greenland for any strategic purpose, and the US have already signed laws with Denmark’s permission to allow for strategic use of Greenland. If Trump wanted Europe to pick up some of the pay for defence, and stop accommodating China, which some journalists, like Freddy Grey, have claimed to hear around diplomatic circles, surely there are other ways? I’m not exactly a policy expert, but playing games with import charges is just insane.

This is causing the world to look for other leaders. This is very obvious because the international press practically wet themselves over Mark Carney’s speech at Davos.

Ladies, he literally just said there should be other international units besides America and China. This is not new. That is literally the point of Europe as a political bloc.

Then again, he was in Davos, so no wonder it was liked. Like preaching Islam to the Saudis, obviously, they’re going to like it.

Trump had some real potential on Iran. The people are protesting. He bombed it previously with bunker busters because they were dodging the nuclear inspections (again, enforcing rules), and because a nuclear Iran is about as sane as allowing Pennywise access to a nursery. Yet he still failed to follow through; he’d encourage protestors, saying he stands with them, ‘Help is on the way’.

Where is that help, good sir?

I would be all over the big, bad orange man if he had taken out the Ayatollah. Yet he did nothing.

I may end up eating my words here, as it does appear as if Trump is cooking up some delicious new conflict with Iran, but in my book, it’s probably too little, too late. He won’t do what is necessary to allow for freedom in the Middle East.

The Iranian situation is exceptionally serious. In Gaza, the death toll is around 72,000 according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, with the IDF confirming similar numbers. That’s after a 2-year war, in which we aren’t sure how many are civilians and how many are combatants (the Middle East is not a stranger to using human shields and children as soldiers).

The number of cases in Iran could reach 30,000 within around 3 months.

Pure chaos.

The United States and the United Kingdom have a relationship as normal as a Targaryen marriage.

Keir Starmer’s only virtue appears to be that he is largely on Trump’s good side. However, this didn’t stop Trump from calling Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal, a deal where the UK is handing over a set of Islands, formerly colonies of theirs, back to Mauritius, a Chinese ally, and paying them £3.4billion to keep the use of a base. This is something I’ve previously commented on as silly.

Trump, in all his infinite wisdom, agreed. Briefly.

He called it an act of ‘Great Stupidity’ and ‘Total Weakness’.

Thank you, President Trump, very cool.

He has since changed his mind. Then he changed his mind again, as the UK won’t allow the use of RAF bases for his conflict with Iran.

I honestly am not fully sure what to say to that.

I would love it if Trump, or the man with a million jobs, Marco Rubio, showed some interest in our fine country. We now have Krispy Kreme and Popeyes. Can we please have some freedom?

The position for US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland has been left vacant since my best friend, Joe Kennedy III (for legal purposes, we are not best friends; we met just once). Has he considered potentially appointing one? As long as it’s not George Mitchell, it should be good to go.

Or would it? I say all this with some hope that there can be a connection, but the truth is, I don’t think there’s any way Northern Ireland and the Island of Ireland as a whole can have a connection with Trump.

Not necessarily because Trump is the devil- you’d think so from being on this campus for as long as I am. I say this because it’s a political virtue here, or at least in very, very loud political circles, to ‘resist American imperialism’. I could be very brutish and unfair and say it’s because the Irish on the world stage love to complain, that they’re complainers, while the US are doers, which involves getting their hands dirty- see the example of Venezuela.

Even under Biden, the anti-Western voices in much of the inner city and university politics were forever against the Americans. I genuinely do worry for the relationship between Northern Ireland, Ireland, Europe and America.

Being on campus and in political societies is… interesting whenever America is brought up. Some people seriously think China is an equal actor to America on the world stage. It isn’t. People who pretend it is represent a serious problem.Unfortunately, Trump can’t and won’t help this problem, and not even future Ayatollah Rubio can do it either. There’s serious anti-Westernism growing in Europe. Maybe it was always there? I’m not fully sure.However, Trump’s ‘unsafe’ rhetoric, compared to Biden’s sleepy (I do mean this literally, he fell asleep at conferences) but softer diplomacy, is just not good for the Atlantic relationship.It’s very unfortunate, but Trump is fumbling the bag.