Trump is living in a parallel universe – and looks deeply unstable
“I don’t care about the midterms” is an odd position for any American president to take, especially one whose party increasingly looks like it will be the victim of an electoral bloodbath in November.
But Donald Trump’s need for an offramp from the conflict that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignited on 28 February is now so urgent that on Wednesday, the US leader was even willing to send that agonising message to Republicans on Capitol Hill who are seeking re-election.
Trump’s comment came during his latest made-for-TV Cabinet meeting at which he declared himself “not satisfied” with the latest Iranian proposals. Observing that the Iranians think America’s electoral calendar may be on their side, the President sought to warn the regime that their calculations are incorrect and that he is willing to “finish them off”.
“Their whole economic system is broken down … they’re negotiating on fumes,” Trump assured the sycophantic members of his inner circle crowded around the Cabinet table. “They thought they were going to outwait me. You know, ‘we’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms.'”
“I don’t care about the midterms,” Trump shrugged, insisting that America’s voters “understand that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.
His comments again revealed the parallel universe in which he is living. Over the past three weeks, he has insisted his war on Iran is “popular” with Americans, even though as many as 64 per cent of voters tell pollsters they disapprove of his decision to begin it.
He has claimed that he does not think “even a little bit” about the financial hardships that ordinary Americans are facing due to the conflict. On Wednesday, he dismissed global concerns about the economic consequences of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as not being his “primary urgency”.
Instead, he even threatened to broaden the conflict.
Rejecting plans that would see the Iranians and Omanis split revenues from new proposed tolls paid by every vessel that passes through a reopened Strait, Trump warned Oman that he had zero tolerance for the conversation. “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” the President said, of a Sultanate that is a key US ally in the region. “They understand … they’ll be fine.”
Trump’s cavalier talk only appears to be emboldening the Iranians. On Saturday, Trump claimed that an agreement with Iran “has been largely negotiated … and will be announced shortly”, telling his followers on social media that “the Strait of Hormuz will be opened”.
On Monday, the President insisted negotiations were still “proceeding very nicely”, but in the very next sentence warned that “it will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all”. He then went on to reveal a new requirement for the negotiations: that Iran and all its neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even Pakistan, would be “mandatorily requested” to sign the Abraham Accords, fully normalising ties with Israel as part of the process.
“On what planet of the Milky Way Galaxy would this regime in Tehran, which is practically founded on hatred of Israel, just up and make peace with it after this war?” asked veteran foreign policy columnist Thomas Freedman in The New York Times. “The whole thing was so ridiculous, juvenile and unvetted by any experts that it had to have left our Israeli and Arab allies deeply worried that their American protector is led by a truly unstable man.”
On Wednesday night, US forces were back in action, conducting a fresh wave of airstrikes on southern Iran for the second time in 72 hours. In the Pentagon’s telling, a series of “self-defense operations” destroyed four attack drones that Iran launched over the Strait and eliminated a drone control station in Bandar Abbas. The White House continues to insist that the ceasefire with Iran that began on 7 April is still in effect, despite almost-daily military interactions between the two countries.
As the week heads to a close, there is no indication that any kind of agreement is at hand, nor that Trump has damped down the concern of prominent Senate Republicans that the regime will only emerge strengthened by the conflict.
But now, they have another worry: a leader who publicly claims that he “doesn’t care” about midterm elections in five months that could end the careers of scores of Republican lawmakers, delivering the House and even the Senate back into the hands of the Democrats.
