Amid all the major elections around the world this year (think Brexit, the UK election, and European elections), nothing will match the one coming in the United States on the first Tuesday in November. The present polling indicates that Donald Trump is certain to be back in the White House by January, 2025.
If he does, he will be inaugurated to begin his second term, not wiser but more experienced and even more convinced of his own brilliance. But more ominously, he will resolve to fix what he believes was the fatal flaw of his first term, that his advisers and Washington officials were impeding his agenda.
Donald Trump is nothing like most people, though, because he never doubts himself, even when he clearly should. His potent narcissistic self-belief valve seems to have allowed him to prevail not just over the various foes amassed against him but over the very reality that contains them all.
He has convinced most of his party (and millions of Americans) for four years that he actually won the 2020 election. Has anyone been a better gaslight or more viciously gaslighted?
Donald Trump was a president who, more than any other of the last century, built a cocoon of sycophants around himself, telling him what he wanted to hear. Anyone who veered off this path was unceremoniously shown the door.
If Trump gets another stint in the Oval Office, he may become more tyrannical in his willingness to punish adversaries and populate the executive branch with toadies.
If they are Democrats, he will regard domestic critics as political opponents; if they are Republicans, he will see them as traitors. Trump, feeling invincible in his triumph like a Roman emperor, just won’t have a slave by his side whispering, “Remember, you are mortal.
An Opportunity for Allies
Presidents of countries that are intimate U.S. allies should counsel Trump with a kind of brutal yet respectful forthrightness that few of his advisers likely will.
In my time as Prime Minister of Australia, I learned from my experience dealing with Trump that he may not like strength, directness, from other leaders, but in the end he actually respects them—aside from his initial frown, of course.
My point: All over the world, the leaders are scrambling to wonder how to butter up Trump and avoid his ire. But this pliable path is not only the wrong path, it is also the last thing America needs.
A New Normal
After Trump was elected president in 2017, many world leaders were guided by false assumptions in their dealings with him. It will no longer be Trump, because the first is that his campaign promise of wild rhetoric would be ditched once he took residence in the White House. They thought the duties of the presidency would correct him.
That was the grim message conveyed by the leaders of the world’s leading economies when they gathered in Lima for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that convened almost immediately after Trump’s stunning win.
The conference was overshadowed by the persona of U.S. president Barack Obama, making his final summit appearance and providing a neat segue for several leaders to quote former New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s line, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
Trump’s behavior shocked many leaders, who had expected Donald to be more presidential if the voters gave him the keys to the kingdom (one of them, Chinese President Xi Jinping, is said to have explicitly told his associates as much, expressing surprise that Trump did not do so once in office).
Of course, the Chinese factors in Trump’s election campaign could possibly not influence him in his government, and Xi boasted that the that the US system would not allow Trump to tremble on American public interests.
The general assumption was that the institutions of government would prevent Trump from flying too far into his fantasyland. But then Trump proved to be more rudderless in office than he had been on the campaign trail, eventually inciting a mob to hit the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
At that point, should Trump be ushered back to the White House in 2025, only the most willfully deluded would believe that a second Trump administration would be less volatile, less alarming, than the first.
Don’t Give In
The second world leader’s misconception was that by stroking Trump’s ego in a certain way, he could be mollified. Guys like Trump make comfort calls for obsequiousness, to enlist their authorities in forcing the rest of us to tell them what they want to hear.
But that is exactly the wrong way to approach Trump — or any bully. You will never have respect from the likes of Trump unless you stand up to him.
But this amount of defiance is not without risks. Every world leader not ruling the U.S. wants to stay on Washington’s good side. They would no doubt be well aware that a major stoush with the US president could result in their own people, and media, particularly in nations where right wing media is generally sympathetic to Trump, not backing them up.
My Experience with Trump
I had been Australia’s prime minister for close to 18 months when Trump scored his stunning victory. I xyz completed his businesses, but i had worked with men like these before, including billionaires and media barons. I made a deal with Obama to take some asylum seekers in 2016.
My government wanted Trump to honor the deal from the time he was elected. But moments before a call between Turnbull and Trump could be held, Vice-President Mike Pence and national security adviser Michael Flynn suggested to us that we should avoid doing anything that Trump would not like, thereby giving us the distinct impression that the new president would not take the refugees.
I raised the issue anyway. Trump was angry but, at the end of the call, he grudgingly accepted the agreement. The call was then leaked to demonstrate Trump’s begrudging acquiescence, and he subsequently went along with the deal. Then, when we reconvened almost exactly a year ago, in May 2017, Trump mentioned the deal as a light-hearted joke, suggesting that he held my resolve in high regard.
Make the Case
While most presidents and prime ministers cede a great deal of authority to their advisers, the Trump White House did not work like this. He acted alone, it was Trump. This meant other foreign leaders had to address him face-to-face to convince him why their proposal was also in his favor.
I saw it with my own eyes during the trade-tariff-on-demand drama of 2018 with Trump. I was able to argue a strong case as to why Australian steel and aluminum should be exempt from tariffs and successfully persuade him to do so.
Speaking Truth to Trump
The caricature of him as a cartoon, one-dimensional monster who just goes batshit all the time doesn’t really include the fact that he’s really a very intelligent transactional entity.
When he can no longer bully, he will deal. It gives foreign leaders wanting to transact business with Trump the incentive to approach him directly and cut to the chase as best they can about why their proposals should work.
A White House Trump had returned even more surrounded by yes men and sycophants than ever before. So who is going to be willing to tell him the inconvenient truths? The leaders of U.S. allies will be among the few able to speak frank truths to Trump. Since he cannot fire them, they can take his outbursts.
Their character, bravery, and honesty may be the most important aid they can provide to the United States in the second age of Donald Trump. Source – Foreign Affairs
