Is there anyone who is still as obsessed with Joe Biden as Donald Trump? A year after the Democratic President was expelled from his reinstated campaign by his own party, Trump hardly lets spend a day without disparaging his predecessor. This week alone, he said that Biden was personally blamed for the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by Russia, or, as he called it, the “Biden War”; that Biden was responsible for Jerome Powell, the president of the federal reserve which has become from another of his frequent targets; And Biden’s inability during his duties was the greatest scandal in the history of the country. He also boasted of having ended the “Biden War against the clean and magnificent coal of Pennsylvania”, and insisted that the United States “had the worst inflation in history under Biden” – a favorite attack on sound – although it is far from true.
In the Trump gaming book, blame is the best type of distraction, so it is not surprising that a large part of the president’s belly this week came when he was trying to repress a fury among his own Maga Supporters of the decision of the Ministry of Justice not to publish additional files on the death of the late sexual trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Trump on Tuesday called Biden by name and other Democrats to have supposedly “invented” Epstein files. On Wednesday, Trump gave conferences to journalists on “the scandal you should talk about”, not to Epstein but to the use of the Autopen of the Biden administration, supposedly to cover his age -related infirmity, which Trump called “the biggest scandal – one of them in American history”.
Back in March, the Times noted that Trump had continued Biden three hundred and sixteen times during the first fifty days of his second term, mentioning the former president more frequently in speeches than “America”. Continuous fixation. And why not? Trump’s approach in policy matters forces him to take credit from all successes, regardless of the minor or nonexistent, while diverting responsibility for any problem. Biden, outside the office and unpopular, even among many many members of his own party, who blame him for the return of Trump, is an easy target. But the list of Trump’s enemies is hardly confined to Biden. Others he has targeted in recent days include Powell, the president of the Fed who refused to bow to Trump requests at lower interest rates; Hollywood celebrity Rosie O’Donnell, whose citizenship the president threatened to revoke; A journalist “very badly” who dared to ask what could have caused late alerts to residents of recent deadly floods in Texas; And California Senator Adam Schiff, a “crook” who “must be brought to justice”, according to one of Trump’s messages on Trump’s social media this week, who presented an elaborate and not founded allegation of mortgage fraud against Schiff, his prosecutor of indictment of survival.
One of Trump’s problems in his second term, however, is that this daily defamation flow is now a very familiar script. I’m not sure that even Maga Dayhards still cares about another attack on Sleepy Joe or Shifty Schiff. He certainly failed to silence them with Epstein. But that doesn’t matter. Trump continues to do it because there is so much distraction; Choosing fights on Truth Social is much easier than winning wars or commercial negotiations. And, while the Congress dominated by the Republicans is becoming more and more a subsidiary of Trump’s White House, the president has found a new way of diverting attention, taking objectives such as the media funded by the State and foreign aid for hungry children in Africa, as in the bill on cancellations adopted by the Senate early Thursday at the request of Trump. Fighting on the weak is much simpler than confronting the fort.
In the real world, there is no peace agreement in Gaza, no peace agreement in Ukraine, no trade agreement with Mexico or Canada or in the European Union. Inflation increases again; Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin turned out to be sheltered from Trump’s flattery; And the president’s disapproval coast has just reached his highest note on this subject to his second term, with fifty-five percent in a new Economist/ Poll Yougov who seeks unfavorably on his professional performance; A new Associated Press /Norc The survey, also released this week, revealed that the majority of Americans were not satisfied with its management of the economy, public spending, trade, taxes, immigration, health care and conflict in the Middle East – each problem whose survey posed questions. But hey, Joe Biden. . .
I am writing to the Aspen Security Forum, an annual rally non -supporter of the national security wonks, which was also appointed this year from the list of enemies of Trump. On Monday, a few hours before the start of the forum, the Pentagon forced the withdrawal of a dozen senior officials who were to participate, including the Admiral who oversees the Indo-Pacific Command, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Navy Secretary. The crime of the forum? This is an “event that promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our big country and hatred for the President of the United States,” said a statement by Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson. His specific mischief seems to imply to give a platform to the former officials of Biden or, as Wilson called them, “the architects of chaos abroad and failure at home”.
Being on the list of enemies could be a badge of honor in the Trump era, but it is striking that adversaries who consume leaders of the United States at the moment are, for the most part, not the real enemies of the country but the personal obsessions of a potential insecurity. The fact seems to be that engaging with the world, as it is actually, demands too much Magaverse; The lesson of our polarized policy is that everything – from the implications to the national security of the international supply chain to the Mudite Epstein affair – is now subject to the discouraging laws of the frantic partisanry. It is not as if Trump or his administration presents himself in clear and questionable terms of the United States foreign policy at the moment. This week, when the Pentagon refused to allow defense officials to explain their strategies to contain American enemies and to sit for questions from independent moderators, the defense secretary Pete Hegseth was publicly celebrating major political initiatives such as a new “sexual fitness test” for military recruits.
During the forum, on the other hand, the sessions included discussions on the disturbing militarization of space by China and the prospects of an Iranian nuclear agreement following the recent joint American-Israeli attack against the country’s nuclear installations. There have been panels on artificial intelligence, Trump’s prices and the future of foreign aid. In Trump 1.0, the administration found the forum precious enough to send its new secretary of state, its director of national intelligence and the president of the joint chiefs. How much he did not allow his high -level brass to participate in serious conversations in foreign policy if it could mean breathing the same mountain air as Jake Sullivan. Is the problem that Trump has Biden on the brain – or that he wants our foreign policy to be as dead in the brain as our domestic policy has already become? ♦
