President Donald Trump announcing new tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in April 2025, in Washington. He had to backtrack on his tariff initiatives due to political, economic and legal pressures he encountered. He has hit another politio-economic brick wall with his strikes against Iran.
Image: AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Finally, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel that Donald Trump plunged us all into four weeks ago. And, thankfully, the light isn’t an oncoming train with a nuclear warhead on the driver’s cab.
Trump has realised he couldn’t finish what he started – or what his son-in-law made him start. But he has eventually found a way out that he believes will cost him and his party the least number of votes later this year during the mid-term elections. But no matter how he spins this, he has failed to fulfil his mission – whatever that was. His gambit backfired.
Apparently, it was the young fella who started it all. He and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are said to be close. As a teenager, Kushner used to let Netanyahu sleep in his bedroom when visiting his family in the US. That is, perhaps, what qualified him in Trump's eyes to be put in charge of the US's Middle East policy. The young man had no diplomatic experience or foreign policy background or anything that anyone could say prepared him for the job and the region that even old titans of diplomacy like Henry Kissinger found to be inherently complex and historically fraught.
It’s reported that Kushner convinced Trump that Iran was “about to attack the United States”, and, despite the Pentagon and other experts saying the exact opposite, Trump listened to the young man. It’s hard to believe, but that’s the most credible explanation that I could find while searching for answers as to how the world was suddenly plunged into chaos.
They say “you get the government you deserve”, but that canned victim-blaming phrase seems to be completely unfair to the ordinary American voting and non-voting public. Surely, those who voted for Trump never imagined things could get as bad with Trump 2.0?
Didn’t the same Trump campaign on “no new wars”? Didn’t he promise to end the Ukraine one in a day?
And what about the rest of us who make up the eight billion or so citizens of this world? We never voted for Trump 2.0 but we've had to suffer the fallout of his stupid escapades in Iran, and his global tariff wars before that.
It’s going to be very interesting to see if his voting base sticks with him and his party in November. Will they give themselves and the rest of us another government they and we don’t deserve? Watch this space. We shall all find out in about eight months' time.