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The American Media’s Endless Search For A “Presidential” Trump

The American Media’s Endless Search For A “Presidential” Trump

Like Captain Ahab spotting a breaching Moby Dick in the distance, there seemed to be palpable pundit excitement last week about the prospect of the elusive “presidential” Donald Trump finally being sighted in the wake of the United States’ bombing mission in Syria.

Eager to bestow a mantle of seriousness and normalcy upon him, some commentators rushed to proclaim the U.S. military strike on an airfield to be a defining moment for the still-new president; to stress how the bombardment meant that Trump had elevated himself in stature and was now conducting himself in a somber, statesmanlike manner.

We’ve seen this excited commentary regularly with Trump, perhaps most notably when a portion of the pundit class was eager to announce that a serious, “presidential” Trump had finally emerged following his address to a joint session of Congress in February. (It was yet another false sighting.)

Media declarations late last week about how Trump “became President Of The United States” with the Syria attack and “turned the page” on his troubled presidency presented the brief military incursion as a sweeping demarcation line for Trump’s presidency in terms of grading his seriousness.

We were told Trump had experienced an epiphany of sorts and suddenly understood how to use Oval Office power for good around the world. Indeed, Trump led with his “heart,” The New York Timesannounced in the wake of the strikes.

But the “presidential” spin isn’t based on fact. It’s well-established that Trump is an Olympic liar who pushes falsehoods about topics large and small alike. So why would journalists suddenly assume that Trump’s telling the truth about the motivation for the bombing attack on Syria?

The “presidential” narrative seems more like it’s the media projecting into the news cycle how they think the President of the United States should act during a time of crisis. But Trump is not normal, and his relentlessly strange behavior cannot be explained away, let alone normalized.

In its page-one analysis of the Syria bombing, the Times stressed Trump had been moved to action out of sympathy for Syrian victims of a chemical attack that authorities believe was ordered by President Bashar al-Assad.

Suddenly able to read Trump’s mind and peer into his heart (or listening intently to White House spin), the Times claimed unequivocally that the bombing raid was “an emotional act by a man suddenly aware that the world’s problems were now his — and that turning away, to him, was not an option.” (The Times also excitedly concluded the one-day bombing raid would “change the course” of Trump’s presidency.)

The Associated Press stressed that “the weight of world’s problems” had sunk in and forced Trump to act. Like the Times, the AP tried to read Trump’s mind and concluded that there’s “a growing awareness that an American president — even an unconventional one like him — is looked to as [a] defender of human rights and a barometer of when nations have violated international norms.”

TheWashington Postsuggested, “The Syrian chemical weapons attack seemed to awaken Trump’s sense of moral responsibility as leader of the world’s sole remaining superpower.”

But other than launching some missles at an airfield, where’s the evidence that Trump did any of those things? Where was the evidence he had suddenly transformed himself into a “defender of human rights,” or that a “moral responsibility” seemed to “awaken” in him?

If, according to one preferred media telling, the gruesome pictures of children being gassed to death last week represented an epiphany of sorts for Trump, why didn’t Trump simultaneously lift his proposed travel ban and welcome suffering Syrian refugees into America?

Trump relentlessly used the victims of the Syrian civil war as political punching bags during the presidential campaign. Yet parts of the Syria bombing coverage last week politely set that aside in order to suggest Trump had become more “heartfelt” and “presidential.”

He can’t have it both ways.

And this has been part of the on-going riddle for the press: How to treat seriously someone like Trump who is categorically un-serious. And how to treat seriously a president who seems to be profoundly uninterested in the details of policy. Or telling the truth.

This is why the pursuit of “presidential” Trump often seems like wishful thinking: Journalists desperately want Trump to meet them halfway. Lots of journalists seem completely willing, if not eager, to uniformly lower the bar for Trump in terms of acceptable behavior for a sitting president. They’re willing to rewrite the rules for him, which includes consciously looking away for very long periods of time in order to pretend he falls within the mainstream of American politics and our history of Oval Office inhabitants.

But if they’re going to craft new rules for Trump, the least he could do is alter, or improve, his behavior and meet them halfway.

But Trump’s going to keep doing what he wants to do, which is to often act abhorrently.

Still, when there appears to be even the slightest glimmer of normalcy emanating from this president, journalists overreact and pronounce that The Change, or The Pivot, has finally occurred and Trump is now ready and willing to act like an adult while serving as president.

He’s not, and he hasn’t. Yet the media’s “presidential” pursuit continues.

IMAGE: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers an statement about missile strikes on a Syrian airbase, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Black Day For Ukraine Military Ahead Of Key Vote

Black Day For Ukraine Military Ahead Of Key Vote

Volnovakha, Ukraine (AFP) – Pro-Russian rebels firing mortar shells and grenades killed 14 Ukrainian soldiers on Thursday, the blackest day yet for the military and a dramatic ratcheting up of tensions just three days before a crunch election.

The attacks in the eastern industrial belt near the Russian border underscored the difficulties of the embattled Kiev government in resolving a crisis that is threatening to tear the country apart.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russia of trying to “escalate the conflict” and disrupt Sunday’s vote, calling on the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent meeting on the crisis.

He said the Kremlin’s announcement of a troop withdrawal from the border was merely a “bluff”, and that even if soldiers were redeploying, Ukraine was still being infiltrated by “armed terrorists.”

Adding to the chaos in the east, armed separatists seized four coal mines in the first such confirmed attack on the main economic engines of the former Soviet republic.

Western governments have pressured Russia not to meddle in the snap election, seen as crucial to preventing all-out civil war erupting on Europe’s eastern flank.

Russia set Western nerves on edge when it massed some 40,000 troops on the border, raising fears of an invasion into eastern Ukraine after its seizure of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March.

On Thursday, Russia’s defense ministry said four trains and more than a dozen planes were taking troops and equipment away from the border in what President Vladimir Putin said were measures to create “favorable conditions” for Sunday’s election.

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he had seen some evidence of limited Russian troop activity that he hoped was “the start of a full and genuine withdrawal.”

But rebels in Ukraine’s heavily-Russified eastern industrial regions of Donetsk and Lugansk are showing no signs of scaling back resistance to what they and the Kremlin regard as an illegitimate government in Kiev.

The Ukrainian defense ministry said the worst of the two overnight attacks saw the insurgents blow up a military vehicle after volleying mortar shells and grenades at a roadblock set up by government troops near the town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region.

Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov said 13 had been killed in Volnovakha, while the defense ministry said another soldier was killed in a similar strike near Rubizhne in Lugansk.

Kiev’s interim government launched its so-called “anti-terrorist” operation in mid-April aimed at crushing the rebels who have seized more than a dozen eastern cities and towns and declared sovereignty in Donetsk and Lugansk.

An AFP toll compiled through U.N. and Ukrainian government sources puts the number of deaths across the east since mid-April at over 140.

Putin — his government wary of devastating sanctions threatened by Washington and its European allies — denies a direct role in the insurgency and has so far refrained from recognizing the legitimacy of the rebel republics.

But Putin rejects the legitimacy of the pro-Western team that toppled a Moscow-backed president in February on the back of a massive wave of street protests.

He has given only grudging backing to an election that is all but certain to bring to power a pro-Western president who will seek to fold the nation of 46 million more fully into Europe and break for good its historic dependence on Russia.

Sunday’s poll pits the overwhelming favorite Petro Poroshenko — a 48-year-old confectioner whose chocolate factories have been shuttered in Russia on dubious health and safety grounds — against nearly 20 challengers including the divisive nationalist ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko.

“What is important is not the election itself,” Putin said. “What is important is that (Kiev) repairs relations with the regions so that people start feeling like full-fledged citizens again.”

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in Bucharest on Wednesday, warned Russia of new sanctions.

“If Russia undermines these elections on Sunday, we must remain resolute in imposing greater costs,” he said.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said it is mobilizing 55,000 police and 20,000 volunteers to ensure security for Sunday’s ballot although officials acknowledge it will be difficult to organize in the east.

“I appeal to all Ukrainians not only to go and vote but to help others go and vote, to prevent people from preventing others to vote,” Wolfgang Ischinger, the mediator for an OSCE-sponsored peace plan, told reporters on Thursday.

Rebel leaders have vowed to disrupt polling in Donetsk and Lugansk, the heartland of Ukraine’s Soviet-era industrial rust belt that churns out more than 15 percent of the country’s economic output.

Earlier Thursday, the self-proclaimed leader of Lugansk Valery Bolotov proclaimed martial law in the region and called for Putin to send peacekeeping forces that could help avert a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

©afp.com / Genya Savilov

Egypt, International Groups Weigh Value Of Observers For Election

Egypt, International Groups Weigh Value Of Observers For Election

By Amro Hassan and Laura King, Los Angeles Times

CAIRO — Egypt’s presidential election next week presents a quandary for both international observer groups and the military-backed interim government.

To Egyptian authorities, the presence of prestigious outside observers gives the election a stamp of legitimacy, even in the face of the government’s harsh crackdown on political dissent.

But international election monitors’ reports will probably include yet more criticism of the repressive political climate that has prevailed in the more than 10 months since the government — whose de facto head, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, is expected to be elected president — took power.

For the observer groups, the dilemma is whether to risk appearing to support what human rights groups describe as a deeply undemocratic administration by being here at all for the vote — or to stay away and perhaps let their voices go unheard.

Previous prosecutions of foreign organizations seeking to promote democracy in Egypt — including some court convictions that still stand — have kept away some authoritative groups that would normally try to assess the fairness of a major election.

Some strongly worded reservations in advance of the vote came from the U.S.-based Carter Center, which expressed concern last week about the “restrictive political and legal context” surrounding the vote.

In the past 10 months, the interim government has cracked down on Islamist opponents, and also has targeted some secular democrats. More than 1,400 supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi have been killed, and by conservative estimates, more than 16,000 have been arrested. Morsi, an Islamist, is imprisoned and on trial for various charges.

“I am gravely concerned that Egypt’s democratic transition has faltered,” former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said in a statement last week. “Egypt’s next president should take immediate steps to foster dialogue and political accommodation to ensure the full spectrum of Egyptian society can participate meaningfully in politics.”

The Carter Center chose to deploy what it called a “small expert mission” to assess conditions surrounding the election.

The European Union said Monday that its observers — after reporting initial technical problems that could have seriously hampered their work — would fully participate in assessing the fairness of the balloting, deploying across Egypt.

Mario David, a member of the European Parliament and the chief observer, said Monday that the mission would go ahead despite observers not getting into the field throughout Egypt well ahead of time as intended.

Many of the international organizations that monitored the 2012 election that brought Morsi to power are sitting out this election, as they did the January referendum on Egypt’s new constitution. Morsi was the country’s first democratically elected president, though his rule was considered profoundly authoritarian and not politically inclusive.

January’s referendum was the interim government’s first foray into a promised democratic transition. The new national charter won about 98 percent approval — a lopsided margin reminiscent of sham elections that were a hallmark of the three-decade rule of dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in the Arab Spring uprising of 2011.

Morsi was ousted by the military in July after popular protests demanding his removal. In the interim, the government that supplanted him has alternated between harsh demands that the international community back off and appeals for understanding of the political circumstances that led to the coup.