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GELFAND’S WORLD - It became clear during the Alaskan summit. Going in, Trump was full of threats and demands. Leaving, he had adopted the Russian position entirely. And none of this is remotely surprising. We have come to expect some new Trumpian surprise on a weekly basis, but each time it is followed by a reversal.
It's true that the Alaskan reversal occurred in a sort of upside-down manner, with the outrage at the end rather than the beginning, but in whatever order, consistency is not part of the Trump approach. Whatever you get from Trump on Monday can be expected to be reversed by Thursday.
Clearly this is not evidence of strength, but of weakness. We wouldn't use the word Resolute to describe this president. He has lost the power to awe and shock. He's become boring.
Often enough, a reversal has been due to organized opposition on the part of the victims -- witness Gavin Newsom's actions in trying to negate the Texas gerrymandering. What's significant is that there is still organized opposition -- and since opposition heartens the refuseniks and begets further opposition, there obviously will continue to be even more opposition. And that fact, now becoming evident, means that Trump is losing his ability to intimidate.
And that's why Trump has become boring. He's kind of The Great Oz after the curtain has been pulled back. Nothing to be afraid of. It's true that we should be afraid of what could happen to our country -- and certainly to our standing in the world -- but we should stop being afraid of the man himself.
We are no longer surprised, or in any possible way amused. This administration is still a lot of things -- dreary, tiresome, mentally trying -- but Trump has lost the power to interest us in what he might be thinking.
Just continue to be bored.
That boredom exists, even in the continued ICE raids here in Los Angeles and in the budgetary attacks on all things educational, scientific, and weather related. It's not that they aren't painful and damaging. It's just that under the current political and legal situation, they are self-limiting.
He still does stupid, reckless, dangerous things, but they've lost the power to shock and amaze. Yes, he's attempting to throw away centuries of Constitutional tradition and political norms by pushing for the mid-decade gerrymandering in Texas, but it's not even surprising. We already knew that he was willing to steal an election if he could get away with it, as January 6, 2021 showed. But now it's just one more irritation. It's boring.
The threat of tyranny and loss of Constitutional protections becomes just another chronic illness for us to fight.
One more thing: The Alaskan summit reminded us of an old lesson.
There is an old maxim that there is more power in the threat than in the actual execution. Another way this has been stated is that power is highest when held in reserve rather than after it is expended. Keeping your opponents in fear can be more effective than showing them the extent -- and therefore the limits -- of your power. I bring this up because the recent events in Anchorage remind us.
And curiously, it is a lesson that both sides should have learned.
First, let's consider the war itself. Back in 2022, the idea of a Russian invasion would have put grave concern, if not terror, into the hearts of any second class power. The smart money figured that the war would last maybe 3 days, and there was thought that the Ukrainian leadership would be on the first flight to Switzerland.
Not so much, as things turned out.
The reality, if not an actual Ukrainian victory, is a kind of stalemate so far, with Ukraine discovering that it is able to invent and adapt technology while the once-vaunted Russian armor turns out to be less than spectacular. Ukraine has blown up missile storage facilities and burned refineries close to Moscow, showing how far the Ukrainians have come. There are estimates that the Russians have suffered as many as a million casualties so far.
It turns out that Putin would have been ahead had he avoided the invasion, because it has revealed that the once mighty Soviet Union is no more. Forgive the mixed metaphor, but the Russian bear turns out to be a paper tiger.
So Vladimir would have been better off had he not revealed so much about Russian military capability. Keeping his tanks and troops in reserve would have better served his interests.
And the same lesson applies to Donald Trump, except that in his case it is about politics rather than military might.
Remember that this is the guy who claimed that the war would never have occurred had he been president, and that he would end it in a day. And he would accomplish this before he even took the oath of office.
From a political standpoint, Trump would have been better off avoiding the summit with Putin and continuing to blame Ukraine and its leaders for everything. That's pretty much what he and Marco Rubio were doing when Ukraine's president was verbally ambushed in the oval office a few months ago. It was ugly and totally dishonest, but it didn't make Trump look like a fool -- just a bully. And Trump's bad behavior never seems to bother his hardcore supporters, so he didn't lose anything politically.
Setting up the summit meeting and going to Alaska put Trump on the spot -- could he produce any movement towards an end of the conflict? So far, the answer seems to be No. The current White House position, as one wag explained, is that Zelensky can end the war -- under Trump's terms -- simply by surrendering.
What the Alaska summit has demonstrated is not only our diplomatic weakness, but the fact that European leaders have no trust in Trump whatsoever. They are demonstrating this by traveling to Washington to join with Zelensky this week. The fact that so many European leaders feel the need to be here shows just how little belief they are willing to give that Trump will act in good faith.
There is another observation about the Anchorage events that struck me. In the televised comments to reporters and in the press conferences, trump came across as sober and businesslike. He spoke reasonably well, and there even seemed to be a moment of candor when he conceded that the meeting might not be a success. That doesn't mean that we should believe anything that Trump says -- ever -- but it does show that when he puts on the air of the successful businessman and adopts that speech pattern, that he does better. If you want to nitpick, you can point out that a genocidal, terroristic war against the civilian population of Ukraine is not a business deal, and that discussions about how we can engage in trade with Russia are kind of off the point, but the demeanor and delivery work better when Trump fakes being a businessman as opposed to faking expertise in climatology or vaccine science or economics.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
