“Events, dear boy, events,” is the alleged response from British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in the early 1960s when asked what the greatest challenges a leader faced were.
It may be apocryphal as its exact context is difficult to pin down. Was Supermac, as he was called, talking to President John Kennedy when he said it, or talking about his own rise to power to Westminster colleagues, or did he utter it to a journalist when he sacked seven cabinet members in the night of the long knives?
Whatever the truth, it has entered the political lexicon as one of the wisest utterances ever. But events can also be manipulated. Leaders are not always at the mercy; they can also set the agenda. They may even have events to cover up other events. There is no suggestion whatsoever that the White House would ever stoop to such cynical endeavors. Heaven forbid!
But any serious examination of recent, well, events, may lead people to possibly think that a blindside operation has taken place that has benefited a certain Donald Trump.
It’s no secret that the US economy is not firing on all cylinders. The cost-of-living crisis poses a real challenge to many American households, one year into Trump 2. Trump’s election campaign put the economy front and center.
He also suggested during that campaign that he could solve the Ukraine war in a day. Even allowing for the intoxicating atmosphere of a campaign, it was a rash thing to promise. The economy and Ukraine were his headline-grabbing campaign pledges. Let me evoke the spirit of Oscar Wilde. Failure to resolve one would be unfortunate. Failure to resolve both could be viewed as careless.
Trump in campaign mode was, or so it seemed, determined to keep the US out of forever wars.
Also to be considered is the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein that hovers over the White House. Trump apparently depends on very little sleep. It may be that thoughts, tucked away in bed, about his former buddy could deplete even the few hours he allocates to shuteye. Let it not be forgotten that Trump and the convicted sex offender, who died in jail awaiting trial for trafficking minors, were more than just nodding acquaintances.
The Epstein affair was getting heavy media scrutiny in December. Millions of documents related to the case were expected to be released by the US Justice Department. They have still not been released, no doubt for some fully innocent bureaucratic reason.
But the most intriguing aspect of the Trump presidency is how the above, the economy, and Epstein have so little traction in today’s media. They were hot topics in November and December, but in January, there’s hardly any mention of them. Instead, the public’s focus has been on the Nobel Peace Prize, Venezuela, Colombia, Greenland, and a legal case brought against the chairman of the Federal Reserve. On top of this, Iran was threatened by Trump, and whisper it softly, Cuba was mentioned.
Again, Trump in campaign mode was, or so it seemed, determined to keep the US out of forever wars. Parents in the flyover states of Middle America were sick and tired of their sons fighting overseas while parents on the two coasts prepared their offspring for college, or at least that was a perception promulgated by the Trump campaign. It struck a chord and secured millions of votes.
It is unlikely that US involvement in Venezuela will be short-term. And any invasion of Greenland will tear NATO asunder, and that is guaranteed to have consequences that will plague Europe for decades to come.
Distraction seems not a ploy but an actual policy.
One possible explanation for Trump’s seemingly erratic behavior could be that he wants to use Greenland, or Iceland, or Lapland as a useful bargaining chip to get a Ukraine deal or, for that matter, any deal that the White House wants to get over and done with. He could plausibly tell European leaders that he’ll back off from Greenland or Iceland or Lapland, if they support him on a Ukraine agreement.
Distraction seems not a ploy but an actual policy. Here is one event that has not seen much media attention: 48 million Americans reside in households where food insecurity is a daily experience. That is 14.4 percent of the population. This figure represents a 32.1 percent increase over 2019. The number of people desperately trying to get food is the highest it’s been in over a decade.
Real issues need attention. Difficult to do if the course you set drives you to distraction.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.