How Trump's love for TV is shaping US diplomacy
In his words, it was images of emaciated children in Gaza that Trump saw on television -- his main window into the world that has long shaped his political and diplomatic decision-making.
Trump made clear his affection for the small screen in late July when asked if he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a major US ally, that there was no famine in Gaza.
"Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry," said Trump, a former reality TV star.
"That's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that."
Since then, the 79-year-old has repeated that aid must be brought to people living in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, though he has stopped of any major diplomatic moves.
"Trump has a reputation for not reading anything, including the briefing papers that his aides prepare for him, and for always believing that he knows better than his staff or anyone else does," said Dan Kennedy, a journalist professor at Northeastern University.
"So it's not surprising that he would be affected by images on television, especially since he is known to spend a lot of time watching TV."
- 'I watch the shows' -
Trump has attended 22 intelligence briefings since taking office in January, according to an AFP tally, despite several reports having revealed that he lacks interest in written reports.
However, his love for television is well-documented -- even when it comes to major decisions.
In 2015, before he first entered the White House, the billionaire told a journalist asking how he educates himself on military strategy: "Well, I watch the shows."
And a New York Times report recounted how Trump spent several hours a day in his first term glued to the television, mainly watching Fox News -- his favorite channel -- but also CNN, NBC and ABC news channels.
His second term has been little changed, despite Trump leading an election campaign that deployed social media and podcasts.
"Trump is a product of his generation," Kennedy said. "He's not sitting around looking at TikTok."
- 'Great television' -
The Republican, who hosted 14 seasons of "The Apprentice" television series, knows better than most how images can be weaponized for political point-scoring.
He was gleeful after his shocking clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House in February, which saw the pair rowing in front of the world's press.
"This is going to be great television," Trump said.
And in May he gave a similar public dressing down to South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa when he sat in the Oval Office for what turned into a diplomatic ambush.
Trump hijacked the meeting by playing a video montage -- one littered with inaccuracies -- that purported to prove claims of a "genocide" against white farmers in South Africa.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Sky News AU
27 minutes ago
- Sky News AU
India hit with additional 25 per cent tariffs from the US
Deputy Nationals Leader Kevin Hogan discusses US President Donald Trump's additional tariffs on India. US President Donald Trump has imposed an additional 25 per cent tariff on India. The decision was made in an effort to stop India from buying Russian oil and indirectly stop funding Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Trump ‘serious about sanctions' relating to Russia
Donald Trump's special Envoy Steve Witkoff has spent three hours sitting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Now while there has no talk of a ceasefire in Ukraine, US President Donald Trump says great progress was made. And US media is now also reporting that Presidents Trump and Putin could hold a face to face meeting as early as next week. But time is running out because this all comes as the clock ticks down on Friday's deadline from the White House for Russia to begin negotiating peace with Kyiv or face punishing new sanctions. ABC NewsRadio's Sarah Morice spoke with Rose Gottemoeller, who was the former Deputy Secretary General of NATO and is now a Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute. She says President Trump has shown he's serious about sanctions.
9 News
an hour ago
- 9 News
Why the report that infuriated Donald Trump actually served as a warning
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here The bad news in last Friday's US jobs report may have been overshadowed when President Donald Trump fired the commissioner in charge of producing it. But economists haven't forgotten about the American job market – and they're growing concerned. Some of the jobs report data has economists using a word they haven't uttered in several months: recession. Are Donald Trump's tariff measures impacting the United States' job market? Economists say they may well be. (AP) Hiring over the past three months slowed dramatically, creating problems for the economists and statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), whose job is to make sense of the payroll data they get from thousands of businesses across the country. As new data came in about May and June's employment, the BLS was forced to sharply lower those months' job totals from their preliminary estimates. The BLS revised May and June's jobs totals lower by a combined 258,000 jobs. That massive revision gave economists some serious agita. Larger revisions have happened before, but every time changes that large have taken place over the course of at least two months, the US economy has been in a recession – at least since records began in 1968. "The job market is terrible," Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office during the George W. Bush administration, said. "Outside of education and health, the economy has lost private sector jobs in the past three months. That's terrible." The US economy has added an average of just 85,000 jobs per month this year, which is well below the 177,000 jobs that the economy added on average each month before the pandemic. Poor jobs data doesn't mean the US economy is in or going into a recession. Several recent economic indicators are pointing in the wrong direction – weakness in second-quarter gross domestic product and slower-than-expected growth in both the manufacturing and services sectors, for example. But, importantly, the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is responsible for declaring recessions, tracks four big indicators of economic activity – consumer spending, personal income, factory production and employment. None have been pointing to a recession or even that the US economy is on the precipice of a recession. That is, until Friday's jobs report. Yet even the recession alarms it sounded come with some caveats. Recent moribund job growth was likely distorted by business uncertainty surrounding Trump's tariffs, and it's too early to tell whether it will rebound or continue to remain at this low level, noted Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist. There are some concerns the United States could be heading towards a recession. (AP) "The US economy is in a muddle-through environment," Lerner, who said the Federal Reserve probably needs to take action to lower interest rates soon because the jobs report suggests it might be behind the curve. The Fed has known about the slowing hiring for quite some time. But the sharp pullback over the past few months – data the Fed didn't have when it made its decision last week to hold interest rates steady – probably means the economy is considerably weaker than economists had expected. "Friday's jobs report was terrible with recessionary level numbers, but slowing hiring is not new," Robert Ruggirello, chief investment officer at Brave Eagle Wealth Management, said. "While Friday's report does not mean we are entering a recession, it shows that companies are freezing hiring and firing until there is more policy certainty and business confidence." Ironically, the leading culprit for slowing jobs growth may be the thing that has been holding the Fed back from cutting rates: Trump's tariffs. The Fed had been in wait and see mode in case tariffs pushed prices higher. The flip side is that the US economy appeared strong enough to handle higher interest rates. The Federal Reserve took a cautious approach when reacting to Donald Trump's tariff measures announced in April. (AP) But it seems businesses are no longer waiting. They're freezing hiring and changing their investments as they grow fearful that tariffs could raise costs and hurt the economy. "The president's unorthodox economic agenda and policies may be starting to make a dent in the labour market," Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, said. "Businesses are not waiting as they are cutting back on the numbers of new workers they bring on board, which means we can no longer count on the employment markets to be a positive factor supporting economic growth in the weeks and months ahead." Trump's immigration policy appears to be taking a toll, too. Since April, 1.4 million people dropped out of the US labour force – 802,000 of whom were foreign-born. That may have helped make the jobs report look slightly better than it actually is. Because of the way the survey was taken, if the 503,000 who dropped out of the labour force but still wanted to work had told the BLS that they were actively searching for a job, the unemployment rate would have risen to 4.5 per cent last month, Rupkey said. Instead, it rose to 4.2 per cent. The revisions, though surprising for their sheer size, were not fully unexpected. They align with the other inputs that analysts have been tracking, Goldman Sachs economists said in a note to clients on Saturday, and they help paint a clearer picture of the economy. Other key jobs indicators "have slowed significantly in recent months", Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius wrote. "Taken together, the economic data confirm our view that the US economy is growing at a below-potential pace." In other words, Goldman Sachs isn't shocked by the revisions; if anything, they fit with the broader puzzle pieces. The revisions were "undeniably concerning," Bank of America economists said in a note to investors on Monday. But the "silver lining" is that a considerable amount of the revisions had to do with seasonal adjustments – basically algorithms that needed adjusting as new data came in. Goldman Sachs was not massively caught off-guard by the tariff revisions. (Associated Press) The BLS considers its initial jobs numbers to be preliminary when they're first published, because some respondents fail to report their payroll data by the BLS' deadline. Low survey responses can make the report more challenging to estimate. But the BLS continues to collect the payroll data as it's reported, and it revises the data accordingly. To extrapolate the data for the entire country, BLS economists add in some educated guesswork , based on seasonal hiring trends. The BLS also smooths out the data with calculations known as seasonal adjustments to avoid huge spikes and dips in data each month. The data are also revised because of those seasonal adjustments. If the more complete data comes in well above or below the preliminary data, revisions can be exacerbated by the BLS' seasonal adjustments, which sometimes need to be recalculated. Now that the BLS has a better sense of the job market – one with a much slower pace of hiring – future revisions may be far less dramatic than over the past several months. World USA Donald Trump finance Economy tariffs CONTACT US Property News: Rubbish-strewn house overtaken by mould asks $1.2 million.
