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‘Daddy Trump': Why the spinmeister US president is the perfect leader for social media generation
I must admit being among the multitude of Indians with 84% positive rating, India was by far the most optimistic among nations looking forward to Donald Trump's second term in the White House – if not for anything else then the prospect of renewal of trust between India and the United States that took a beating during the Joe Biden interim.
Not unlike others I had assumed, going by the history of warmth and friendship between Trump and Narendra Modi – two leaders for whom personal is political – that bilateral ties would shed some of the negativity and wrinkles that had crept in. I was wrong. There's something fundamentally different about Trump 2.0.
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The US president appears totally unhinged, unrestrained, disruptive, arrogant and reckless in this term, a bull on steroids in a China shop.
Domestically, Trump is as secure as ever. The Democrats are still licking their wounds and appear in utter disarray to project any sort of meaningful Opposition to Trump's policies. It is in the area of diplomacy that Trump's actions are inviting scrutiny since his unfettered access to the might of American national security and foreign policy machinery is going hand in hand with an unnerving egotism, narcissism and transactionalism.
All leaders are transactionalist in various degrees. What sets Trump apart is his fascinating amorality and complete inability to understand even token ethical constraints of the high office that he occupies.
For instance, Trump cannot understand why he shouldn't invite '$Trump' memecoin buyers – the crypto token that he has floated – to a tour of the White House or host them for a private dinner at his club. In his view, any president that does not do so isn't smart enough. His MAGA base adores such 'unfiltered' approach.
Since Trump is operating within the paradigm of little domestic oversight and uncontrolled executive power he can do whatever he wants, such as appearing disinterested in a conflict one day and barging in with B-2 bombers the next, inviting the army chief of a terrorist state for lunch at the White House and attempting to set up a meeting with the thrice elected prime minister of the world's largest democracy, or as professor Elizabeth N Saunders writes in Foreign Affairs, 'shipping noncitizens to prison camps in El Salvador, imposing sweeping tariffs on countries around the world, gutting congressionally mandated foreign aid commitments, bullying allies, courting autocrats, accepting lavish gifts from monarchies, deploying the military on the streets of American cities, and even marshaling the armed forces in a celebratory parade on his birthday.'
In his second term, Trump appears to be a man in a hurry to cement his legacy, conscious of the fact that he probably has time till the midterms to do as he wants. Inside his head, he is constantly shadow boxing with Barack Obama, the two-time former president who received a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump says he deserves 'at least 5 or 6'.
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In as much as can be gleaned off Trump's 'unfiltered' actions, he prefers opportunism over a doctrinal approach and prioritises quick wins over intractable entanglements. He has the attention span of a toddler, shifts interests at the turn of a clock, pivots on a dime and has a pathological craving for attention, even if negative.
However, he also loves to project strength, hates losing and won't hesitate to steal credit if that's what it takes to be perceived as a 'winner'. For instance, Indians can't understand why the US president remains fixated on pilfering credit for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan and lies relentlessly at every possible opportunity – 18 times by last count – that he 'engineered it through the promise of trade.'
New Delhi has made it clear multiple times that Trump played no role in the ceasefire, and earlier this month, prime minister Modi categorically reminded the US president that 'due to India's firm action, Pakistan was compelled to request a cessation of military operations… and 'at no point during this entire sequence of events was there any discussion, at any level, on an India-US Trade Deal, or any proposal for a mediation by the US between India and Pakistan.'
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Still Trump persists.
The reason is simple. Trump's obsession with claiming a moderator's role arises from his desperation to reinforce his self-created image of a 'peacemaker'. 'I stopped the nuclear war between India and Pakistan with a series of phone calls' sounds reasonably impressive, as can be expected from a 'stable genius' who 'can solve anything'.
To drive home this message, which strengthens his credentials as a 'peacemaker' who deserves that Nobel, the US president has resorted to what we call the 'illusory truth effect', lying repeatedly and often enough for it to be perceived as 'truth'.
Trump has an instinctive understanding of the laws of propaganda, and most of his foreign policy moves are intelligible if seen from the lens of MAGA politics. Trump was at The Hague Wednesday for the Nato summit where he compared the impact of American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites to the atomic bombing of twin Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the face of it, such a comparison seems bizarre, but it isn't. It's actually quite logical.
In Trump's mind, it is intended to convey that the destruction carried out by HIS BOMBS on Iran can only be compared to the obliteration caused by nuclear blasts on the Japanese cities. Faced with accusations that Iran's nuclear program has received only a relatively minor setback – through reports that cited leaked intelligence from America's own intelligence agencies – Trump unleashed the comparison as a weapon to settle the debate once and for all.
It might seem frivolous and even onerous to the rest of the world that the bombing of an uninhabited nuclear site was being compared with the unspeakable human tragedy that befell the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but not Trump for whom the success of his bombing campaign on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities – a veritable bragging right and a clincher for his role as the terminator of Iran's nuclear programme – is critical.
The comparison is also meant to convey the importance of Trump's actions – just as the atom bombs ended World War 2, similarly, claims Trump, his bombs shaped the fate of Israel-Iran war. Such ostentatious contrasts also give us an indication on what Trump really thinks about the intelligence of his core supporters. 'Hiroshima', in this context, became a symbolic word for destruction, something Trump wanted to stress on, faced with the discomfort of a realization that the Iran problem might ultimately elude the quick fix that he has been promoting.
The leaked intelligence report, albeit an early assessment, was carried by outlets such as CNN and New York Times that cited 'Defense Intelligence Agency', the Pentagon's intelligence arm, as saying that 'Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed.' CNN reported that 'centrifuges are largely intact' and that 'enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.'
According to The New York Times, 'Before the attack, US intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the US bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.'
This set off a catastrophic incendiary reaction from Trump and his top lieutenants and the world has been witnessing a steady stream of Trumpian rage through his social media platform, Truth Social. The US president has been raining fire on the journalists and the media platforms, screaming in all caps that: 'FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY… THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!'
Trump kept up his diatribes even after 24 hours, name-calling CNN as 'DISGUSTING AND INCOMPETENT' and calling the journalists ' SOME OF THE DUMBEST ANCHORS IN THE BUSINESS!'
Trump also dropped a parody song 'Bomb Iran,' over a video montage of B-2 bombers, on his Truth Social platform. The 1980 number by Vince Vance & the Valiants is a parody of a 1962 song by the Regents, and features lyrics such as: 'Ol' Uncle Sam's getting pretty hot, time to turn Iran into a parking lot', and 'Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks, tell the Ayatollah, 'Gonna put you in a box!' Bomb Iran.'
Once again, these actions might seem frivolous, incoherent, and unbecoming of the dignity of the presidential office, but what Trump is doing here is sending across a message to his base and the world that he remains every bit the infallible leader, courageous and strong with incredible leadership skills – someone who cannot do wrong.
This myth is central to Trump's appeal as a cultish leader. Whether or not Iran's nuclear programme has been 'obliterated', sent into oblivion or set back by a few years or months doesn't really matter. What matters is that Trump has said so, and facts must fall in line with his political needs.
In many ways, in his instinctive understanding of AI-era traits such as algorithmic amplification, audience engagement, elements of cult indoctrination, inciting his base through provocation, emotional appeal and polarization, Trump is the perfect leader of the social media generation where 30 seconds is the height of human attention span. No wonders European leaders are falling on their knees, one by one, and calling him their 'daddy'.
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