
Trump isn't ‘un-American', he's just transparent
A common reaction to that notorious Trump/Zelensky press conference is 'we haven't seen anything like this before'. Seen is the key word.
Bust-ups and walk-outs do occur in diplomacy, the difference is that Donald Trump does in the open what is meant to be conducted in private. An example: in 2022, NBC reported that Joe Biden had spoken to Zelensky by phone about a $1 billion aid package, and when Zelensky began asking for more, the US president 'lost his temper' and told him to be more grateful.
So, yes, America argues with its friends. Worse than that: it has a record of abandoning them. I'm struck by the parallel between Ukraine and South Vietnam, two regimes encouraged by the US to fight an invader – at huge cost in money and lives – only for Washington to cut and run.
America's stake was far greater in Vietnam (it lost about 58,000 soldiers trying to see off the Viet Cong) and Richard Nixon, unlike Trump, attempted to strengthen his ally's hand with devastating bombing raids. But Nixon had promised his voters peace and, in December 1972, his administration suggested terms to South Vietnam's President Thieu.
If you want a sense of how the sausage is made in foreign policy, read the transcripts of Nixon's conversations with national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Thieu, it seems, rejected a peace deal that would be generous to the Viet Cong; Kissinger called him a 'cheap, self-serving son-of-a-b----', 'criminal' and 'insane.' He suggested cutting off Thieu's economic and military aid and 'doing a Diem on him' – referring to a coup d'état in 1963 that resulted in the assassination of one of Thieu's predecessors, Ngo Dinh Diem. Henry and Dick were discussing murder, but that was part of the job.
To keep face, they decided to bomb the Viet Cong a bit more – then offered it ceasefire terms obviously unfavourable to their own ally. ('We bombed [the enemy] into accepting our concessions,' explained Kissinger). Thieu was left with a promise of ongoing US funding, what you might call a 'backstop', but Congress, including a young Joe Biden, soon voted to turn off the tap.
South Vietnam fell in 1975. Some politicians opposed accepting refugees almost as vociferously as Trump does today. Decades later, Biden applied the withdrawal method to Afghanistan, believing voters were tired of building democracy in exotic locales.
All foreign policy is domestic. Rightly so. Presidents are elected to represent Ohio and Alabama, not Kabul or Kyiv, and as circumstances change it would be madness to stick to a failed policy. What confuses outsiders about America is that its ideals are universal, all men created equal etc, so it sounds as if it's operating out of the goodness of its heart. 'We shall pay any price,' said John F Kennedy, 'oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.' (The Diem coup, incidentally, happened on Kennedy's watch.)
Historian Mark White's latest, very good book, Icon, Libertine, Leader, suggests that Kennedy believed those words, that he entered office in thrall to his generals and the novels of Ian Fleming. He approved a disastrous invasion of Cuba and, probably, some plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. His strategy likely agitated the Soviets and gave a pretext for sending nuclear weapons to Cuba in 1962, bringing us closer to World War Three than we've ever been. Some argue that Kennedy's diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, though brilliant, de-escalated a drama he had helped to cause.
Trump would have been 16 years old during Cuba. Does he remember it? Most people my age have no memory of living with the fear of a nuclear exchange, but it conditioned an entire generation's attitude towards Russian relations – and Donald mentions the risks often.
That's why he's reluctant to provide security guarantees for a country outside Nato, which puts him in the tradition of non-interference adopted during the Soviet invasion of Hungary, in 1956. Today it is taken for granted that Ukraine should be allowed to join Nato if it so wishes, but as late as 1998, when senators discussed Nato's expansion, politicians of a less utopian era warned about 'poking the Russian bear'.
As for fawning over Moscow's leaders, as Trump does Putin, even Harry Truman, the wisest eagle of all, wrote in his diary, 'I can deal with Stalin. He is honest – but smart as hell.' This did not stop him defending Europe or Korea when the communists went on the march, but the point is that politicians can be charmed, awed, fooled or irritated by choices as small as not wearing a tie.
While many historians agree that Trump is something unseen before, a few might conclude he's the most American president we've ever had – his chief novelty being transparency. Viewers of the press conference were shocked by his volatility, but when he said 'you don't have the cards', he expressed the way countless administrations have handled smaller countries, including our own. The reason why British policy consists solely of trying to persuade the US to support our goals is because the Americans previously undermined our ability to act as an independent power.
They made demolition of the empire a tacit condition for their support during the Second World War. The US insisted on creating a unipolar world and now complains about having to police it almost on its own. The irony.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Mail
24 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Vance slams Newsom over LA ICE riots
By Published: | Updated: Vice President JD Vance ridiculed California Governor Gavin Newsom, as he struggled to handle violent protests in California in response to ICE deportations. The social media duel between the two ambitious politicians was a messaging preview if the two leaders ultimately one day face each other in the upcoming 2028 presidential election. Trump told reporters he even supported the idea of his immigration czar Tom Homan arresting Newsom for doing a 'terrible job' as governor as he returned to the White House from Camp David. Newsom reacted on social media, expressing shock at Trump's comments. 'The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor,' Newsom wrote. 'This is a day I hoped I would never see in America.' 'Do your job. That's all we're asking,' Vance replied on X. Newsom appears eager to take his political career to a national level after he is prevented from running again for governor in 2026, thanks to term limits. Vance, who many expect to be the heir to the MAGA movement remained widely supportive of President Trump's action to send the military to help quell the riots.


The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘It's just daily life': Kyiv residents get used to overnight Russian drone attacks
It only occurred to Iryna Yakymehuk to make use of the local bomb shelter after the Shaheed kamizake drone struck her nextdoor neighbour's fifth-floor flat at 2am on Tuesday, taking a messy bite out of the bedroom. The 22-year-old had returned to her home in Kyiv's Obolon district from the underwear shop where she works as an assistant at about 9pm. She ate macaroni while swiping through some funny TikTok videos before getting into bed at 11pm. Russia has stepped up its aerial attacks on Kyiv in recent days. From the safety of Washington, Donald Trump had warned that Vladimir Putin's response to Ukraine's audacious Operation Spiderweb attack on Russia's nuclear-capable bombers a week earlier 'wouldn't be pretty'. But Yakymehuk doesn't look for that sort of content on TikTok. Air raid sirens, and talk of drones and missiles, have been par for the course for Kyiv's residents since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion three years ago. A car dealership was destroyed by falling debris from a shot-down missile a couple of years ago, but otherwise the Obolon district in north Kyiv, 6 miles from the government buildings in the city centre, has avoided the worst. 'I am a deep sleeper, so I don't normally hear the drones,' Yakymehuk said as she was queueing with others in front of a blue tent where police were taking down details and volunteers were giving out compensation forms to fill in. 'It's just daily life, I don't think about it,' she added, squinting up in the morning sun at the demolition workers dangling from cranes at the corner of the 25-storey apartment building as they sought to make the site safe. The window frame of her bedroom had been blown in, and was dangling at an angle. On Monday the drones did wake her. They seemed to be on top of her, she said. And the persistent, nagging buzz of what seemed to be a large number of them was getting louder, as if someone was slowly bringing a electric shaver ever closer to her face. Then the first massive explosion that made her heart jump. And a second. This one sent 'sparks' flying across her bedroom window on the fifth floor, she said. Yakymehuk ran down the stairs from her flat, as did others, out of the building and to the bomb shelter – a dusty cellar, in reality, below another building, 100 metres away. The door to it is not always unlocked. But it was tonight. There were hundreds in there already, 'maybe 500 people', she said. Others in the queue outside the tent on Tuesday morning said they heard 10 explosions in all. Black smoke was still bellowing from the neighbouring industrial estate at mid-morning. This appears to have been the target. One woman in the Obolon district had been killed. Across Kyiv, four were said to be injured. Seven of Kyiv's 10 districts reported being hit in one of the largest drone attacks on the city since the war started. Yakymehuk might not sleep so well in future. Kyiv could be any European capital during the day. It is a far cry from the opening months of the war, when it resembled European cities during the pandemic. Then the streets were empty. The shops locked up. There was a nervous energy among the soldiers at checkpoints that would make everyone else anxious. And the Russians wanted Kyiv. They had been at the edge of the city and could come back. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion Today, the atmosphere is different. The nightlife is lively, restaurants full, and those with money flash it around. Some people are nervous as it gets dark. That's when the Russian bombers and their drones come, increasingly so in recent weeks, even before Operation Spiderweb. The nerves are especially acute among those who live near factories and industrial estates, which the Kremlin suspects of playing a role in Ukraine's war effort. They listen in their beds for the drones to drop, breathing a little easier as they pass by. But others, maybe the majority, ignore the air raid sirens and assure themselves that the drones won't come for them. They get on with it. It is only when an attack from the air comes to your own doorstep that the reality of the situation bites, said Elvira Neehyporenko, 34, whose red Honda, parked just below where the Shaheed drone struck, had taken a hefty blow, leaving it with smashed windows and a caved-in roof. Neehyporenko lives in the same block as Yakymehuk but further away from the where the drone struck. She laughed as she admitted that when the explosions began, a little distant at first, it was her dog Molly, an American Staffordshire terrier, who had the sense to run into the bathroom. Neehyporenko, whose boyfriend is in the army and fighting in Kharkiv, followed the dog. She stayed there for a while on the cold tiles, before the biggest explosion forced her down to the first floor, where she stayed for fear of what she had heard was a Russian tactic of striking at people as they flee from damaged buildings. Standing watching all the commotion outside the flats mid-morning on Tuesday was Oksana Kodynets, 23, who lives in the apartment block opposite where the drone struck. She was taking her 18-month-old daughter, Maria, for a walk. Her husband is in the army and had been working an overnight shift in the city. She had been alone last night and was a little shaken this morning, she admitted. She had recorded the sound of the explosions, including the largest one, just over the way, and had been listening to them this morning. It was a kind of metallic sound, nothing like she had heard before, she said, as she played it from her phone. Does she worry? 'I did last night,' she said with a half-smile. 'I thought it was going to be the last day of my life.'


Daily Mail
31 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Mystery of Trump's vanishing Tesla as his purchase from Elon Musk disappears from outside White House
President Donald Trump has stashed his red Model S Tesla in an undisclosed location amid his running feud with Elon Musk. Hours after Trump introduced the idea that he may move his new car around 'a little bit,' the pricey vehicle had vanished Tuesday from the prime parking spot it had occupied on White House grounds since he purchased it. A White House official, pressed for details, refused to provide additional information to on its whereabouts. 'We're not playing Where's Waldo,' said the official. 'If you don't see, it you don't see it.' Trump himself was coy when a reporter asked him about the electric vehicle Monday after he spent the preceding days warring with Musk by threatening his government contracts, while Trump ally Steve Bannon brought up Musk's alleged drug use and said he should be deported. The South-Africa born Musk is CEO of Tesla, and also runs X and SpaceX. Musk published and deleted a post saying the feds had additional information on Trump in the Jeffrey Epstein files and even suggested the president should be impeached. Trump said Musk would face 'serious consequences' if he backed Democrats, although Musk later appeared to be using his X account to try to claw himself back into Trump's good graces. Amid the threats and counter-threats, reporters wanted to know if Trump would keep the car and maintain the Starlink internet service installed for the White House by Musk's DOGE aides, despite reported warnings by government security professionals. The Tesla remains a fixation, and there were media reports Trump was considering selling it amid the astonishing breach with his former first buddy. 'No, I haven't heard that. I mean, I may move the Tesla around a little bit, but I don't think we'll be doing that with Starlink. It's a good service,' Trump responded. Asked where he might put it, he responded, 'I have a lot of locations. I got so many locations that I don't know what to do with them all,' Trump jokes. The car, which lists for about $80,000, has Florida tags, giving Trump more street parking options if he moves it back to his official domicile at Mar-a-Lago. He also could store the car at his nearby golf club just across the Potomac River in Sterling, Virginia. Trump says he paid for it with a check. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and longtime aide Margo Martin took the car for a spin May 30, shortly before the massive public spat between Trump and Musk erupted at the end of Musk's 130-day stint as a Special Government Employee. The car's disappearance a tangible demonstration of how Trump's relationship has soured with the world's richest man. Trump took heat in the press for turning the White House grounds into a virtual Tesla showroom at a time when Tesla's stock price was tanking amid fury over DOGE cuts. He called the cars 'beautiful' and gushed about the look of the Cybertruck. 'As soon as I saw it, I said, 'That is the coolest design,' he said.