12 hours ago
Donald Trump's F-word and his discovery of some hard truths about the world
The sportswriter Bill Simmons coined the phrase 'the Tyson Zone' to describe the rarified state of being – named after Mike Tyson – in which a celebrity's behaviour becomes so unglued that nothing you hear about them seems impossible anymore. It was almost 20 years ago in his ESPN column that he originated the idea, but Donald Trump was a little later in discovering the powerful sorcery of occupying the Tyson Zone in politics.
He does and says whatever he wants to such extremes that none of it shocks or even matters anymore. The more outrageous his actions, the more he expands the comfy cocoon of the Tyson Zone around himself.
And yet, somehow, the F-word was a new bridge to cross. This he hadn't done before; this was a surprise. There was something in this reaction that mattered.
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On Tuesday as he prepared to leave for a NATO summit in the Netherlands, Mr. Trump faced a barrage of questions about the ceasefire he had declared the previous night between Israel and Iran, which had been breached immediately and explosively.
'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing,' Mr. Trump snarled, physically leaning into the end of the sentence. He finished by barking 'Do you understand that?' at the reporters crowding around, before stalking away to his helicopter.
It read like a true temper tantrum: naked, overwhelmed, a bubbling over of the insides.
On one hand, Mr. Trump may have been simply expressing intense frustration about a long-running conflict that is intractable, destructive, bloody and, yes, incredibly frustrating on a geopolitical scale.
There appeared to be an element of aggrieved surprise, as though he had thought he could quell a roiling sea just by saying so. He didn't seem to have accounted for 75 years of conflict in the Middle East, burning even hotter in the past few years, and still more in the past couple of weeks.
But Mr. Trump's reaction to the world around him – particularly his most energetic responses – are never about the world, but rather about the centre of the universe: Donald J. Trump. What we saw on Tuesday was the President discovering in real time that some forces in the world will not be bent to his will, no matter how badly he wants to claim a big win.
Around 1 a.m. ET on Monday, Mr. Trump posted on his social-media network, Truth Social, 'THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!' The prim, limp politeness of that was overshadowed in strangeness only by the way he signed it, like an official, enforceable order, 'DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!'
By the time day broke in Washington, the ceasefire had been breached and Israel and Iran were each blaming the other. During the same press gaggle in which he launched that expletive, the President said he 'didn't like the fact that Israel unloaded right after we made the deal.'
Mr. Trump thinks of himself as the consummate dealmaker. And here he was trying to broker the biggest deal imaginable – what could be more consequential or difficult, after all, than peace in the Middle East – and the whole world could see it failing.
It's plain that Mr. Trump sees the ability to end conflicts as a demonstration of authority and negotiating prowess. He has repeatedly asserted that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would not have happened on his watch, and in the last several days, he's taken to listing off all the accomplishments for which he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
On Monday, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who had nominated Mr. Trump for the Nobel for brokering negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv withdrew the nomination. Then a Republican congressman stepped in on Tuesday to nominate him for the hours-old ceasefire.
Re-posting that nomination letter was among the manic blizzard of social-media activity Mr. Trump mashed out aboard Air Force One as it hummed toward The Hague, following his meltdown on the White House lawn. He posted a praise-filled message from the NATO Secretary-General, he wrote a long tirade that combined the alleged stupidity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a flex about his own cognitive testing, and he shared multiple posts about his approval ratings and various brownnosers declaring he should win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the decade that he's dominated world news, Mr. Trump has said and done so many things that breach unthinkable boundaries that it's not even worth trying to count them. But he's never dropped an F-word before.
Consider how many times the President – who grew up as a boy with a rich and ruthless father who paved New York City for him, before he became a rich and ruthless man himself – has been told 'no' in his life. How often has he not gotten something he really wanted? How many times in the past 10 years? (Once at least, in November, 2020, and we know how that went.) How many times since election night last fall?
Later in the day on Tuesday, Iran and Israel confirmed the ceasefire, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pronounced that 'Donald Trump is the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.' By the time he gaggled with reporters aboard his plane, Mr. Trump seemed to be feeling more optimistic and in control.
'Israel, as you know, turned back. They didn't do that raid this morning,' he said. He added, 'So the ceasefire is very much in effect and I think we're going to keep it there for a very long time.'
Now, the President figured he was on his way to NATO to 'solve a new set of problems.' He answered more questions, and then when he'd had enough, he turned away from the reporters to walk back to his private section of the plane.
'Do you think you'll get the Nobel Peace Prize now, sir?' a reporter called after him.
Mr. Trump mustn't have heard her, because he didn't turn back.
