TRUMP TRIUMPH IS BAD NEWS FOR HIS ADVERSARIES. If Alvin Bragg, the Democratic district attorney of Manhattan, had his way, Donald Trump would have spent Monday in a New York state correctional facility. Instead, Trump — President Donald Trump — spent the day in the Middle East, first in Israel and then in Egypt, presiding over the peace he negotiated to end the war in Gaza. To say Trump received a hero’s welcome in Jerusalem would be an understatement.
Trump’s successes make for bad days for his most zealous opponents. And Monday in the Middle East was one of Trump’s greatest successes, perhaps his greatest so far — and therefore one of the worst days ever for his adversaries.
The triumph in Israel made for a particularly bad day for some in the anti-Trump “Resistance.” How many of them have at some point in the recent past characterized Trump as Adolf Hitler? (The answer is a lot of them, some at the highest levels of establishment journalism.) And yet there was Trump, addressing the Knesset, standing by the Israeli flag, receiving ovation after ovation. Let’s just say it wasn’t a good time for the Trump-is-Hitler people.
Of course, the Resistance will figure out a way around the temporary roadblock of Trump’s current success. As for the Israel-Hamas agreement, they will try to give credit to others, arguing (improbably) that Trump simply built on the foundation laid by former President Joe Biden. They will also try to redirect focus onto domestic issues, on which they will continue to call Trump an authoritarian.
Perhaps some will wrestle with the question of how Trump accomplished what Biden could not, and also what former Vice President Kamala Harris almost certainly could not, had she become president. Maybe the reason lies in one of Trump’s characteristics they like least: the fact that he is simply not part of the international elite consensus that they believe should responsibly rule the United States and the world.
On the Middle East deal specifically, here is how one perceptive observer, Temple University professor Jacob Shell, put it: “Seems like the Trump/Kushner vulgar dealmaking style is just more effective for Middle East geopolitics than the outwardly highminded ‘Peace Studies’ approach preferred by Democrats and their nonprofit proxies. Harris win would surely have meant no ceasefire now.” At this moment, that seems indisputably true.
The bottom line is that Trump simply knew better than the elite consensus how to approach the seemingly intractable problem of this latest Middle East conflict. Yes, that is likely galling to some in the Resistance, just as the pro-Trump celebrations across Israel are galling, or at least mystifying, to the Trump-is-Hitler crowd. But perhaps all can be thankful that Trump was free to make peace — and not in the New York prison his adversaries hoped to put him in for years to come.
