Right-wing critic tears apart Trump's double standard

President Donald Trump may insist that he won the war in Iran with his bluster, but one conservative commentator bluntly observed in a recent editorial that “Trump's antics don't work on America's allies.”

“The essence of this low-road-for-me, high-road-for-thee dynamic rests on the belief that Trumpism is a one-way road,” wrote conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg in an editorial that appeared in the Grand Island Independent on Wednesday. “Insulting Trump, deservedly or not, is forbidden, while Trump's antics should be celebrated when possible, defended when necessary, or ignored when neither of those responses is possible. But he should never, ever face consequences for his own actions.”

He added that based on this principle “Trump has routinely mocked our allies. For efficiency's sake, let's forgive all of the petty jabs from the first term ostensibly intended to get them to spend more on defense. In Trump's second term, he claimed our NATO allies would never fight on our behalf, even though the only time NATO invoked Article 5 -- an attack on one is an attack on all -- was in the wake of 9/11.”

He added, “Back in January, in Davos, Switzerland, Trump revised this false claim, admitting some did fight in Afghanistan, but that ‘they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.’ This infuriated not just allied leaders, but their voters. Indeed, Trump is even unpopular with the populist right across most of Europe.”

Yet despite this attitude, Trump still assumes that others will come to his defense when he calls for that to happen. Goldberg noted that this simply does not work beyond his own domestic political base.

“Trump's one-way-street antics work domestically because of his support in the GOP base,” Goldberg explained. “But he can't incite a primary challenge to elected allied leaders, not when he's loathed. In January his approval rating in the U.K. was 16% (and in Denmark just 4%). One in 5 Europeans see America as a greater threat than China or North Korea.”

He added, “Again, I think it would be good for Europe--which has seen energy prices skyrocket because of the war and still needs the U.S. for its security--to swallow some of the humiliation and help. But the refusal of Trump and his defenders to acknowledge why it's politically hard for Europe to help is maddening.”

Indeed, an adviser to a different Republican president wrote on Wednesday that Trump cannot be trusted, and others know it.

“Donald Trump started a war with no plan to win, no strategy to leave,” former President George W. Bush adviser Steve Schmidt wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday. “Without the support of the American people, he threatened nuclear war and then backed down. And there wasn't one single Republican in the entire Congress who said a word about it, but his poll numbers keep dropping and he's down to about a 30% approval level.”

Schmidt pointed out that as a result of Trump’s behavior with Iran he has proved that he “cannot be trusted. And what we're witnessing is a defeat that will shape the future for many, many years to come. And it will make the world more dangerous — far more dangerous than an already dangerous world has been. Trump's folly is our burden.”

The Trump White House contests this criticism. Writing to AlterNet about Trump's economic policies and the Iran war, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers insisted that “the United States’ energy dominance status, as the world’s leading producer and a top exporter of oil and natural gas, has positioned us to not rely on the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz like other countries. If anything, Operation Epic Fury actually underscored the importance of producing reliable, affordable, and secure energy here at home. Many of our allies that have tried transitioning to intermittent and unreliable renewable energy sources have predictably failed to break their reliance on foreign oil that goes through the Strait."

She added, "Several countries from around the world are now looking to emulate the President’s energy dominance agenda and are advancing new partnerships that enhance their energy security with the United States.”

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