US President Donald Trump leaves Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland, after a medical check-up. While Trump has sought to cast himself as the ultimate peacemaker in conflicts abroad, he is fuelling a never-ending series of conflicts at home. Photo / Haiyun Jiang, The New York Times
Within a span of two hours on Friday, United States President Donald Trump won two pressure campaigns.
Firstly, he celebrated a significant victory in his self-described goal as a peacemaker when Israel approved the first phase of his plan to end the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.
Just a short time later, New York’s Attorney-General, Letitia James, was indicted after he publicly demanded she be charged, making her the latest target of his retribution.
While Trump has sought to cast himself as a force for peace abroad, he is fuelling a seemingly never-ending series of conflicts at home.
The split screen has emerged as a defining element of Trump’s presidency, providing ammunition to his allies and adversaries alike.
It’s a dizzying dichotomy that has crystallised in images and headlines that capture Trump’s duelling presidential personas over the past week.
As relieved Israelis and Palestinians danced in the streets to celebrate a ceasefire that could lead to the end of the two-year war, federal law enforcement officials and protesters clashed in the streets of American cities where Trump has deployed the military to areas led by Democrats he has railed against.
As he campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize on his claim of brokering an end to multiple conflicts abroad, he has refused to negotiate with Democrats over healthcare to end the US Government shutdown, instead promising to inflict pain on them and their constituents.
Trump has a history of boasting about ending multiple world conflicts — claims that, often, require some important context.
And as Trump positioned himself as a humanitarian figure to the people in the Middle East, he followed through with a plan to carry out mass layoffs of thousands of federal workers who will go without pay and won’t be able to provide critical services to Americans.
A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Trump’s domestic and foreign policy goals were consistent.
Trump felt compelled to broker peace in Gaza for the same reasons he felt compelled to send troops to Chicago: to stop violence and promote stability. And the official reiterated the Administration’s position that it is Democrats who are to blame for the shutdown fallout.
“This is another fake angle from the failing New York Times,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.
“President Trump is working to end conflicts around the world, just like he is working to quell violence in cities across the country.
“His efforts both at home and abroad have been successful, the end of the Israel-Hamas war is under way, and cities like Washington, DC, are thanking him for freeing up resources to bring more justice to victims and hold more criminals accountable.”
Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and the editor of a book of essays about Trump’s first term, said it was not unusual for presidents to have contrasting foreign and domestic policy achievements. But, as is often the case, Trump’s are more dramatic.
“He has a long tendency — he did this in his first term — to overwhelm things that could be good political news for him, because he can’t resist either going after his perceived enemies or just doing controversial things for the sake of dividing and aggravating tensions,” Zelizer said.
While time will tell whether Trump’s Middle East peace deal will hold, Zelizer said, the President wasted no time demonstrating that the peaceful side of him could turn.
“He basically shifted attention back to the other side of him,” Zelizer said. “There was no need to move forward with this indictment right now. I think it fits his pattern. In the end, I think he believes chaos benefits him.”
For Trump’s supporters, the split screen reflects two distinctly different accomplishments.
Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group, called Trump’s ceasefire deal “transformative”, and the indictment of James “airtight”.
“She waged her lawfare against President Trump and tried to bankrupt him,” Davis said. “After years of claiming that nobody is above the law, she has found the certainty of that statement.”
Justin Logan, the director of defence and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said Trump’s actions this past week pointed to how he viewed politics.
“He views the institutions of the federal government — the universities, the media — as all having been engaged in political combat, political conflict, and thinks that the Republicans have been sort of sitting on their hands for decades.”
The whiplash was on full display as Trump closed out the week.
During an event in the Oval Office where he announced a deal to lower prescription drug costs, Trump responded at length to questions about his Middle East deal, remarking on the celebrations of the war nearing an end as a “beautiful thing”. He said he believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel wanted the deal and praised him for “fighting hard”.
“I’ve never seen happier people than many of these places, not just Israel, many of these places, they’re all dancing in the streets,” Trump said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He ended the event ranting about crime in Chicago, where local leaders are opposing his deployment of the National Guard. He called Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois a “slob of a governor” who was downplaying the crime crisis there, and disparaged Chicago’s mayor as “an incompetent man”.
“We’re heading to Chicago because we want to save Chicago,” Trump said.
During the announcement, Trump’s top aides sought to draw a comparison to what he was doing around the world.
“The world is watching as President Trump tries to make peace in every place he can go,” said Dr Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “but at the same time, President Trump is bringing peace into the hearts of Americans and bringing peace of mind to them, especially Americans who cannot afford their medications.”
Zelizer said he believed that Trump’s actions this past week may have also served as a way to divert attention from the fact that he is struggling to blunt Democrats’ messaging that the shutdown impasse was caused by Trump and Republicans refusing to negotiate down healthcare costs that are due to skyrocket in the coming months.
In the end, any tactic employed by the President is short-lived, he said.
“I do think the bigger point is,” Zelizer said, “no one overwhelms his own positive news the way he can.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Erica L. Green
Photograph by: Haiyun Jiang
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