For Americans of Donald Trump’s generation, the cover of Time magazine will always hold a certain cachet. It is no secret that Trump still prizes the distinction of being its cover star but hours after his triumphant, wee-hours return from Monday’s lightning visit to Israel and Egypt for his declared “new dawn” of the Middle East, he had to wrestle with conflicting emotions at his latest appearance, with the headline: His Triumph.
In the plus ledger, Time had written a “relatively good” story about him. But they’d also chosen what he deemed to be a deeply unflattering photograph that looked as though the lens was pointing up from his midriff. Within hours, a morning critique popped up on his Truth Social account.
“They disappeared my hair and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown but an extremely small one. Really weird!”
It was the only blemish for Trump after 24 triumphant hours after which even his adversaries on the Democratic left offered guarded commendations on the Israel-Hamas Gaza peace deal.
RM Block
Everyone from Chuck Schumer, the minority leader of the Senate, to former president Bill Clinton name-checked Trump in brief statements welcoming the ceasefire and the phase-one return of hostages.
Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the most outspoken Democrat critic of the White House leniency towards Binyamin Netanyahu throughout Joe Biden’s last year in office, has yet to publicly acknowledge the brokering of this peace deal, while Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar expressed, on social media, the wish that: “For the sake of humanity, let’s hope this will be a lasting and permanent ceasefire. While this is a hopeful step, we must demand accountability for every war crime committed during this genocide and continue to call for an end to the occupation.”
Accountability, and the lasting consequences of the antipathy and loathing engendered by the violence that occurred before, on and since October 7th, 2023, will be among the many obstacles on the path ahead. Trump offered little detail on Monday about how the ceasefire and hostage return will develop into the transformative vision he presented of a golden age for the Middle East. Already implicit is that the US will not have troops on the ground, nor will it bear the enormous cost of rebuilding Gaza.
On Tuesday, Trump arose to deal with another hectic itinerary. He hosted Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, to confirm the $20 billion bailout the administration has offered to keep the country’s ailing economy afloat and signalled that future US financial support is contingent on Milei winning the national election on October 26th.
In the afternoon, he spoke at a ceremony in the Rose Garden in which he bequeathed the late Charlie Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The honour was received by Kirk’s widow, Erika. The Argentinian president remained in Washington to attend the ceremony, which Trump opened by reflecting on how he had to return from the Middle East in the small hours of Tuesday morning no matter what.
“I was gonna call Erika and say: ‘Erika could you maybe move it to Friday?’ And I didn’t have the courage to call,” the president said, explaining that when he discovered Tuesday would have been Charlie Kirk’s 32nd birthday, he decided to go ahead with the planned ceremony and told himself: “We are going to have to forget about some of those very big, very rich countries that expected me to be there.”
His speech was a blend of warm tribute to Kirk’s enduring influence on the Maga movement and a reheated smorgasbord of current peeves – the “radical left lunatics” responsible for the ongoing government shutdown and the need to restore peace to American cities such as Chicago and Portland through military force. The only direct reference to the peace deal came in response to a question posed about how and when Hamas is going to deliver on its commitment to disarm.
“They’re going to disarm because they said they are going to disarm,” Trump replied.
“And if they don’t, we will disarm them. I don’t have to explain that to you but if they don’t disarm we will disarm them. They know I am not playing games. We did something monumental, which is get the hostages back. Now they misrepresented, because we were told they had 26, 24 of the dead hostages, if we can use those terms. And it seems as though they don’t have that because they are talking about a much lesser number.
“Also, they said that they are going to disarm. They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad and killed a couple of gang members. That didn’t bother me too much. It will happen quickly and perhaps violently but they will disarm. And I spoke to Hamas and I said: you’re going to disarm, right? Yes sir. We are going to disarm. They will disarm – or we will disarm them.”
[ The Irish Times view on Gaza ceasefire: an achievement for TrumpOpens in new window ]
So the roiling mood among Democratic and Republican lawmakers over the shutdown, the accelerating threat of lay-offs to federal workers and the sombre remembrance for Charlie Kirk made for a mixed-up return from the Middle East.
In Washington, foreign policy outlets are puzzling over forecasts of the likely ramifications of the peace deal – and even over the nature of foreign diplomacy itself. Asli Aydintasbas, foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, has termed Trump’s approach as “upside-down peacemaking” in noting that he has thrown the entire tradition and understanding of how foreign policy works into the air.
“As the foreign policy community, we have prided ourselves on our ability to provide expertise, strategic depth and long-term vision to complex problems,” she wrote on Tuesday.
“We valued sequenced roadmaps, expert led-negotiations, and the painstaking architecture that underpins durable peace agreements. What if that no longer matters in the same way? The last few months have shown that a transactional, personalized and perpetually televised approach to diplomacy – as unserious as it may seem – can yield results.”
Those are questions for others to mull over. As far as Trump is concerned, when he cosigned the Trump Declaration for Peace and Prosperity along with Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, president of Egypt; Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, emir of Qatar; and Recep Tayip Erdoğan, president of Turkey, he was providing all the pieces of the jigsaw. Putting them all together should be child’s play.
“This took 3,000 years to get to this point,” he said, pen in hand on Monday.
“Can you believe it? And it’s going to hold up, too.”
