Everyone has their own go-to nickname for Donald Trump – the Yabba-Dabba Doofus. LBC's late-night weekend presenter Nick Abbot invites listeners to add their own epithets to an ever-growing glossary: Donny Bigmouth, the Commander-in-Tweet, Cheeto Benito…
When "Trumpoleon" insisted this week that he was in negotiations with Iran over ending the four-week-old conflict that he started, Iran itself issued a rebuttal – prompting comedian Jon Stewart to dub him "the Supreme Misleader".
But perhaps it's time for everyone to give Trumplethinskin a break? People, he's busy trying to prosecute an unwarranted and unpopular war and… well, laughing at him clearly isn't helping.
"Never mind making America great again," said Sean O'Grady of the president's seeming inability to stick to a strategy in the region. "Trump is actively weakening America's efforts to 'win', by any feasible definition." And thus "President Flip-flop" was born.
The ill-advised Iran excursion has also revived the "Taco" acronym that Trump loathes. "It seems to get harder with every day that Operation Epic Fury grinds on, and the president finds his options closing in on him," O'Grady added. "In the past, the world and, crucially, the markets have learned that 'Trump always chickens out'. Supposedly, he is able to declare victory on his own terms at any minute. So where is it?"
For veteran defence editor Robert Fox, Trump has been reduced from a belligerent commander-in-chief with the world's most powerful military at his fingertips to a bit-part video gamer. In this context, the White House and the Pentagon using Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto in their social media messaging is rather on the nose. And yet, "for all the kapow and wham of the White House's gamification of combat, back down in the real world of the bombing and blood, the Iranians seem pretty well prepared for their battle for survival".
As Tehran rejected outright the White House's 15-point plan to end the war – after the president's gnomic claim that Iran had offered him a "very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money" – Mary Dejevsky asked why the once gung-ho leader was seemingly content to tread diplomatic water.
"It is hard to escape the impression that Trump is playing everything by ear, even more than he habitually does. He appears to give no recognition to the fact that this is a live war, the implications of which are vastly more dangerous in substance and potential scale than anything he has embarked on hitherto – more dangerous by far than gaming the international tariff system, deporting irregular migrants, and decapitating the regime in Venezuela."
And it's not just Trump taking unfriendly fire. Holly Baxter wondered what has happened to JD Vance. Once a "smooth operator and an Ivy League-educated shape-shifter who likes to present himself like a plain-speakin' purveyor of simple home truths", the man who once declared himself happy to be Trump's right-hand man "because I know he won't recklessly send Americans to fight overseas", the Iran conflict has rendered him "the smallest man alive".
The last thing Trump's disappearing deputy needs right now is a barrage of disobliging nicknames. So let's hear them.
Until next week.
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