TPM Reader PT has a counterpoint to my post from last night on the offer Trump can’t resist. I’m not sure whether I agree with me or with him. If nothing else PT hits key elements of Trump’s MO …
I’m going to lay down a marker here: the US is not going to join the attacks on Iran. I say this because I think that Trump’s being driven by an entirely different dynamic than his desire to stamp his name on what looks increasingly like an “easy win.”
Let’s consider the context: just 3 days ago, Trump’s military parade was a bust and left him a laughingstock. Meanwhile, something like 2% of the population of the US turned out to protest his policies and his Presidency.
I think that Trump needed to be back to being the center of attention, to recapture the spotlight. I mean, it seems clear that his Presidency is all about watching shows about himself on Fox News, right? So he needed something that could chase the parade and the protests off the front page and put him back in a way that was not humiliating to him. Voila! He changed his tune on Iran.
Having done that, of course, he’s now doing what he learned to do from reality TV: he’s tuning his daily messages on the topic to keep it front-and-center, and this is accomplished by teasing the final decision for as long as possible, keeping everyone on the edges of our seats while we wait to see what he’s going to do.
Given his motivations, though, the last thing he wants to do is to actually send in US military forces. Why?
Because then he stops being the center of the story! The center of the story becomes the actual US military forces that are carrying out operations, the actual state of the fight in Iran, etc. Plus: it would let Netanyahu preen as the guy who was so powerful he coerced Donald Trump into supporting Israel’s fight against Iran. In other words, once he does that, he sets the stage for Netanyahu to be the big hero in the media, not Trump.
Given that background, Trump simply has to snub Netanyahu and avoid moving the actual military into the center of attention.
