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Bullying as "Diplomacy": Trump Threatens Jordan and Egypt [1]
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Date: 2025-02-10
Donald Trump is a bully. He was a bully as a child, he was a bully in the debates, he was a bully to his campaign staff, a bully in his first term, and a bully to the world. (You can supply other examples yourselves; I have a diary to write and can’t stay all night.) The point is, bullying is how he “negotiates” with the world. The latest example was just reported this evening: Trump Says He May Cut Aid to Jordan and Egypt if They Don’t Take Gazans:
President Trump said on Monday that he could cut aid to Jordan and Egypt if they refused his demand to permanently take in most Palestinians from Gaza, substantially increasing the pressure on key allies in the region to back his audacious proposal to relocate the entire population of the territory in order to redevelop it.
This is a familiar tactic for Trump; he tried it on Ukraine back in 2019, as we all remember, holding back weapons that Congress had approved until Zelenskii agreed to help him get dirt on his political opponent. (It almost worked, but instead it got him impeached, though not convicted.)
It’s not going to work this time, either. Trump thinks he got his way when he bullied Canada and Mexico with tariff threats into strengthening their borders, but they were both in the process of doing that anyway. But in this case, Jordan and Egypt have no intention of taking in the Gazans; they have no room for them, no way to care for them, other Arab countries would rise up against them, the Gazans don’t want to go. And it violates international law.
Not that Trump cares any more about international law than he does about our laws, the ones he swore to uphold (leaving his hand off the Bible just in case). But he will not be able to bully Jordan and Egypt into doing something they have no intention of doing, and that could quite likely get their leaders killed (viz., Anwar Sadat) if they did agree to do it.
When Canada and Mexico agreed to do what they were going to do anyway, Trump could boast that his bullying won him a victory. He won’t be able to do that this time. Trump is trying to rule the US by fear, and thinks he can rule the world the same way.
In this case, though, the very resistable force is confronting an immovable object. However Trump responds to being thwarted this way, it will not be pretty. Nor can it be hidden.
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