Most people were afraid he would. Only a few naive optimists were convinced he wouldn’t do what he said, or promised, to do.
Still, they had some grounds for their optimism. Trump spins out such monstrous schemes and aspirations on a daily basis, it’s easy to assume “this just isn’t going to happen”.
Between you and me, I don’t know whether they will or they won’t. What I do know for sure, though, is that he will try to make them happen. And with all the fallout they entail.
Meaning, we can’t predict whether Trump will annex Canada or purchase Greenland, whether he’ll take over the administration of the Panama Canal, end the conflict in Ukraine, or turn Gaza into a Riviera.
We don’t even know if the global trade war he’s promising his audience will become a reality. Because you can raise your tariffs, but others can just go ahead and raise theirs, too.
But the new American President’s ambition “to change the planet” is obvious. Although—and I don’t have to remind you—he hasn’t engaged seriously with China yet.
Of course, whether the planet will change is another matter.
And at what cost. Because the thing is, all these wonderful plans cost money. In fact, they cost far more than Trump can afford, no matter how much his billionaire friends pony up.
And this, I hope, is a language the new President will understand—better than those of politics, or diplomacy.
So will Trump be confronted by reality at some point? I’m not sure.
After all, he held on to the belief (or said he did) that the 2020 elections had been “stolen” for four years, and in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. He even pardoned the morons who took him seriously and ended up in the joint.
Because that’s what Trumpworld is like. It’s a closed system: self-contained and self-referential.
So there’s no way to assess the validity, or even the cost, of the stuff he comes out with. No one knows how he weighs them up himself in his head.
In this sense, in his world, he may indeed aspire to annex Canada and turn Gaza into an Atlantic City on the Med.
But Trump’s isn’t the only world on the planet. And that’s where things get confusing.
It’s the difference between ambition and annihilation.
