Remember the Gaza Riviera? Two weeks is a millennium in the news cycle
Opinion
The start of Donald Trump’s second presidency felt like a lifetime ago. How the British press has covered his many manoeuvres since speaks volumes.
If a week is a long time in politics, two weeks is the equivalent of a millennium in the news cycle.
As for way back to the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidency — that’s an eternity.
Once there was a big, big story involving Trump and the Middle East. It was truly remarkable in every sense. The Americans would take over and own the Gaza Strip and its 2m people would leave voluntarily (or not). The rubble would be turned into, by the magic of capitalism, the “Gaza Riviera”.
Some of the commentary was as extraordinary as the pronouncement.
‘Strategic genius’
Stephen Pollard, writing in the Daily Mail, said it was “hard to overstate the bravery and sheer strategic genius of this revolutionary idea”.
The former editor of The Jewish Chronicle said that everyone he had spoken to had loved the idea, without saying who exactly they had been. Pollard went on to say that a new world is unfolding and, after so many years watching the mire of the Arab-Israeli relationship, he was “thrilled to witness it”.
American troops in Gaza? Really?
Anyway, the slight problem with the “strategic genius of this revolutionary idea” is that it is never going to happen.
The Palestinians have no intention of moving from what is internationally recognised as their land. Removal by force of 2m people would be a war crime and neighbouring Jordan and Egypt have made it clear that they will not accept 2m, as have other Arab states.
The art of Trump’s deal
Less than two weeks since it was announced, the “Gaza Riviera” is barely mentioned and the news caravan has moved on.
Another Trump fan is Alex Brummer, coincidently also of the Daily Mail. According to Brummer: “We are witnessing Trump’s Art of the Deal on the world stage — a real-time masterclass in brinkmanship. Buckle up!”
He cited Colombia backing down on receiving deportation flights, and Mexico and Canada agreeing to strengthen border patrols to stop narcotics and illegal immigrants.
Actually, Colombia’s complaint was about conditions on deportation flights, and Mexico and Canada “conceded” border controls had already been given to Joe Biden.
Brummer also seemed unaware that Tony Schwartz, who wrote The Art of the Deal for Trump, has described it as a work of fiction and that he suffers from ”serious remorse” for helping to give credibility to such a person.
Harry Cole of The Sun is a potential Trump supporter who wrote last month: “Whisper it… Trump may do a good job.” His Sun colleague Douglas Murray is rather more overt and has been listing all the things that the UK can learn from the US president.
Murray approves of the fact that Trump has abolished USAID, founded by John F Kennedy, citing some of its individual — apparently bizarre — decisions while forgetting its main mission is against hunger and disease.
A small problem: hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of vaccines and other medicines are sitting in warehouses approaching their use-by dates because there is now no-one to distribute them.
Ukraine strategy
No-one can doubt former UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s resolution in supporting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine. In fact, many would regard it as the only tangible achievement of his prime ministership.
Yet Johnson, like others, seems to have caught the Trump contagion. On Saturday, while declaiming that “this war will only be over when [Vladimir] Putin finally understands that Ukraine is never coming back under his thumb”, Johnson said Trump “has exactly the courage now needed, at this critical moment, to stand up to Putin”.
A few days later, the art of the deal involved making endless concessions to Putin and excluding both Ukraine and Europe from any negotiations, ahead of a likely two-person “summit”.
You don’t have to be a clairvoyant to foresee that Trump is likely to give Russia all the Ukraine land that Putin has occupied by force and Zelenskyy will have to agree, otherwise he loses all US military support.
Reverse ferret
Since the unilateral Trump talks on Ukraine, there has been a bit of a reverse ferret in the British media and the art of the deal nonsense has largely disappeared.
Most media outlets have emphasised the scale of the crisis facing not just Ukraine but also the UK and Europe, following Monday’s emergency meeting in Paris that failed to reach a consensus.
The Daily Telegraph, which must be well-placed to be aware of the damaging strategic implications of Trump’s manoeuvre, gave Sir Keir Starmer space on its editorial page to argue that, if necessary, British troops could be used in Ukraine to police any peace settlement.
In fact, Starmer is emerging in a leadership role, alongside French president Emmanuel Macron. Even if the German press called Starmer’s initiative “annoying and premature”.
And in other news…
Most British media organisations concentrated on the Ukraine crisis. Except, oddly, the Daily Mail, which on Tuesday splashed on Tory leader Kemi Badenoch demanding we in the UK all get off our knees and fight against the “poisonous woke ideology” and defend free speech, free markets and the rule of law.
Perhaps she has realised that all of those rights are now under threat in Ukraine and some of them in the US.
At least in the US some of the media organisations are fighting back.
The Associated Press has refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, at the cost of having its reporters banned from the White House and Air Force One, while CBS programme 60 Minutes has focused on the legal challenges to Trump diktats — many of which will turn out to be illegal.
The trouble is that the endless flow of Trump executive orders — more than 50 signed so far and rising by the day — threatens to fill up the courts and they come after the event, when the chaos has already been caused.
In times of turmoil, at least we can rely on the Daily Star for a sense of perspective. The most important story of the day for the title was that Gen Z is returning to bangers in a big way.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.