Do Gifts To Trump Keep On Giving?

I doubt it--but expect everyone to keep giving anyway.

Q: What do Air Force One and Edan Alexander have in common?

The answer I’m looking for is not “they were both paid for by Qatar,” even though Qatar has historically been one of the largest funders of Hamas. The answer I’m looking for is: they were both gifts. And unlike in private relationships, where people may give each other gifts simply out of an expression of love, in public life gifts are given in order to curry favor and to induce in the receiving party the feeling of obligation. I should clarify that people give gifts for these reasons in private life as well—but love is a real thing between people, and gifts between friends don’t have to be transactional in this way. In public life they do.

I have no idea what Qatar wants from President Trump that induced them to give him such an extravagant present. I don’t know whether they are looking to receive a favor or whether they are looking to avoid a punishment. Neither do I know whether Trump planned to do something against America’s interest so as to extort a gift, so that, now that the gift has been granted, policy can revert to something more optimal, or if the opposite is true and he will now plan to turn policy away from America’s interests in Qatar’s service. Either way, what we’re looking at is that Qatar is trying to shape American policy by offering a personal reward to the president. I’m not so naive as to think that corruption of that sort hasn’t gone on frequently in the past in one form or another, but there’s something sobering about seeing it done so blatantly.

It’s likely, though, that Trump doesn’t plan on delivering anything in the way of policy, that this is pure grift. The possibility that Trump might do something terrible if he isn’t bribed, or that he might do something unexpectedly delightful if he is, has already proved enough to induce a variety of parties to shower him with unearned largesse. By the time it’s clear that his threats are largely bluffs, and his promises largely worthless, it’ll be too late to get the presents back, and retaliation in some other forum or manner would have its own costs. Better to give gifts that you can afford, and just write them off.

I suspect that’s what Hamas is going to learn. The release of Edan Alexander was a gift to Trump as much as the luxury 747 is, albeit this gift is political in nature, enhancing Trump’s stature both at home and with the Israeli public. What Hamas presumably wants in exchange is some assistance in restraining the Netanyahu government from its current plan to reconquer Gaza, expel the population from the north end of the Strip, and settle in for a long-term military occupation. I expect them to be disappointed. Netanyahu can look to Trump’s trade war with China, and his shooting war with the Houthis, and recognize that the right way to “negotiate” with Trump is to offer him absolutely nothing, and wait for him to fold. That’s a strategy Netanyahu has lots of familiarity with, since it’s how he’s treated every American president since he first entered politics.

So no, I don’t believe Trump has sided with the Israeli people against the Netanyahu government, as Yair Rosenberg put it, even though he did do something the Israeli people are happy about, and was only able to do it because he went behind the Netanyahu’s back. Rather, Trump is doing what he always does: leveraging his position to benefit himself. In this case, that also means an incalculable benefit to Edan and his family, and they should properly rejoice and be grateful to Trump for doing it. They, and the other hostage families, just shouldn’t expect more miracles. Nor should anyone else.

To be clear, I’m glad that Trump has gone from dreaming about an ethnically-cleansed Gaza as a seaside paradise to trying to get a cease-fire and bring home the hostages, just as I’m glad that he is backing down from the absurd excess of his trade war with China, and glad that he’s not blindly continuing a war against the Houthis that was achieving nothing. I hope that, similarly, he’ll get a new deal done with Iran. If he does, it’ll likely look an awful lot like the deal President Obama did that Trump tore up in his first term. Stubbornly pursuing a bad policy is a decidedly inferior strategy to reversing course. But it’s not a sign of negotiating brilliance or even minimally good judgment, and it shouldn’t lead anyone to expect actual progress. Except for one thing: Trump is remarkably good at convincing his own supporters that his twists and turns are some kind of brilliant strategy. And that does give him flexibility that not every leader has.

The optimistic case for Trump in general, relies entirely on that last point. If Trump gives up on war against the Houthis, or makes a deal with Iran, or reopens trade with China, or whatever else he does on any front to declare victory and go golfing, his supporters will be more likely to accept it than they would from any other president. Maybe on multiple fronts Trump will eventually wind up doing pretty much what another president would have done, only more chaotically and corruptly, causing a whole bunch of collateral damage along the way. But because his own followers won’t oppose him as they would some other president’s actions, when he does something it might actually stick.

Ain’t populism grand?