Trump tells truth people do not want to hear

Matthew Paris:
Kissing Theresa May better after roughing her up was neither contrition nor revision. Donald Trump plays soft cop to his own hard cop. It was that first stomach-punch that was indicative. The president was right first time about a US-UK trade deal and he knows it. The Sun headline was exactly what he intended, while the subsequent “there, there, I didn’t really mean it” should be understood as a kind of exquisite torture: as a cat plays with a mouse. Mr Trump does it because he can.

This visit by the 45th president of the United States will be viewed as a turning point in 21st-century British and European politics. As we digest, we will see the occasion as more important than any childish barrage balloons, Trumpish kicks at our hapless prime minister or exchange of discourtesies can possibly convey. No future president will want to unwind what he said about Nato, about special trade deals for Britain or about the choices facing us.

Because this is not really about Donald J Trump. It is about great forces in history. It is about America: an America of which Mr Trump may strike us as a disagreeable caricature, but of which he is also in some ways a distillation.

It is about how nations with almost unlimited power use it, have always used it, and always will. Power has no need to act refined. The way Trump combs his hair, wipes his nose, ties his tie or treats his hosts is not the point. He can handle his hair, his nose, his tie and his hosts any way he likes. He is president of the United States of America. “ ‘I want’ doesn’t get” is what we British children were brought up to believe. A US president is empowered to adopt a different maxim, and we may shake our tiny British fists in rage and horror, but we must finally face it. Yapping by my fellow British liberals is beginning to grate.
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Life is too short to deconstruct the mental processes of Donald Trump, so let me quote my former Times colleague Michael Gove. After interviewing the president in January 2017 for this newspaper, the (now) environment secretary remarked: “Intelligence comes in many forms.” Properly understood, the remark was neither sarcastic nor fawning, but puzzled and thoughtful.

Way back in the last century, Margaret Thatcher’s rather fastidious and left-of-centre colleague, the (then) Norman St John-Stevas remarked “the trouble with Margaret is that when she speaks without thinking she says what she thinks”.

Both men were, in their ways, describing the same phenomenon: the crude honesty than can come with brute strength.

Donald Trump doesn’t care to think too much before he speaks and has a habit of saying what he thinks. And the trouble with us, not him, is that what he thinks is what plenty of more genteel and considered folk do actually think, but don’t like to say.
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This is his roundabout way of saying Trump was right about NATO members not pulling their load and was right about the strategic blunder of Germany relying on Russia for 70 percent of its energy.

Besides the piece is also brilliant for using the quote about Margaret Thatcher's occasional bluntness.

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