“Wag the Dog” was a 1997 film starring Robert DiNiro and Dustin Hoffman. A U.S. president is caught in a sex scandal only two weeks after taking office. The White House turns to DiNiro and Hoffman to create a foreign threat, in this case Albanians who are seeking to use nuclear weapons against the United States. Americans buy the story. The president escapes controversy.
President Trump obviously has watched the movie because he is a master of deflection. His decision to abandon our Kurdish allies in Syria has created a firestorm in Washington, which was precisely his intention. The drumroll of headlines about him asking the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son was building to uncomfortable levels. Trump needed to get the news cycle to move on, which he knows how to do because of his experience on television. He says he hates the media but he is a master manipulator.
The Kurdish decision was a relatively minor one in the overall scheme of global affairs. But what else might Trump do to distract from the impeachment proceedings? Might he declare a sudden victory in negotiations with the Chinese even though they concede nothing to him? The fact that he has publicly asked the Chinese to also investigate Biden’s son means his negotiating clout has been lessened. But that might not stop him from proclaiming victory.
How about a sudden summit with Vladimir Putin? Or a missile attack on Tehran? An invasion of Venezuela? Nobody knows how far he will go. And that’s truly scary.
