The sooner the US\u2019s former friends realise the old global order is over, the sooner they can organise to regain power and agency \u2013 the only language Trump understands<\/p>\n
A resonant phrase during Donald Trump\u2019s first administration was the advice to take him \u201cseriously, but not literally\u201d. It was a singularly detrimental expression, widely quoted by politicians<\/a> and the media. Its adoption fit with the position many felt most comfortable taking: Trump was bad, but he wasn\u2019t smart. He wasn\u2019t intentional. He wasn\u2019t calculated and deliberate. He sounded off, but rarely followed up with action. He was in essence a misfiring weapon that could do serious damage, but mostly by accident.<\/p>\n The residue of that approach still persists<\/a>, even in analysis that describes Trump\u2019s first executive orders as a campaign of \u201cshock and awe\u201d, as if it were just a matter of signalling rather than executing. Or that his plan for Gaza is to be taken \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 seriously, not literally<\/a>. When that was suggested to Democratic senator Andy Kim, he lost it<\/a>. \u201cI understand people are bending over backwards to try to mitigate some of the fallout from these statements that are made,\u201d he told Politico. But Trump is \u201cthe commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world \u2026 if I can\u2019t take the words of the president of the United States to actually mean something, rather than needing some type of oracle to be able to explain, I just don\u2019t know what to think about when it comes to our national security.\u201d<\/p>\n Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The sooner the US\u2019s former friends realise the old global order is over, the sooner they can organise to regain power and agency \u2013 the only language Trump understands A resonant phrase during Donald Trump\u2019s first administration was the advice to take him \u201cseriously, but not literally\u201d. It was a singularly detrimental expression, widely quoted … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}