Trump always lets his friends and allies down, and has now doomed himself

“You always knew precisely where you stood with him because he always let you down.” Friends and allies of Donald Trump have ample cause to echo David Niven’s remark about Errol Flynn.

By far the most important of those friends and allies are the American people. They have twice elected Trump their President. To his supporters he offered an irresistible chance to humiliate the condescending liberals who neither knew nor cared what unfashionable Americans thought.

Trump also appealed to the isolationism which has always been a powerful current in American opinion, often the dominant one, expressed not only by the refusal of the American people to go to war in 1914 and 1939, but by no less a figure than George Washington in his tremendous Farewell Address in 1796:

“Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?”

Trump promised to put America First, never to sacrifice American lives and treasure in foreign wars, and in a primary debate in 2016 described George W Bush’s Iraq War as “a big fat mistake”.

By attacking Iran, Trump has broken this promise and betrayed his supporters. As the conservative American commentator Christopher Caldwell observes in a piece for The Spectator,

“The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project.”

The price of petrol has shot up, bringing the war to the attention of American voters every time they fill up their cars, and this sharp rise in the cost of living is something the President cannot justify to them.

Nor can he justify the war to the wider world. No clear war aims were worked out before embarking on this adventure, so no clear war aims can now be stated, especially as the war itself is full of complications which an informed observer might have foreseen, but which were not dreamed of in Mar-a-Lago.

Were the claim by some that he acted at the behest of the Israelis true, this would in no way exculpate him. The responsibility for American involvement plainly rests with the President. The buck stops with Trump.

The President attempts to distract us from questions about morality and responsibility by playing to his undoubted strengths as a reality TV performer.

To go on winning at that tawdry game you have to go on being more disgusting than the other performers, again and again outdoing them in bad taste, and you also need at frequent intervals to change the subject, or the viewers will get bored and switch over to another channel.

Trump needs to find a quick end to the war or else American voters will switch over, and at the mid-term elections in November will turn him into the lamest of lame ducks.

The Iranian regime knows this, and can play for time.

Nobody can be certain how the war will end. How delighted one would be if the present regime in Tehran were to be overthrown and replaced with a constitutional monarchy which is on good terms with its neighbours.

But even Trump holds back from promising such a happy outcome. Much more likely, at the best, is an unhappy deal which restores freedom of navigation in the Gulf, gets a certain amount of oil and gas flowing once more through the Strait of Hormuz, but leaves open the danger of further disruption.

Freedom of navigation is and always has been in Britain’s interest, and we ought to be willing to play a full, long-term part in restoring and maintaining it in the Gulf.

We need to remember that Trump is not eternal, and that our policy should not be distorted by vain attempts to conciliate him. Channel 4 has just broadcast a three-part series, The Tony Blair Story, which recounted that Prime Minister’s energetic and in the short term triumphant campaign after the attack on the World Trade Center on 11th September 2001 to get closer than any other foreign leader to President George W Bush.

From that flowed Blair’s decision to deploy British troops alongside the Americans in the invasion of Iraq, followed by the discovery that no plans had been drawn up for the country once Saddam Hussein had been overthrown.

The Channel 4 programmes show a vulnerable old man who longs to convince us that a quarter of a century ago he did the right thing, but instead demonstrates that an air of moral seriousness, though much less vulgar than Trump’s antics, does not necessarily lead to wise decisions.

Sir Keir Starmer began by getting on surprisingly well with Trump, and hoped to follow up this success by sending Peter Mandelson to Washington.

It is curious to reflect that this manoeuvre may instead precipitate Starmer’s downfall.

Nor is his relationship with Trump as good as it was. The President now says, “Keir was willing to send two aircraft carriers after we’ve won,” and adds, “Unfortunately Keir is not Winston Churchill.”

Which prompts the thought that Trump is not Franklin D Roosevelt.