Donald Trump has put his own name on the United States Institute of Peace at its now empty building at 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue. He used the scene today to preside over the signing of a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Experts doubt the agreement will stick.
Trump’s peacebuilding record is nonsense. In Gaza, the Israelis continue to bombard the Palestinians, despite his much-ballyhooed ceasefire. No Muslim countries have been willing to deploy peacekeepers. Israel doesn’t really want them. The entire “second phase” of the Trump 28-point plan is now in doubt. The Ukraine peace plan is in pieces too, since Trump’s pal Putin isn’t interested. He thinks he can buy off Trump from insisting on a ceasefire with business deals for Trump’s friends and family. That’s surely true.
I won’t review each of the other six wars Trump claims to have ended. Others have debunked the claims. The claim for Azerbaijan/Armenia is false–the war ended with an Azeri victory during the Biden Administration. But Trump may deserve some credit for the subsequent peace deal that includes a transit corridor. Let’s wait and see whether it gets implemented. The claim about ending a war between Kosovo and Serbia is just a lie, since there was no war in either Trump’s first or second term.
Trump’s war crimes in the Caribbean belie his claim to be a peacemaker. While there may be no court that can impose accountability, he has murdered dozens of alleged drug traffickers without providing a scintilla of evidence that they were in fact drug traffickers. And even if they were, who gave him the authority to kill them on the high seas?
The Norwegians who decide on Nobel peace prize winners are nowhere near dumb enough to take this man seriously. He is a blowhard. His claims are mostly distractions from his disastrous record as President of the United States. The Americans are finally catching on. His poll numbers are in the cellar.
Trump’s abuse of the USIP building requires comment too. I trust the courts will eventually decide it is property of the nongovernmental organization that ran USIP, not the US government. As I understand the matter, even the land on which it stands was transferred to that entity by the Navy before construction.
But Trump is no stranger to theft. He is constantly trying to steal credit from his predecessors, has wantonly destroyed part of the White House without proper permits, and is stiffing the contractors who did his bidding. How anyone would ever do business with this man is hard for me to fathom.
Trump’s name will of course come off the building with the inauguration of the next Democratic president. He’ll try to prevent that from ever happening, but his efforts so far look to me too feeble to stem the blue tide that is swelling. Trump is a master manipulator, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get away with it forever. The racism, misogyny, economic illiteracy, and disdain for decency will catch up with him sooner or later. At least I hope so.
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