'Peacemaker' president Trump has botched an awful lot of peace: conservative

How many times has President Donald Trump blundered a path for peace. Let conservative Dispatch writer Kevin D. Williamson count the ways.

“Campaigning for the White House in 2024, retired game show host Donald Trump insisted that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war on his first day in office — maybe before. He repeated that boast more than 50 times — it clearly was not a one-off remark,” said Williamson. “[But] the war rages on, of course, and we have a pretty good idea of who is going to put a stop to that war: the Ukrainians.”

“How are the great peacemaker’s other projects going?” Williamson then asked before whacking Trump’s “ceasefire” in the U.S.-Iran-Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict.

It’s “a funny kind of ceasefire, in which the firing never ceases,” Williamson explained. “Those are the two big ones. Nothing you would call an unqualified success. We did wreck the Iranian navy, much of which might as well have been ordered from a 1972 Montgomery Ward catalog.”

Last year, Trump claimed he negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. But there were two parties who disputed Trump’s description, notably India and Pakistan. India, in fact, rejected the Trump administration’s offer to act as a mediator in the Kashmir dispute, Williamson reminded.

Trump also claims to have negotiated a truce in the Thai-Cambodian dispute, although neither the Thais nor the Cambodians seem to have got the word, said Williamson. Within a few weeks of the alleged ceasefire, a half million residents of the border area were forced to flee fighting and Thai flags were being raised on invaded territory.

Trump also brags that he negotiated a “historic” peace deal in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But fighting has, in fact, intensified since the “peace deal” got announced.

“In the months since Trump’s announced intention to intervene in the Egypt-Ethiopia dispute, there has been no fighting,” concedes Williamson. “Also, there was no fighting before, no war per se to be resolved. Trump did cause some head-scratching in the Arab world when he talked about his first encounter with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who ‘was in a hotel, and I met him, and we fell deeply in love.’ A strange thing to say, but, then, Trump has for years been losing ground in what evidently is a hopeless war with his frontal lobe.”

Trump wants himself a Nobel Peace Prize, said Williamson. It’s shiny and Barack Obama got one that Williamson said he did not deserve, so why shouldn’t Trump?

“Unhappily for the president, the only peace prize he has secured for himself so far is the one invented for him by a corrupt soccer organization seeking to curry favor with his administration,” said Williamson.

Ronald Reagan wanted to be a peacemaker, said Williamson, but Reagan was a serious man surrounded by serious men.

“Donald Trump, in contrast, is a social media addict who watches cable news all day and is surrounded by sycophants, grifters, and incompetents,” said Williamson. “It is remarkable to note that even as the U.S. military has depleted its weapons reserves to dangerous levels, the priority for the strutting, preening secretary of defense is … testosterone screening for U.S. troops. It is as though these goofs wish to advertise their insecurities.”

“As a peacemaking team, the Trump administration has an almost unblemished record of failure. That being the case, they might wish to change the subject,” Williamson suggested. “Should we talk about inflation?”