Ed note

Ah — the Donald!

Traditionally, journalists, political pundits, and talk show hosts wait just over three months before issuing a report card for a president’s first 100 days in office.

Not this time.

At The Cairo Review, it’s been a mad dash to keep up with President Donald Trump’s first thirty days as he continues to make sweeping changes not only on the domestic front but in all manner of international relations. 

We give him an A—for Astounding. Here’s why.

On Day 1, Trump sent Canada and Mexico into a frenzy by vowing to slap tariffs on their exports, effectively upending trade deals which have marked North American relations for 30 years. The jury is still out on how America’s dealings with its neighbors will change. Both Canada and Mexico have promised countermeasures of their own amid “buy local” campaigns and a wave of nationalistic fervor. American businesses say they will bear the brunt of the impending trade war that Trump claims will make America great again.

Waitaminute! Didn’t mainstream U.S. media promise that Trump was a washout in 2021 when he lost to Biden?

In her brilliant exposé of how the Democrats lost the White House, Diana Carlin, a professor emerita of communication at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri and expert on political communication with an emphasis on presidential rhetoric, traces their failures back to the campaign trail and televised debates.

“Harris … failed to make the case for Biden’s economic successes. It is not something that can be explained in a 30-second ad, but it could be explained in a debate which is watched by millions. She made a strategic mistake in not directly responding to the first question [about the cost of living in America] in her single debate against Trump,” writes Carlin.

No matter how one looks at his return to the White House, Trump has proven himself a master strategist who can woo even his fiercest critics.

“The Republicans who had disavowed Trump after January 6, one by one began realigning themselves as they started to realize that there was no alternative to him,” writes Gabriele Consentino, American University in Cairo assistant professor and author of The Infodemic: Geopolitics, Disinformation, and the Covid-19 Pandemic.

“Perhaps begrudgingly, or out of calculation, they nonetheless accepted Trump was not a passing fad, or a transient anomaly, but a structural, deeply-rooted presence in the landscape of American conservative politics,” Consentino asserts.

On the same day he returned to the White House, Trump took credit for the Hamas-Israel ceasefire, which had failed to materialize for several months prior. Ironically, former U.S. President Joe Biden also took credit.

In the weeks since the first handful of Israeli hostages emerged to be repatriated in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Trump has several times come close to steamrolling over the ceasefire agreement he earlier took credit for. With the bluster of rapidfire ultimatums, the U.S. president shocked the world when he announced that the United States would take over Gaza and transform it into beachfront property while removing its Palestinian residents to Egypt and/or Jordan. A day later, he vowed the Palestinians wouldn’t be allowed back. The proposition was so removed from reality that even visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t perform a happy dance.

“This bizarro world solution for the Middle East isn’t going to happen. There is no appetite around the globe for accepting millions of Palestinians from Gaza,” writes weekly columnist and senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington Hussein Ibish.

He says that there is no way for Jordan—even if it were willing to accept still more Palestinian refugees than those already living there—to receive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza.

Trump’s plans for Gaza, and the Middle East, are foreboding, writes Palestine Chronicle editor and author. “If he continues down the same path—maintaining blind U.S. support for Israel, as seen under the Biden administration and its predecessors—nothing will change, in fact, things could become even worse,” Baroud says.

There’s just no way to pin Trump down to a consistent policy; he rises and falls with market indicators it seems. But one thing’s for sure—the United States, and the world for that matter, will be dramatically transformed in the next four years.

Cairo Review Co-Managing Editors,

Karim Haggag

Firas Al-Atraqchi