As we know from his first term, he can blather on about ideas and projects, and not follow up at all. He just moves on to the next crazy idea, with no explanation of what he said in the past.
But his comment that there will be “all hell to pay” if the Israel-Hamas conflict isn’t resolved by his inauguration seems to be leading to a cease-fire and hostage exchange. Considering his substantial failures that he’s never been taken to task for, I hate giving him this credit. But is it true? Is he really just “crazy like a fox?”
My take is that trump’s posturing, belligerent ‘loose cannon’ mentality is basically one big bluff. I mean, he may not consciously realize it himself even, but when you state something as a fact or threaten to take a certain action with nothing of real substance to back it up, it’s essentially a bluff, whether you realize you’re bluffing, or are not self-reflective enough to realize it.
The thing about bluffing is, it does occasionally work. Until it doesn’t. Then, when it fails, it can fail spectacularly. trump’s entire life and career have been one huge bloviating bluff, and it has been a crazy high-wire act of somehow working for him so far, incredulously. But it could go bad at any time. And the thing is, when things do go bad, they seem to go bad for everybody in trump’s orbit but him.
The thing is, Trump bombing the shit out of Gaza, and letting the Israelis bomb the shit out of it even more, is probably the most plausible use of military force he’s suggested.
They’re already shooting people over there, so he still gets to claim he hasn’t started a war
They’d be bombing Muslims, and Trump and his supporters hate Muslims, so they’d be all in on this.
Bombing Gaza won’t lose him any support he cares about; MAGA is all-in on “supporting Israel”, no matter what that looks like
It lets him “look tough” at virtually no cost to himself.
I can’t see any reason he wouldn’t order massive airstrikes on Day One, if they’re still shooting each other.
As is typical of the entire Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I think that this drastically overestimates how much influence the US has over the situation. Whatever they are doing there, it’s for their own reasons.
And the Palestinians are already grossly mismatched in military terms and the US certainly isn’t going to intervene on their side, so the US doesn’t really have have anything meaningful to the balance of power to offer.
In general, during his first term in office, Trump did more for Israel than he did for the USA. I don’t believe that to have been intentional, it was just the happenstance that Kushner and Pompeo were on the same page and that Trump didn’t care what they were doing - it was a rare instance of Trump’s people not acting at cross-purposes, during his administration. But, to a person in that region of the planet, it would seem like Trump has no limits when it comes to Israel and Netanyahu.
Israel can smash most of the countries that it lives near and the only thing, really, that prevents it is the warnings and admonishes by the USA. On the day that Joe Biden leaves and Donald Trump steps in, that barrier comes down. Israel has no force preventing it from going even more extreme.
Hamas only had until Netanyahu is freed from the shackles to survive. They would need to negotiate a settlement now, whether Trump said anything or not, because they know that he’s going to let Israel do whatever. So I wouldn’t say that Trump is making any particular threat nor any particular bluff. While it is his presence that is causing Hamas’ about face, he’s more cashing in on Israel’s overwhelming strength, than projecting any particular strength of his own. I don’t actually expect him to involve himself, and he doesn’t need to, either.
Right now, at least, President Felon has an entire political party propping him up on that high-wire. Once they decide that he’s outlived his usefulness, that support will be swiftly removed.