Someone should tell Politico's senior foreign affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi that Team America: World Police was meant to be a comedy, not an instructional film. Yet on Sunday Toosi was strategizing how to get President-elect Trump deep into the Syria mess that he wants to avoid.
Her story in which she ditches any hint of attempting to be an objective reporter in favor of a flat out advocate for foreign interference by Trump is made crystal clear in the title of her more than obvious pitch piece, "How to Convince a Reluctant Trump to Get Involved in a Liberated Syria."
“American leadership matters for the whole world,” Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former ambassador in Washington, said during the IISS Manama Dialogue. “It is time for America, under your presidency, to change the course of this troubled region.”
Maybe the prince was trying to boost the ego of a self-obsessed politician, a man whose famous quotes include “I alone can fix it.”
Pssst! Nahal, if you want to nudge someone to take your advice, perhaps not the best idea to describe him in public as having "the ego of a self-obsessed politician."
Toosi continues revealing that her oozing TDS condescension trumps (pun intended) any sense of diplomacy on her part:
...based on my conversations with half a dozen people in Trump’s orbit and others who’ve worked for him, telling the incoming president that America should take the lead on some global issue is more likely to annoy than persuade him. It might even backfire.
The better approach? Show him what you’re doing for the United States, especially if you’re investing in the American economy; lay out your plan to solve the latest crisis; and assure him that you’re willing to take the lead. Then, maybe, he might help you.
It’s not what America can do for you, but what you can do for America — if not Trump himself.
...to convince Trump, the regional leaders may have to put a finer point on things. They could, for instance, tout the money U.S. businesses could make helping rebuild Syria.
I won’t sugarcoat all this, though. Similar arguments about Ukraine have had limited effect on Trump. Some serious creativity will be needed. But given that Trump is inconsistent and unpredictable, who knows what he will do, even about a country he has described as “sand and death.”
Toosi concludes her interventionist appeal by condescendingly suggesting waving what she thinks are the Trump version of shiny trinkets in front of him.
“Check the sovereign wealth funds,” one Arab diplomat advised me.
He might want to take along some screenshots of those investment portfolios the next time he sees Trump.
Now you wouldn't be thinking that Trump could get stuck in a Middle East quagmire would you, Nahal? You only have what are in the best interests of America and Trump in mind without any thought about what happened with Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam....or Bush/Cheney in Iraq.
