Sarah Sanders has quit … hasn’t she? It’s hard to tell. But it’s certain that Hope Hicks is long gone, and so is anyone else who stood between Donald Trump and the camera lights. And Trump is convinced that no one can explain his “policies” the way he can.
After being the only person convinced that his disastrous interview with George Stephanopoulos was a net positive, Trump is apparently determined to launch a new interview offensive, handing out hours of his time to anyone who asks. Next up on the block is Time, which got the chance to ask Trump about his Iran policy on the brink of his declaring war, psych, not war.
But the actions in the Persian Gulf turn out to be a mess too bogged-down in contradictions for even Trump to keep straight. Asked whether he believed the evidence suggesting that Iran was behind recent attacks on oil tankers, he deployed a triple negative … with a half-twist. “Well, I don’t think too many people don’t believe it,” said Trump. “I think people say they don’t believe it because they don’t want to get drawn in. But they don’t, they don’t, uh, they don’t believe it.” Is that … yes? No? Eggplant? It’s hard to tell.
About the only thing really clear from the interview is that there isn’t a question that Trump can’t answer by claiming that President Obama made bad deals and that the world has been taking advantage of American’s naïveté.
But maybe the biggest chunk of Trump’s interview is devoted to making the case that America shouldn’t be in the Persian Gulf confronting Iran at all. Trump argues that the United States has little need for the oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, and that it’s actually other nations that depend on that oil. “China gets 60% of their oil there,” says Trump. “So many of the other places get such vast amounts of oil there. We get very little.” It’s wrong, Trump says, to think the United States is there for the oil, because we don’t need that oil. Then Trump launches into a prolonged ramble about how America has been doing too much for the world for too long while everyone else hangs onto our coattails. “You look at China, it’s a big beneficiary—they don’t pay anything. Japan is a big beneficiary, they don’t pay anything. Many other countries, they don’t pay anything. … And we’re there keeping the world as, you know, we’re there keeping the oil flowing. Right?“
Which brings up a really, really good question: Why is the United States on the brink of fighting a war for all those countries Trump views as grifters?
The Time reporter seems equally baffled by Trump’s claims that the U.S. doesn’t need anything from the Middle East at the same time as it’s rolling more military resources into the Middle East. And by Trump’s claims that we’re doing this for a lot of ungrateful countries unwilling to shoulder their own burdens. The reporter asks if Trump believes that his criticisms of the U.S. intelligence community, combined with the errors made in the Iraq invasion, have generated a “credibility problem” in trying to build an international coalition to deal with Iran. “No, I don’t think we have any problems,” replies Trump. But he doesn’t mean that other nations believe U.S. intelligence. He means that he’s finally gotten all his people into place, so no one is feeding him intelligence he doesn’t like. “I have a good group of people now. I have people that I want. And we have some terrific people, and no, that’s not a problem.” Not one word of that speaks to how much faith other nations have in the U.S. But however much that may be, it can’t be helped by the fact that Trump immediately turns back to, “What is a problem is that the United States takes care of the world, and the world doesn’t take care of the world. The world doesn’t want to take care of itself.”
On and on through the interview, Trump hammers the point that “very rich countries” are both the ones who benefit from the oil coming from the Middle East and the ones who are depending on the United States to keep that oil moving. None of which explains why Trump, if he really believes this, is willing to spend hundreds of millions deploying U.S. forces and risk a full-scale conflict that … doesn’t benefit the country.
Trump is also asked about his inability to build a coalition with European allies that have stuck with the Iran nuclear treaty even after Trump walked away. But no, says Trump, his relationships with Europe are “far better now than under the Obama Administration.” And he has proof. “I have very good relationships in Europe. The Prime Minister of U.K., the Queen of England — we had a great time. We had a great time.”
But on the subject of Europe, Trump couldn’t help but return to hitting the topic of all those freeloading countries again. “It’s very unfair. Then on top of it, we protect them, from NATO, in the form of NATO.” That sounds … sure. Why not?
There is a reason why the United States might defend the movement of oil in the Strait of Hormuz, even if not a drop got burned in a Ford or Chevy in America—oil is fungible. A loss of availability anywhere affects the prices everywhere. But then, the biggest threat to the international availability of oil at the moment is the U.S. and Iran glaring at each other across a very narrow strait.