FIFA’s phony “peace prize” can’t redeem Donald Trump

The peace president accepted a very special honor last week Having been denied the Nobel Peace Prize he so desperately covets Donald Trump was awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize which was invented only last month by global soccer czar Gianni Infantino The prize is a large trophy accompanied by a medal that made Trump so excited he snatched it from the box like a furtive five-year-old with a box of chocolates and put it on himself Infantino who is president of FIFA and one of the newer members of Trump s admiring entourage for particular reason he exhibited up a inadequate weeks ago at a ceremony for the Gaza peace process showered Trump with meaningless praise saying You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action for what you have obtained in your way but you obtained it in an incredible way He did not elaborate on exactly what actions he had in mind but before the ceremony Trump had to pretend that he didn t know he was receiving the prize and was petitioned whether that might conflict with a accomplishable military strike against Venezuela He replied that he had settled eight wars and that a ninth was coming which nobody s ever done before He added I really want to save lives I don t need prizes I need to save lives and I ve saved millions and millions of lives and that s really what I want to do He didn t mention the killings in missile strikes on Caribbean fishing boats Presumably those lives aren t among the millions he says he s saved Related Fox News turns sour on Trump financial sector and so do his voters The optics of this silly flattery by FIFA juxtaposed with the burgeoning Pentagon shame in which it appears that Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are overseeing a program of repeated war crimes against people in small boats thousands of miles from U S shores was stark Members of Congress emerged from a briefing with the Navy admiral in charge of the Sept strike in which two survivors were summarily executed as they floated on broken pieces of a small speedboat Legislators looked ashen and somber and one of their number Rep Jim Himes D-Conn declared it one of the the majority troubling things he d ever witnessed Several Republicans however such as Sen Tom Cotton of Arkansas seemed highly aroused by these same images reveling in the gruesome deaths of what seemed to be low-level local operators maybe paid a limited hundred dollars to take their cargo from Venezuela to a Caribbean island whence it may be shipped to Europe Hegseth himself gave a fiery speech in California the next day promising that the U S intended to continue the killing and telling the audience These narcoterrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere and we are hunting them with the same sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaida We are tracking them we are killing them and we will keep killing them so long as they are poisoning our people with narcotics so lethal that they re tantamount to chemical weapons It s estimated that million Americans have used cocaine the drug that is largest part likely being trafficked to Europe from Venezuela If that countless people have ingested chemical weapons we have bigger problems Fentanyl which is a genuinely deadly drug is almost all trafficked over the southern margin and usually imported by Americans Will Company Trump be executing those narcoterrorists too Cotton says no but there s no logical reason why they should stop given their current rationale We need your help to stay independent Subscribe in the present day to sponsorship Heather Digby Parton s columns As the president performed his Trump dance and the Village People delievered YMCA at the FIFA prize event the U S military struck another boat killing four more people The strange dissonance became even more jarring when the administration at last circulated its long-awaited National Safeguard Strategy Salon s Andrew O Hehir makes short work of that embarrassing document It s a long-term deep-horizon manifesto for the reactionary-revolutionary Red Caesar regime dreamed of by Stephen Miller JD Vance and the bro-genius billionaires It imagines unilateral U S domination of the Western Hemisphere the Monroe Doctrine but with drones and AI a Crusader-style reconquest of secular Europe by the white right and a chummy division of the rest of the world into old-school spheres of influence involving Russia China the Saudi monarchy and whoever else gets invited Meanwhile here at home Trump continues his war against all immigrants He is now engaging in rank racism calling Somali immigrants garbage and threatening to revoke the citizenship of anyone he finds distasteful which by pure coincidence seems to mean all people of color He is banning half the world s population from entering the U S and virtually ending the asylum process for everyone except white South Africans The sight of masked armed secret police in unmarked vehicles brutally assaulting anyone they choose on streets all across America is straight out of Nicolae Ceau escu s Romania The language he uses is hostile cruel vulgar and degrading As the president performed his Trump dance and the Village People delievered YMCA at the FIFA prize event the U S military struck another boat killing four more people Now consider the absurdity of Trump s insistence that he s a prince of peace and just cares about saving lives millions of lives He literally announced As president my highest aspiration is to bring peace and stability to the world Sycophants are knocking each other over to give him prizes and kiss his ring telling him exactly what he wants to hear But the bigger question is whether anyone s in fact buying it This inconsistency has consistently been present in the MAGA coalition but until of late it hasn t been quite as obvious It s not clear that his base is happy about it Trump has unfailingly sold himself as a strongman and his bizarre phony machismo has had inexplicable appeal for his followers Now he s falling asleep in citizens spending the majority of his time redecorating and partying and otherwise looking weaker every day His paeans to peace strike a discordant note with the people who love him best for his nasty smart-ass cracks and strong-arm tactics Meanwhile the minority of old-style Republicans who would love for him to stop acting like a nasty schoolyard bully aren t happy either since they still hope he may behave like a serious president Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts There hasn t been any specific polling on this weird MAGA-world contradiction But if you believe the overall numbers Trump is now unpopular with a majority across all issues even those that have traditionally been his strength His approval ratings are now in the high s and low s Independents are abandoning him in droves Mind you the hardcore base is sticking with Trump so far because like their idol they can never admit they were wrong But even they are starting to feel the dissonance of hearing this feeble elderly man yammering about peace amid daily news footage of grotesque attacks on immigrants boat strikes and increasingly bellicose warmongering Several who took him seriously about America First isolationism are ready to abandon ship Whether this ends up truly splitting the Republican base remains to be seen But this fault line in the coalition is widening by the day No wonder so multiple GOP members of Congress are retiring next year Who wants to stay around for the ugly implosion that s just about to happen Read more on Trump s not-so-slow collapse Fox News turns sour on Trump market system and so do his voters Stupid and nasty Trump goes after Kaitlan Collins Pete Hegseth s warrior ethos is plain old cowardice The post FIFA s phony peace prize can t redeem Donald Trump appeared first on Salon com