NEW TRUMP TACTICS READ LIKE SPY NOVEL
THE 45TH president of the US, Donald J Trump, finds himself in an unenviable position, less than two months before a presidential election.
Seeking a second term, Trump, whose popularity ratings have never exceeded 50% and who is facing the real prospect of losing the election, is like a desperate man, drowning in a whirlpool, arms flailing at any and everything, hoping for a branch on which to hang.
This close to an election, an incumbent US president, even with Covid-19 and the resultant economic downturn, should have an advantage over any challenger.
Instead, Trump has faced a torrent of bad headlines, adding to his unfavourable ratings, and barring a miracle his goose seems as good as cooked.
Inscribed on his political epitaph will be “brought down by hubris, lies and corruption”.
It is in that context that politico.com, usually a reliable source of political news and opinion from the US, carried a report on Monday about a plot to assassinate the US ambassador to South Africa, Lana Marks, by the Iranians.
Why?
Supposedly Marks’s death would avenge the assassination, by drone attack, of Iran’s Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who the Americans blamed for engineering deadly attacks on their troops stationed in Iraq.
Marks is known in the US for her luxury handbag business.
A member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, she was rewarded with an ambassadorship due to her proximity and political donations to his campaign.
The Iranians might be hurting over Soleimani’s assassination, but they would be stupid to plot the murder of a US ambassador two months before an American election.
The source for the politico.com story was supposedly US intelligence, the same intelligence fraternity which used “weapons of mass destruction” as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
We all know how that worked out for the Iraqis.
Mind you, America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved crucial in the re-election of George W Bush.
Trump and his allies might be hoping for an “October Surprise” that returns him to the White House, but his advisers should perhaps not borrow plots from John le Carré novels.