Columns

It is a world of weird happenings. From prelates to presidents to politicians of different hues in different countries and riff raff too are rushing to explain themselves. They are all having second and even third thoughts on words they have muttered hours before. They all wish to clarify what they had said previously.

As though one clarification is not enough some want to clarify their clarifications. Breaking news now becomes broken news, no news and even fake news. The blame game goes up to the newsroom doors of media institutions.

Trump shakes hands with Putin during a controversial media briefing. Reuters

It was not too long ago that the Anunayake of Asgiriya made a wayside stop to venture into world history and recall a time in the 20th century that was surely the most hated and disgusting period in modern history.

The man responsible for the killings of millions of people innocent and otherwise was a despicable dictator, Adolf Hitler, who seems to have won some corner of the prelate’s heart for his ability to take hard decisions and implement them.

Having suggested during an anusasana that Sri Lanka might well do with a Hitler-type leader, the venerable monk resorted to Lenin-style course correction taking a couple of steps back to clarify what he had said the previous day.

Well one might say never mind and pass on. Except that this was becoming contagious, as it were. The name Hitler and his doings made another appearance more recently when a sports commentator or some such person reportedly made a reference to Hitler and quickly clarified his remarks when the social media descended on the cricketing type as though he had been caught match fixing.
Just the other day Finance Minister and Minister of Information and Media Mangala Samaraweera never shy of engaging in fisticuffs — verbal, of course — waded into the current debate on drug lords, trafficking and distribution. Without just hanging around he named a couple of charity organisations that seemed home to them.

Quickly realising his faux pas the media minister engaged the reverse gear and apologised for naming the two organisations. It was all a mistake, a slip of the tongue or whatever.

Now all this might be forgiven though not entirely forgotten for prelates and politicians cannot be excused for their slippery tongues or political interventions that might well be seen as promoting authoritarian, undemocratic rule with the help of uniformed types who have hung up their service clothes.

But these might be considered minor indiscretions compared to the wagging tongue of the president of the only remaining super power, Donald Trump, whose political and diplomatic gaffes on the dais and small screen have the world wondering whether the world is safe in the hands of a man whose world view is a dangerous reversal of what we are accustomed to, including the institutions that have managed to keep us safe from bullying nuclear powers like the one that Trump represents.

His recent attempts to clarify his linguistic aberrations as though it was all the fault of the media that reported them and have the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders add to the confusion, has made the Oval Office seem an even more of a madhouse than first suspected when Trump began kicking officials around in those early days.

But, today, matters are turning worse. All Trump’s tawdry rhetoric about putting “America First” is just a ‘nationalistic’ cover for his real intention which is to put Trump first before anything else.

He wants to rewrite the world order and remake it in his own image. That is why right now he is sorting out friends and foes and even the biggest enemies today will become friends if they are powerful nations such as Russia and China.

Not only does Trump have problems with language where his inability to distinguish between “would” and “wouldn’t” is dismissed as having “misspoken” the word he intended to use. It is a sign that he is still trying to absolve Vladimir Putin from Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

Trump is caught in a nut cracker. On the one hand he wants to build a good working relationship with Putin in order to build his new world order. On the other his intelligence services have assessed that Russian agents were involved in election fixing. Just the other day Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian military officers with conducting large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump has dismissed as a “witch hunt” the Mueller investigation team for throwing the net wider to investigate individuals and officials closely connected to Trump. It has been touch- and- go on whether Trump would close down the investigation. So far he has held his hand but one never knows with the US president who does say one thing in the morning and changes it in the evening.
All this recent chaos and confusion and Trump’s pitiful attempts at clarification ably assisted by his press secretary, is because the garrulous American president cannot keep a civil tongue in his head.

In addition he engages in foreign policy making and disturbing diplomacy by tweeting at dawn like early morning bird calls.
It was his recent European visit to attend the Nato summit, a visit to the UK for talks with beleaguered Prime Minister Theresa May and the crucial bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin as the highlight of his visit, that caused the ruckus.

As befits Trump’s diplomatic conduct, he harangued Nato, tried to hector May on how to run her government and deal with Brexit and reserved the compliments for Putin.

Having bullied Nato members to cough up larger contributions to the alliance on which Trump had a legitimate grouse, the US president seemed to question today’s value in maintaining a cold war institution with the US doling out the major share for its maintenance.

Today Nato has 29 members the latest being Montenegro, a tiny Balkan state, on which Trump turned after his talks with Putin, asking why American lives should be sacrificed for Montenegrins if that country is attacked.

The answer to that is that Montenegro joined the alliance last year and the US congress voted strongly in support of its admission. In fact on April 11, 2017, Trump himself signed off on it and, “congratulate(d) the Montenegrin people for their resilience and their demonstrated commitment to NATO’s democratic values.”

Now he has done a U-turn. He described the tiny state’s people as “very aggressive” and capable of sparking World War III. Is this turn-around influenced by Putin who would like to see Russian hegemony extend further south?

If Trump had read the Nato Treaty, especially Article 5 and something of his country’s recent history he would surely know that the only country that has invoked the article which calls for member-states to come to the defence of a member under attack was the US after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

While Trump’s attempts to recast his words in the wake of furious bipartisan castigation for his remarks that seemed to exonerate Putin for the election interference and dismissing the assessments by US intelligence agencies of the continuing threat to the US from Russia is now generally known.

What is less well- known is Trump’s economy with the truth and his tendency to abandon truth when convenient. If one were to be charitable to Trump one might attribute it to forgetfulness.

A couple of examples would suffice to establish this. Talking of Europe Trump said “I was there many, many years ago” meaning “my parents were born in the European Union. I love these countries; Germany, Scotland, they are still in there, right”?
Well if he is talking of Germany and Scotland (one might ask for a clarification perhaps) they were indeed there at the time of writing. That is if Trump had not blown them apart since.

What is important is that his constant refrain that his father was born in Germany is untrue, to put it euphemistically. Fred Trump, his father, was born in New York City, US and not in Germany. His grandfather Friedrich Trump was born in Germany but left for the US at the age of 16. Surely Donald Trump should know where his father was born. After all he knows where his mother was born.

Trump has claimed that those in the Special Counsel’s investigating team are Democrats and that Robert Mueller worked for President Obama for eight years. Wrong again. Mueller is a life-long Republican and did not work for Obama for 8 years as claimed.

And by the way Trump is reported to have claimed US$ 50,000 as expenses for his stay in Scotland during his recent visit. He stayed at the hotel and property he owned. Shades of Sri Lankan politics and politicians!

An acquaintance defending Trump’s white supremacist policies and conduct said of the “would”/ “wouldn’t” controversy and other mishaps that Homer also nods. Even if I was to commit sacrilege by speaking of Homer in the same breath as Trump, this is not nodding. This is a combination of ignorance and untruth in the extreme.