MARK RILEY: Australians are paying the price at the pump for Trump’s election campaign
MARK RILEY: While politicians trade ultimatums, drivers are left counting the cost.
There were no gasps of horror or surprise when Donald Trump declared to world leaders in the middle of his typically bombastic address to the United Nations General Assembly this week that he would either seek peace with Iran or annihilate it.
The absurdity of this binary proposition floated above the room as a concept of such weightless illogicality that it didn’t demand deep consideration.
That it was the centrepiece of a speech designed to elevate Trump as the world’s greatest peacemaker barely creased an eyebrow.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Scanning the assembled delegations at that moment I could see the Iranians sitting stony-faced.
They had heard it all before. Many times.
Others around the room simply shrugged their shoulders.
It was Trump saying Trump things.
But the assembled world leaders sharpened their focus as the US President rambled into territory that seemed more relevant to the real question they were hoping to hear answered during this annual high-level week.
Just when would Trump pull out of Iran?
At what point would he decide he’s degraded the rogue regime’s nuclear capabilities to the extent that it no longer poses an apocalyptic threat to the Middle East and the world?
That seems to be the continuing justification for this war, despite Trump declaring many times that he has already bombed Iran back into the Stone Age.
It’s not just the bombing but the fallout that worries the other leaders.
The shockwaves from the US President’s two-week war, which is about to run into its eight month, are shuddering through petrol pumps around the world and straight into consumers’ pockets.
American motorists were pumping diesel into their twin-cab suburban monsters for $US3.67 a gallon ($1.38 per litre) before the first missiles were fired. This week, diesel in the US hit a record high of $US6.53 a gallon. There are now predictions that it will hit $US7 before the congressional midterm elections.
That vote is on Tuesday, November 3.
It is an important date for Trump. It is also an important date for world leaders at the UN this week.
Trump Republicans are likely to lose control of the House of Representatives as the President’s record unpopularity drains their support base.
The Senate is a closer-run thing. None of the leading American commentators seems prepared to predict what is going to happen. Most suggest it will come down to whether the Democrats can flip a few crucial seats in Texas, Georgia and Michigan.
It is not unusual for a President to get a whack in the midterms. Most suffer that fate.
But just how weakened Trump be in emerging from the result wasn’t the primary thing that concerned world leaders as they listened to him at the UN, externalising his inner dialogue in splenetic style.
It was the date that mattered.
In delivering his peace-or-annihilation ultimatum, Trump suggested that whatever way the fundamentalist regime in Tehran leant, there would be no ceasefire before the midterms.
The unspoken message was that he wasn’t about to walk away from a fight with them while he still faced a fight with the Congress and the voters.
Even drenched in the depths of his own delusional narcissism, Trump realises he enters the race from a position of weakness. He fears that pulling out of Iran without tangible evidence of victory — whatever that may look like — would only compound that impression in the eyes of American voters.
And, so, he casually blames the soaring petrol price on the Ukraine War in an attempt to absolve himself of responsibility and offers $US5000 to every adult citizen if the Republicans retain control of both houses.
He calls this a “Trump dividend cheque”. Others call it a bribe.
The thunderous response from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian ominously insisting that his people will never surrender and will fight the US to their last breath made clear he wasn’t going to allow Trump to dictate terms.
The world leaders here in New York this week exhaled deeply, resigned to the belief that all this means that motorists in their countries will continue to get thumped at the bowser by soaring fuel prices for many months yet.
They also know their voters won’t blame Trump. They’ll blame them. That’s politics. And there are no gasps of horror or surprise from the leaders about that.
