PrintTrump trolls the mullahs of Iran
On a topic as dreary as another round of U.S. sanctions on Iran's loathesome mullahs, President Trump has injected a bit of unexpected flair.
Get a load of his latest Iran tweet:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2018
It's genius.
Riffing off the popular HBO television series Game of Thrones and its famous Winter is Coming episode, Trump sends Iran's pompous third-world mullahs a mocking suggestion he considers this, this soul-crushing sanctions, a bunch of theatre, a tiny thing for him, even as our correspondent Hassan Mahmoudi notes today, it's not a tiny thing for the mullahs, who are strangling with internal unrest and the consequences of their own economic mismanagement and deeply dread Trump's sanctions piled on top of that.
It's irreverent, it's the doing of a guy who enjoys watching TV, (which has got to cheese off the publicly serious mullahs themselves, who do it on the side), and it's unexpected. Best of all, it suggests that Trump is laughing at them. Someone on his team spent a bunch of time creating this mocking tweak poster even as crushing sanctions were being put together by Trump's National Security policymakers. Now the mullahs not only get sanctions, they find themselves on the butt-end of the joke. Imagine being a mullah, all serious about thinking of new ways to oppress people, and then waking up to a Trump tweet like that. And because everyone can relate to it, they know it will draw global attention. So in effect, Trump is telling everyone to go ahead and watch these sanctions on the mullahs go through because he's about to crush them like bugs.
Talk about driving the shank in.
Best of all, it's going to hearten Iran's beleaguered opposition inside Iran, young people who most likely watch that television series where they can, and who will relate to the poster instantly.
It's so vintage Trump. The man has cleverly used his background in television to create yet another foreign policy coup that openly borrows from television, to turn the boring business of sanctions into something worth writing home about. Trump earlier drew some high praise for his movie-making about a rich modern North Korea to persuade Kim Jong Un to scrap his communist ways and take the Singapore shortcut to success, which was something Kim responded to.
Now the mullahs, who cannot bear to be mocked, are getting mocked on a global scale with a Trump movie poster.
Just as political analysts didn't see Trump coming, these tyrants didn't see Trump coming. The mullahs just got it in the face. Trump's creative use of media forges new paths in foreign policy and is going to keep throwing these thug regimes on their backfoot.
