How far would you go for your son? For Donald Trump, the answer is simply: “The Bahamas? That is way too far! Why can’t you just get married on the golf course we buried your mother in? Or better still, the one I’m being carted to the second I get off the reinforced toilet I’m typing this on.” And so it was that the president cordially flaked on the latest marriage of his large adult son Don Jr, which took place somewhere in the Bahamas last weekend. If the world felt somehow different to you on Sunday morning, you were right. We now live in a post-troth society.
In other ways, though, the world would have felt quite samey. Those whose notional protest placard reads “IRAN DEAL WHEN?” remain fobbed off round the clock by a US administration that is always “close”, looking at a “pretty solid thing on the table” and debating “specific language in the initial document”. The Iranian government, meanwhile, is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz, expressing “resolute” support for Hezbollah and saying gnomically trolling things like how the two sides are both “very close and very far”. The president loves to imply that deals are always like this, once again confusing commercial Floridian real estate with the fanatical remnants of a dysfunctional regime in whose interest it is to play him.
On the plus side, this is all the perfect excuse to bin off attending your child’s wedding. Or as Trump preferred to put it on his thwarted desire to schlep to the Bahamas: “Circumstances pertaining to government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so.” Weird – those are exactly the words I’m hoping will get me out of my next destination-second-wedding-invitation. I feel it strikes the perfect balance between “solemnity” and “any old shit”.
We all know the old Taco rule – Trump Always Chickens Out. But does Trump perhaps always flake too – or certainly seek to? Could it be, for a simple-souled psychopath, that a self-launched war that never quite ends up being resolved is the absolute holy grail of social bailing: the perfect rolling excuse not to have to do things he doesn’t want to do? Many ordinary flakers get like this when they have children, realising that they now have the perfect long-term citation to get out of any social occasion they’re not quite feeling by texting at 5pm about vomiting bugs / rashes / fevers / not-a-fever-but-definitely-an-elevated-body-temperature. Truly, children are precious in myriad ways. Personally, I would try serial social flakers at the Hague, but I don’t make the rules.
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So in more ways than one, Trump is Iran’s baby. On the one hand, it’s an unnecessarily self-started conflict that is racking up civilian casualties, will fail even on its own aims, has destabilised an already perilously destabilised region, and is causing a severe energy-supply shock that the world is only on the threshold of seeing the huge, varied and in some cases catastrophic effects of. On the other: it gets you out of boring things that require effort, travel and you not being the centre of attention for up to 30 minutes.
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But let’s see Earth’s leading flaker put this excuse into action. Asked last week in the Oval Office if he’d be attending Don Jr’s wedding, Trump replied: “He’d like me to go … I’m going to try and make it. I said: ‘You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran …’ That’s one I can’t win on.” If your first thought was: great, he’s finally admitting he can’t win on Iran – maybe we can just bring this demented misadventure to a close, ideally as soon as Don Jr and his latest are exchanging their ghastly barefoot vows, then … prepare for disappointment. Because unfortunately, there was more. “If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed.” Killed as in “assassinated”, or killed as in “possibly mildly criticised but way less than you have been for spending vast tracts of both your presidencies on the golf course while any number of volatile situations burn”? Oh, the latter. Still, some things are more important than the slings and arrows of a media that simply lacks the imagination to set its sights on the possibility of surprise love, either between Don Jr and his current wife, or between the adversaries in a war Trump once insisted would be over and done with in four to five weeks.
Either way, tell us about your son’s new wife, Mr President? “He’s got a very – person I’ve known for a long time.” A very – person you’ve known for a long time? Why, she sounds just wonderful! “Hopefully,” Trump continued somewhat doubtfully, “they’re going to have a great marriage.” Well quite. If not, he can always catch the next one. When Don Jr broke up with his last fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump Sr found the perfect kiss-off present / way of getting her out of the way. And so it is that Kimberly is now the United States ambassador to Greece. Which is certainly the Mamma Mia! 3 plot we didn’t know we wanted. If things go tits up this time, perhaps Bettina – for that is the name of the very-person-he’s-known-for-a-long-time – could be fed back into the flaking machine and be appointed some kind of Iran peace-deal negotiator? By that time, presumably, the US will have tried almost all other approaches.
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In the meantime, it must be a struggle for Trump to fight the part of him that sees the personal benefit of just keeping any war going and going and going, as the great perma-excuse that keeps on giving. Having suggested (again) that a deal was just around the next corner, he appeared to backtrack (again) on Sunday, suggesting “both sides must take their time and get it right”. Absolutely. We’re less than a year out from Barron Trump’s 21st birthday party – and only a couple away from Kai Trump’s, both of which could be a real ballache to have to get through. Then there are graduation ceremonies, barmitzvahs, potential weddings … Just any number of events that it would, obviously, be awful if Trump were in some way prevented from attending by an imminent deal – which, like Zeno’s arrow, moves ever-closer but never quitegets there and hits its target.
