Trump wants our attention. Let’s stop falling for his geopolitical clickbait | Catherine De Vries
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
De Vries treats Trump’s Greenland talk, tariffs, and Iran warnings as “clickbait,” as if the main problem is that Europeans keep taking the bait. That framing dodges the harder question: why these issues keep landing, and why elites prefer to dismiss them as theater instead of answering the substance. Tariffs are not performance art when supply chains run through rivals and American factories are hollowed out.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Whether he’s targeting Greenland, tariffs or Iran, Trump’s agenda is to distract – because a Europe that is always reacting is never planningWhen Donald Trump reassured the world that he would not, after all, use force to acquire Greenland – after days of threatening as much – he was doing what he does best: turning geopolitics into a spectacle.
Whether Trump ever truly believed the US should acquire a vast Arctic territory belonging to a Nato ally is secondary to the fact that, once again, he ensured that Europe and the rest of the world were focused on his agenda.Trump is not a politician who responds to events – he seeks to make them.
Not because he is deeply invested in policy detail, but because he understands a defining feature of contemporary politics: attention is power. In an era ...
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
De Vries treats Trump’s Greenland talk, tariffs, and Iran warnings as “clickbait,” as if the main problem is that Europeans keep taking the bait. That framing dodges the harder question: why these issues keep landing, and why elites prefer to dismiss them as theater instead of answering the substance.
Tariffs are not performance art when supply chains run through rivals and American factories are hollowed out. Iran is not a distraction when proxies are firing on shipping lanes and allies. And the Arctic is not a joke when Russia and China are positioning for leverage. Calling it spectacle is a convenient way to avoid debating national security and economic resilience.
A serious approach starts with public trust and strategic clarity. If leaders think attention is the only currency, they will keep mistaking managed narratives for policy. What’s at stake is sovereignty and the rule of law, not the media cycle.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.