Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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You said exactly why Trump etc would hide it.
“It would justify whatever with a large portion of the American public”
If your goal is to NOT have a Presidency defined by war then you do not want the populace inflamed for war. Reverse if your George Bush and you already decided to war Iraq.
Trump seems to personally love American power and want to retain it, hiding the assassination of a high profile public figure goes against everything he's done with his presidency and his revealed personality.
At the same time he'd have two MAJOR prongs trying to force the information out there - the majority of the American political and military establishment (which supports pressure on Russia) and any adversaries who find out (because Trump hiding it and then it being revealed would be a massive embarrassment).
It doesn't make any sense.
You would also need to hide it from his family who would presumably have similar political inclinations.
Whether you could successfully muzzle it is a different question than whether you would want to muzzle.
Trump is 100% would want to cover it up because he 100% does not want to be a war time President. Atleast at the group group escalation point of war.
His revealed personality is not to escalate to high casualty/ground force war which he’s done in both Ukraine and Iran. His revealed preference would be to cover it up.
With respect to Iran, that question hasn't come up yet, I think he'd be willing if he isn't getting what he needs - but the posters like me who think things are going fine feel like the question of ground war isn't being asked yet.
With respect to Ukraine he seems to think this isn't really any of America's business and that our involvement is unnecessary, with a side helping of "Europe needs to solve their own fucking problems." American military support has become necessary because That Is What We Do but he doesn't seem to care about it, and in contrast with Iran because the hostage crisis was a formative thing for men of a certain generation.
I would bet money that part of Russia's political calculus is "how do we approach this without pissing Trump off enough to get him involved and interested."
An assassination would do that.
Note that Russia's threats toward the US have been very mild by their standards since Trump 2 came on board.
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