{"id":125047,"date":"2025-10-16T04:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/125047\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T04:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:09:13","slug":"unflattering-magazine-cover-is-only-blemish-for-triumphant-trump-after-gaza-ceasefire-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/125047\/","title":{"rendered":"Unflattering magazine cover is only blemish for triumphant Trump after Gaza ceasefire \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Americans of Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s generation, the cover of Time magazine will always hold a certain cachet. It is no secret that Trump still prizes the distinction of being its cover star but hours after his triumphant, wee-hours return from Monday\u2019s lightning visit to Israel<\/a> and Egypt<\/a> for his declared \u201cnew dawn\u201d of the Middle East<\/a>, he had to wrestle with conflicting emotions at his latest appearance, with the headline: His Triumph.<\/p>\n

In the plus ledger, Time had written a \u201crelatively good\u201d story about him. But they\u2019d also chosen what he deemed to be a deeply unflattering photograph that looked as though the lens was pointing up from his midriff. Within hours, a morning critique popped up on his Truth Social account.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey disappeared my hair and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown but an extremely small one. Really weird!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the only blemish for Trump after 24 triumphant hours after which even his adversaries on the Democratic left offered guarded commendations on the Israel-Hamas Gaza peace deal. <\/p>\n

Everyone from Chuck Schumer, the minority leader of the Senate, to former president Bill Clinton name-checked Trump in brief statements welcoming the ceasefire and the phase-one return of hostages. <\/p>\n

Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the most outspoken Democrat critic of the White House leniency towards Binyamin Netanyahu throughout Joe Biden\u2019s last year in office, has yet to publicly acknowledge the brokering of this peace deal, while Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar expressed, on social media, the wish that: \u201cFor the sake of humanity, let\u2019s hope this will be a lasting and permanent ceasefire. While this is a hopeful step, we must demand accountability for every war crime committed during this genocide and continue to call for an end to the occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accountability, and the lasting consequences of the antipathy and loathing engendered by the violence that occurred before, on and since October 7th, 2023, will be among the many obstacles on the path ahead. Trump offered little detail on Monday about how the ceasefire and hostage return will develop into the transformative vision he presented of a golden age for the Middle East. Already implicit is that the US will not have troops on the ground, nor will it bear the enormous cost of rebuilding Gaza. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Trump arose to deal with another hectic itinerary. He hosted Javier Milei, Argentina\u2019s president, to confirm the $20 billion bailout the administration has offered to keep the country\u2019s ailing economy afloat and signalled that future US financial support is contingent on Milei winning the national election on October 26th. <\/p>\n

In the afternoon, he spoke at a ceremony in the Rose Garden in which he bequeathed the late Charlie Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The honour was received by Kirk\u2019s widow, Erika. The Argentinian president remained in Washington to attend the ceremony, which Trump opened by reflecting on how he had to return from the Middle East in the small hours of Tuesday morning no matter what. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was gonna call Erika and say: \u2018Erika could you maybe move it to Friday?\u2019 And I didn\u2019t have the courage to call,\u201d the president said, explaining that when he discovered Tuesday would have been Charlie Kirk\u2019s 32nd birthday, he decided to go ahead with the planned ceremony and told himself: \u201cWe are going to have to forget about some of those very big, very rich countries that expected me to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump, pictured on the cover of Time magazine <\/p>\n

His speech was a blend of warm tribute to Kirk\u2019s enduring influence on the Maga movement and a reheated smorgasbord of current peeves \u2013 the \u201cradical left lunatics\u201d responsible for the ongoing government shutdown and the need to restore peace to American cities such as Chicago and Portland through military force. The only direct reference to the peace deal came in response to a question posed about how and when Hamas is going to deliver on its commitment to disarm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to disarm because they said they are going to disarm,\u201d Trump replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if they don\u2019t, we will disarm them. I don\u2019t have to explain that to you but if they don\u2019t disarm we will disarm them. They know I am not playing games. We did something monumental, which is get the hostages back. Now they misrepresented, because we were told they had 26, 24 of the dead hostages, if we can use those terms. And it seems as though they don\u2019t have that because they are talking about a much lesser number. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, they said that they are going to disarm. They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad and killed a couple of gang members. That didn\u2019t bother me too much. It will happen quickly and perhaps violently but they will disarm. And I spoke to Hamas and I said: you\u2019re going to disarm, right? Yes sir. We are going to disarm. They will disarm \u2013 or we will disarm them.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Irish Times view on Gaza ceasefire: an achievement for TrumpOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

So the roiling mood among Democratic and Republican lawmakers over the shutdown, the accelerating threat of lay-offs to federal workers and the sombre remembrance for Charlie Kirk made for a mixed-up return from the Middle East. <\/p>\n

In Washington, foreign policy outlets are puzzling over forecasts of the likely ramifications of the peace deal \u2013 and even over the nature of foreign diplomacy itself. Asli Aydintasbas, foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, has termed Trump\u2019s approach as \u201cupside-down peacemaking\u201d in noting that he has thrown the entire tradition and understanding of how foreign policy works into the air.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump posthumously awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to late conservative activist Charlie Kirk as he presents the medal to Erika Kirk in the Rose Garden of the White House. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cAs the foreign policy community, we have prided ourselves on our ability to provide expertise, strategic depth and long-term vision to complex problems,\u201d she wrote on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe valued sequenced roadmaps, expert led-negotiations, and the painstaking architecture that underpins durable peace agreements. What if that no longer matters in the same way? The last few months have shown that a transactional, personalized and perpetually televised approach to diplomacy \u2013 as unserious as it may seem \u2013 can yield results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are questions for others to mull over. As far as Trump is concerned, when he cosigned the Trump Declaration for Peace and Prosperity along with Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, president of Egypt; Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, emir of Qatar; and Recep Tayip Erdo\u011fan, president of Turkey, he was providing all the pieces of the jigsaw. Putting them all together should be child\u2019s play. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis took 3,000 years to get to this point,\u201d he said, pen in hand on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you believe it? And it\u2019s going to hold up, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Americans of Donald Trump\u2019s generation, the cover of Time magazine will always hold a certain cachet. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,71,3857,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,6221,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-125047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-trump-presidency","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}