Is there such a thing as nuance when it comes to Trump?

When Noam Chomsky says Donald Trump is being sensible about the war in Ukraine he’s trying to show he’s not blinded by partisanship, but Trump and his supporters won’t see it that way, writes Holly Baxter

Trump is very good at saying every line of argument, then doubling down on the one that seems best-fitted to the situation (Getty)

This Monday, US journalist Glenn Greenwald teased an interview with linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky on Twitter. Greenwald – who has written several books, contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations, co-founded nonprofit investigative news outlet The Intercept, and who also founded a law firm in the Nineties to support the First Amendment, i.e. freedom of speech, litigation – is no stranger to big-name interviews. With 1.8 million followers on Twitter, he’s also pretty much guaranteed to cause a publicity stink when he does them.

This time was no different. Sharing a few clips of his interview on Twitter, Greenwald showed Chomsky saying that the only “statesman of stature” who was being “sensible” about a solution to the war in Ukraine was Donald J Trump. Considering Chomsky’s past descriptions of Trump as “dangerous,” this seemed surprising. But he, like Greenwald, has always been a little confusing to people on the left. Greenwald’s concentration on freedom of speech and liberalism made him a darling of the left wing for some time – before he started appearing on Fox News and talking about pro-Bolsonaro marches in Brazil as havens for people who believed in freedom. His politics are confusing, and he resigned from The Intercept after a fallout with editors over a story about Hunter Biden in 2020 (in 2022, he seems to at least have been partially vindicated on that front.)

Similarly, Chomsky is a self-proclaimed socialist who echoes a lot of what the “Bernie Sanders left” loves to hear in the US: 9/11 was a result of American imperialism; the Republican Party has become “the most dangerous organisation in the world”. But his overly forgiving eye toward murderous, communist regimes – such as Pol Pot’s in Cambodia – has made him controversial. And now it seems he’s swung round to defending Trump, at least in one very important aspect.

In some ways, this isn’t surprising. The democratic socialist left certainly shared talking-points with the populist Trump during his 2016 campaign: end the “forever wars”, start concentrating on domestic policy to the exclusion of international obligations, rethink Nato, recentre the midwestern American working class rather than the coastal elites and the DC swamp. A lot of Democrats still believe – perhaps justifiably – that if Sanders had won the party’s presidential nomination in 2016 rather than Hillary Clinton, Trump wouldn’t have gotten into power.

Elevating Trump’s throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to foreign policy isn’t going to do any good – least of all for the Ukrainians

Certainly, Clinton was an easy opponent for Trump, who was able to talk about her establishment connections, the nepotism of Washington families, and the out-of-touch ways of celebrity-schmoozing multimillionaires as a way to win over supporters. At that point, it didn’t really matter that he himself was a celebrity-schmoozing multimillionaire who regularly asked for cameos in movies and TV shows in exchange for giving permission to film at locations he owned. People simply wanted to hear that someone – even one of them – recognised the problem.

One can imagine that Trump and Sanders might be able to have a decent conversation about Russia, even if there might be a distinct lack of mutual respect. But Chomsky and Greenwald should consider that Trump is very good at saying every line of argument, then doubling down on the one that seems best-fitted to the situation after something happens. He equivocates so wildly that it’s easy for him to say he’s right in retrospect. And while it is true that he was on record saying Russian aggression could be provoked by Nato, he also said he believed in Nato and that he wanted other countries to pay more and amp up their military; while he talked about taking a different, less adversarial approach with Russia in case of future conflict, he also openly admired Putin for his authoritarian, strongman qualities. And few will forget that standing ovation in the Russian Duma when it was announced that Trump had won the election.

When Russian troops began to surround Ukraine, Trump went on the record to say he thought it was a very clever move. In his interview with Piers Morgan last week, he sought to contextualise that quote, saying that he thought Putin was simply using the tools of negotiation and that he wouldn’t actually invade the country. But the fact that Trump believes surrounding Ukraine with troops is a legitimate tool of negotiation should worry most people. Now, as he calls for restraint and considers a placatory solution to the war for Russia, we should consider where his viewpoint comes from. Trump admires Putin and thinks strong-arming tactics should be rewarded; “to the victor go at least some of the spoils” could be his mantra.

Chomsky, on the other hand, is talking about the collapse of the USSR and mitigating human suffering. Those are markedly different situations. One might think that the viewpoint doesn’t especially matter if we progress toward a peaceful solution for everyone involved – but if you enter the fray with a skewed perspective, it’s easy for things to go wrong very quickly.

Consider how, for a brief moment in time, we all believed that Trump might find a solution to the growing aggression and isolation of North Korea. He knew how people like Kim Jong-un thought, he said; the dictator just wanted a seat at the table, a chance to be taken seriously, and progress toward a sensible global solution. It was a seductive offer. Despite all the ridiculous, offensive and downright terrible things Trump had done by then, a lot of us were behind him when he met with Kim. We hoped this might be the one thing he was good for. But it turns out that a posturing blowhard who knows very little about foreign policy can’t actually make much headway with a posturing blowhard who knows very little about foreign policy. Trump fell in and out of love with Kim Jong-un very quickly and publicly, and the world is probably now worse off than it would have been without any attempted diplomacy at all. Certainly it’ll be hard for any future western leader to attempt the same thing with North Korea, and Trump probably provided ample evidence to the country’s elites that dialogue is a fruitless endeavour.

When Chomsky is quoted as agreeing with Trump, he is plainly trying to be nuanced; to show that he isn’t blinded by partisanship and can recognise when someone of the other side says something worth listening to. But this isn’t how Trump and his supporters will receive it. Simply, MAGA will gain another talking-point for a rumoured Trump re-run in 2024, Marjorie Taylor Greene will make a smug speech at a podium, and everything else will get lost in the noise. Elevating Trump’s throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to foreign policy isn’t going to do any good – least of all for the Ukrainians whose homes have been destroyed and lives upended. Though it is right for us to have uncomfortable conversations and to discuss potentially unsavoury-feeling solutions if they will stop wars and needless deaths, there is also a lot to be said for knowing your source intimately. Glenn Greenwald, whose work with Edward Snowden is well-documented and impressive, knows that most of all.