- Sound the Trumpet - 12th December 2025
- Oh Lord! - 11th December 2025
- Crime pays but shouldn’t, part one - 10th December 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, exposing political humbug and double-speak has always been a mainstay of his journalism, and nowhere is this better underlined than in Donald Trump’s confusing security strategy which was published last week.
Quite apart from being behind this odd document he is mired in controversy, and the American President has threatened a multibillion dollar lawsuit against his one-time friend Rupert Murdoch, as well as the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) parent company Dow Jones (DJ) over “fake” news about his alleged links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Offering comfort to people you don’t like is hardly a good policy.
Yet this is exactly what Donald Trump may have done in his garbled National Security Strategy (NSS), which came out bizarrely in the dead of night between December 4 and 5, because it could have given solace to America’s rivals Russia and China.
This document is very important and affects all of us, but to its critics it is a complete joke.
When you read it, it’s quite hard to work out what the strategy actually IS, and as The Economist has declared: “If (it) sounds like a dog’s breakfast, that’s because it is”!
There are certainly grand words such as: “We want to ensure that the western hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States”, but there is very little meat on the bone, and what there is looks contradictory.
“In everything we do, we are putting America First”, reads the letter from Mr Trump that opens the NSS.
But it is the preceding sentence that will be read by allies with gloom, and with glee by China and Russia, for it is hopelessly at odds with reality: “America is strong and respected again—and because of that, we are making peace all over the world”.
It appears that governments in the Americas will be enlisted to control migration and curb drug flows, while they are expected also to grant the USA control of key assets, resources as well as strategic locations, or at least a veto over “hostile foreign” ownership of them—a clear warning to refuse Chinese investments that offer a sway over ports such as the Panama Canal.
Where law enforcement has failed to halt drug smuggling, the USA will use its armed forces, the NSS warns.
For the most part, the new NSS rejects the decades-old insight that a common set of values is what cements America’s alliances.
For example it proclaims that it is “not grounded in traditional, political ideology” but is motivated by “what works for America”.
It therefore embraces what it calls “flexible realism”, which stands for, we are told, being “pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist’, realistic without being ‘realist’, principled without being ‘idealistic’, muscular without being ‘hawkish’, and restrained without being ‘dovish’”.
But what does this actually MEAN?!
Elsewhere the President’s behaviour is similarly odd.
He filed a $10 billion (£7.5 billion) lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) parent company Dow Jones (DJ), and its owner (his former friend) Rupert Murdoch, over claims that he wrote a “bawdy” note to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper’, he posted on July 17.
The bust-up between Mr Trump and Mr Murdoch (whose media empire includes Fox News as well as the WSJ and other conservative-leaning titles), is the latest example of the president’s aim to enforce a kind of lèse-majesté rule against the American media.
It also marks a twist in the relationship between the president and America’s last real news-media baron. Mr Murdoch, an influential supporter of Mr Trump’s, may prove to be less of a pushover than some of his peers.
Mr Trump alleges that the publication slandered him and violated libel laws in an article alleging that a birthday greeting bearing his name was sent to the late financier in 2003, before he was charged with sex crimes.
I make no judgement as to the veracity or otherwise of this report, but I do know from long experience that it will have been double-checked by lawyers before publication.
I have had this many times (and still do), with the lawyer asking questions like: “What is your source?” and “Will he give evidence in court?”, so this could be a lengthy legal battle.
Perhaps it may be clearer (although there is no guarantee) for Mr Trump.
His defence ‘strategy’ certainly ISN’T!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing 42 year award-winning career in journalism (when confusing documents were often pored over) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
It would make a good Christmas present – Nadolig Llawen!
