Starmer plays the straight man to Trump’s joker

Donald Trump was in a jocular mood as he met with Keir Starmer, barely allowing the British prime minister to get in a word edgewise during their joint appearance in the Oval Office. “Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that,” he mused after a reporter queried whether he continued to regard Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator, only days after he had flayed him as a tinpot authoritarian who might be best off returning to his halcyon days as a television comic. 

If anyone was the joker, however, it was Trump. He entertained the press corps while Starmer played the straight man. Trump never got handsy with Starmer, as he did with French president Emmanuel Macron during his recent visit, who gently but firmly steered Trump’s paw off his left knee, but he seemed to appreciate the stiff upper lip that his coeval displayed. Starmer maintained an impressively impassive visage as Trump flitted from topic to topic. Starmer gamely tried to bring the focus back to Ukraine and the need for the fabled American “backstop” to ensure that Russian president Vladimir Putin, far from entertaining fresh designs upon a hapless Ukraine, was genuinely deterred from a new predatory round upon the conclusion of a peace deal. “They don’t need help,” Trump confidently declared about Britain, a convenient way of dumping the problem of enforcing a peace deal in Whitehall’s lap. Meanwhile, South Korea’s spy agency is warning that North Korea is dispatching additional troops to Russia. So much for Trump’s bluff and bombast about terminating the war with ease. When Zelensky arrives on Friday, he will have fresh ammunition, as it were, to make the case for continued support for his beleaguered country, whether Trump likes it or not. 

Today, the real target of Trump’s ire wasn’t so much Ukraine as his old bête noire, the European Union. For him it seems to be the true evil empire, one intent on mulcting America for defense outlays, on the one hand, and taking it to the cleaners, on the other, in trade. He seemed to hint that the United Kingdom might be exempted from the 25 percent tariffs he’s contemplating for the EU. “The EU is very, very tough on us when it comes to trade,” he said. 

The most ticklish moment arrived when Trump was asked about the arrival of the Tate brothers who hold American and British passports. In 2022, Andrew and Tristan were charged with a variety of crimes by Romania, including human trafficking and rape. According to the Financial Times, Trump’s emissary Richard Grenell sought to pressure the Romanian government on their behalf at the recent Munich Security Conference, but the Romanians declined to practice a new round of appeasement in Munich. But just as Starmer and Trump met in the White House, this dynamic duo — a cause celebre in MAGA world, where they have amassed a not insubstantial fortune — suddenly landed in Florida professing that they were “largely misunderstood.” Poor lads!  

Florida governor Ron DeSantis, though, was apoplectic at the prospect of this British invasion. The Sunshine State, he huffed, “is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct.” And Trump? He evinced no moral compunctions, retreating to his standard dodge when confronted with an unpleasant question: “I know nothing about that.” Starmer intervened, declaring, “we’ll catch up to it.” By this weekend, he may well be dining with them at Mar-a-Lago. Given how many federal employees are being fired by his underlings, perhaps Trump will even consider offering them a plum post in his administration.