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The mainstream media, mostly in favor of progressive ideas, was a staunch enemy of Donald Trump for four years. The confrontations were so many that even the achievements of the former president during his administration were overshadowed in the mainstream media.
Recently, it was confirmed that Jared Kushner, former White House senior advisor, and his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, were nominated by a lawyer friend for the Nobel Peace Prize. Same case as former President Trump, who was nominated by Norwegian lawmaker, Christian Tybring-Gjedde, for the prize. The reason? The Abraham Accords.
Thousands of people are eligible to submit nominations for the award – congresspeople, world leaders, university researchers, previous winners, among others – but, even so, the fact that someone has made your nomination public is because, in effect, you had to do something relevant for your name to come up among the possible winners.
Moreover, the prize itself has lost prestige for conservative and right-wing voices that watch with indignation as Barack Obama -after starting wars and bombing countries- and Juan Manuel Santos -the former Colombian president who promoted the failed “peace process” with FARC terrorists- won the award.
But transcending the Nobel, and all that it means, there is a particular case that, at the very least, generates a certain taste of injustice: how the mainstream media has downplayed the success of the Abraham Accords and other great foreign policy feats of the Trump administration.
Mainstream media: “the accords are good, but not good enough”
If the reader turns to the main news agencies, such as Reuters, he will notice that the Abraham Accords are described as “the most important diplomatic advances in the Middle East in 25 years.” This region is one of the most conflictive and unstable on the planet.
The Trump administration’s praise is not in vain; its foreign policy has been the closest thing to realpolitik in recent decades. Far from the diplomacy of the reluctant and interventionist policy of the neoconservatives, or the bombings exported by Obama who, incidentally, had a weak attitude towards the United States’ main enemies, the opposite of Trump.
According to a report by The Guardian, which used figures from the Council on Foreign Relations, the US dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone before Donald Trump’s arrival. That is an average of three bombs dropped every hour, around the clock, for an entire year.
Trump’s complete reversal of this US attitude toward the seven countries bombed during the Obama era-Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Iraq is noteworthy. But even so, little is said, and, in contrast to the coverage of the Iran Nuclear Deal, the media has been millimetrically critical in discussing the Abraham Accords.
The editorial board of The New York Times, for example, wrote an article titled “Trump’s Middle East Deal Is Good. But Not That Good.”
“The normalization of relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is, on the face of it, a good and beneficial development. The Trump administration deserves credit for brokering it,” the Times reads. “However, the idea, put forward by a conservative Norwegian lawmaker, that President Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for what they call the “Abraham Accords” is far-fetched, and not just because of their political track records or reputations.”
Perhaps the Times is right. The Nobel Peace Prize, in recent years, has been awarded to personalities who bombed countries, promoted wars, or put together agreements that benefited terrorists. Trump did the opposite of those requirements.
But the long-established and traditional New York outlet shamelessly ignores these details. And to show a similarity: with the flawed Iran Nuclear Deal, the Times editorial board was forceful, but for the better: “A Safer World, Thanks to the Iran Deal,” they called their editorial.
How does one explain the skepticism towards “Trump’s exploits” and the praise for “Obama’s exploits” in mainstream media journalism? The reality is that they are being measured with different yardsticks, and that is what is remarkable.
CNN is not far behind, and its platforms have been filled with feathers calling for President Biden to run to the arms of the Iranians. At the same time, they have criticized the Abraham Accords for the sales of advanced F-35 fighter jets and long-range armed drones from the United States to the United Arab Emirates.
A criticism that could be perfectly debatable, but when it comes from a tribune that looks favorably at an Iran agreement that affected U.S. interests and strengthened Tehran as never before, not to mention how those agreements were reached – allowing the growth of Hezbollah – speaks volumes about those who vociferously object to a treaty that seems positive.
What will the mainstream media say about Biden’s change of course?
The Biden administration said it would halt arms and aircraft sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a decision that could jeopardize peace deals with Israel, because while the sales are not in the agreement, the Emirates were interested in such arms deals.
If you go back in time, when the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran deal, the fury of the mainstream media was unrelenting. Trump was branded as irresponsible, but his approach to Iran was beneficial to the interests of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.
The result is that the Iranian theocracy, the one where horrid acts of barbarism are carried out and is an ally of the main enemies of America, is going through one of its worst moments in decades.
This bothers the mainstream media, which today welcomes Joe Biden’s intentions to return to the “Iran Deal,” the return to the problematic Paris Agreement, the “do-gooder” approach towards China and the change of game towards the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan tyrannies.
But, at the same time, the mainstream media not only downplays Trump’s successes with the Abraham Accords; it also overlooks the historic peace agreements with the Taliban, the withdrawal of troops, the successful diplomatic mission in the Balkans, the summit in Korea when the tyrant Kim Jong-un was terrorizing the planet; and the aggressive stance against socialist regimes in the region.
One thing is also certain: not all of Trump’s foreign policy was perfect, but there were, objectively, great feats that many traditional media ignored or shamelessly minimized.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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