Could Britain’s ‘Prince of Darkness’ Really Be Its Trump Whisperer? – POLITICS

“It’s a strange choice if you’re trying to build bridges with the Trump administration,” said Dalibor Rohac of the American Enterprise Institute. And Mandelson’s past criticism of Trump has already angered his loyalistswith top campaign adviser Chris LaCivita dubbing him “an absolute moron” on social media.

But perhaps Mandelson will be forgiven. Although Trump is famously thin-skinned, he can be quite pragmatic when he wants to and has overlooked previous criticism before – his choice of JD Vance as running mate is a notable instance of his magnanimity.

But Rohac doesn’t think the problems end there: the new envoy also has a pro-EU stance that won’t go down well with the MAGA world – and his stance on China won’t endear him either. “It is absurd to imagine putting a country of such weight in the cheeky corner,” Mandelson wrote in 2018, criticizing Trump for being too hostile to Beijing. “His idea of ​​a progressive trade policy is one that forces everyone else to give the United States more favorable treatment rather than a trade system that benefits everyone,” he continued.

In light of this position, “(Mandelson) generally does not come across as someone who can be expected to be effective with the Trump team. I am not entirely sure that he is the best person to ensure that the special relationship, the British aspires to, will thrive,” said Rohac. He is “not the man of the future.”

The underlying concern here is that Mandelson will see Trump’s second term as similar to his first – as something that must weather before everything returns to the multilateral way it was before MAGA came about. He “will fall back to the clichés of the past, to old ways of thinking and an understanding of transatlantic relations that is out of date. It’s just not going to get him very far with the Trump team,” Rohac said.

But Mandelson will not be the only European official or envoy approaching Trump 2.0 as something to be managed and survived rather than a revolution in American politics that will have major long-term consequences.