Trumps tough talk on Hamas hostages delivers Americas righteous fury at last

If they have any instinct for self-preservation, Iran and Hamas should be monitoring President-elect Donald Trump’s communications very closely these days. A couple of weeks ago, there was the Truth Social post promising “ALL HELL TO PAY” if Hamas didn’t release its hostages by Trump’s inauguration on Jan.20. “Those responsible,” Trump noted, “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”He followed up during a press conference Monday.When asked what he meant by his prior threat, Trump left it menacingly vague.

“Well,” he said, referring to our adversaries, “they’re going to have to determine what that means, but it means it won’t be pleasant.It’s not going to be pleasant.” What does that mean? Does Trump have something in particular in mind, or is he making it up as he goes along?Is he bluffing? Or is he dead earnest? No one has come up with a Trump Doctrine yet, but a candidate might be: Find out if I’m serious or not at your own risk. The most basic thing to note about Trump’s threat, though, is that it is the first time an official of the US government — or a soon-to-be government official — has sounded appropriately outraged and harsh about an ongoing crime perpetrated against our fellow citizens. Trump’s “hell to pay” is a throwback to Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt making it clear that we aren’t to be trifled with, and doing it in a clarion tone. It’s been shocking how muted the Biden administration has been about the hostages.Whereas Trump is expressing a righteous indignation in a thunderous tone, the Biden administration has spoken with all the clarity of a deputy secretary of state summarizing the notes of a three-hour-long committee meeting. This style of public negotiation comes naturally to Trump, of course.His approach doesn’t represent any particular foreign-policy theory.

It’s not realist or neo-con or isolationist.It�...