Trump's Geopolitics And Tucker vs Piers Morgan

Assessing the tectonic plates shifting under politics and discourse under the new regime

Trumpian Chaos

Several people have asked if I will comment on the chaotic first few weeks of the new Trump presidency. The wisdom of age has led me to be wary of investing too much in rolling news cycles that change by the hour, and the new Trump administration seems to have adopted a strategy of deliberately keeping the mainstream news cycle in a state of permanent hysteria. Steve Bannon has called it “muzzle velocity”, which ensures the media is three stories behind the latest development.

Nevertheless, and against my better judgment, I began writing a piece the other day about America's entering a “turtle” phase of its empire, which is to say, a defensive strategy rather than the “snowball” strategy it has used since World War II. The shifting sands of the tariff debate made my essay redundant, but I feel the analogy of strategy video games is apt. At the end of World War II, America was left standing as a behemoth on the world stage. Then, it began capitalising on its strong position, expanding its reach culturally, politically, and even morally. One win led to another until, as we discovered this week, the American taxpayer was spending $2 million promoting transsexualism in Guatemala. The problem with snowballs is that the larger they grow, the slower they move, and the more clogged up they become with dog turds, glass, and stones. The purging of DEI does indeed signal a shift that is not merely domestic, but as we have seen in the gutting of USaid, also an end to spreading Globohomo worldwide. As I’ve noted before, anti-white hatred and transsexualism were poor substitutes for Michael J Fox and Ghostbusters.

America's Toxic Rebrand

Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland, Canada and Panama signals a consolidation of the home front and forming a defensive line that goes beyond the traditional Monroe Doctrine sphere of influence by expanding the core itself. Adopting a more defensive position, or “turtling”, does not mean the player has left the board and given up. It is simply a strategic switch that contributes more to the emergence of a multipolar world. Grabbing as much land and resources, whether informally or formally, will allow America to hunker down and soften the blow of its descent into being just one Great Power among several.

There are, of course, a couple of outliers here: Britain and Israel. Despite Britain being “Woke North Korea”, the Trump administration has thus far behaved amicably toward Keir Starmer and the Labour regime. It is as if the UK is indeed being lined up for an Airstrip One role in America’s emerging Oceania. Surprisingly, the Greenland angle plays into this, and an older defensive line that goes back to the Cold War called the “GIUK Gap”.

A golden scenario for a newly isolationist America would be Nigel Farage and Reform governing Britain while America gorges itself on Greenland’s ample precious minerals, offsetting China’s advantage.

If anything is set to cripple the America First ideal, it will, naturally, be their greatest ally, Israel. As of writing, President Trump has just announced in a press conference with Netanyahu that he will annex Gaza!

Here, we return to the problem of offering commentary on events as they unfold and trying to cling on to the hot-take rollercoaster. The discourse online concerning Canada and Europe resulted in a tsunami of jingoistic petty nationalism wherein many Americans gloated over the prospect of bullying their weaker vassals, only within two days to have the rug pulled from under them as Trump announced his policies toward Israel and Gaza and the amicable settlement (so far) of the Canada issue.

The older I get, the more I realise that often saying nothing is the best course of action.

Tucker’s Meme Ideology

Last week, Tucker Carlson and Piers Morgan went head-to-head in an often heated exchange. I must admit that I don’t listen to Carlson frequently, and I barely listen to Morgan at all. It isn’t that I dislike Carlson, exactly, but I find his giggling and slightly hysteric manner grating. However, as noted earlier, it is often best to hold your tongue and let people enjoy things. As for Piers Morgan, I have long considered him to be the voice of the establishment, a weathervane for Power and the wants and needs of the Deep State.

Their discussion covered various subjects, from the Russia/Ukraine war to Israel and Trump to Free Speech. Unsurprisingly, Carlson adopted the “dissident” stance on almost every topic, and Morgan took the line of the Centre. I expected Carlson to fire off a plethora of truth bombs at Morgan and that Morgan would splutter with outrage and I could enjoy his discomfort on a pleasant walk.

But this, in my opinion, did not happen.

Fundamentally, Carlson seemed to have assumed that because he was more closely aligned with the view of the right-wing internet, he automatically had stronger arguments. However, Morgan was non-plussed, and not once did he act surprised or taken aback by Carlson’s truth nukes. For example, the dominant narrative on the right-wing internet regarding the Russia/Ukraine war is that American foreign policy provoked Putin into the invasion. Carlson, who interviewed Putin in 2024, has obviously been influenced by John Mearsheimer, who Morgan has repeatedly debated on this exact subject. Yet, when pressed repeatedly on what action should have been taken after Putin invaded, Carlson dithered, obfuscated, and tittered, but no answer was forthcoming. He did not want to take ownership of assisting Ukraine, but he did not want to be responsible for them being left to rot, either.

The pair then proceeded to discuss the ethics of dropping atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II. Morgan came out for the action as usual, and Carlson was opposed. Interestingly, Carlson slipped in the fact that it was Japan’s most Christian city that was destroyed, implying that there may have been a suspicious anti-Christian element within American policy or leadership. In the end, in order to get around the problem of American casualties required to invade Japan, Carlson denied that Japan should have been invaded at all. It is a curious line of argument to take, given that Carlson defends or is at least sympathetic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But again, it is reflective of the discourse online, complete with an implication that “they” were calling the shots.

Morgan was on far less firm ground when the conversation switched to Britain as an emerging police state, and his waving away of political imprisonment as merely relating to people inciting violence was dishonest. However, Carlson was unprepared and seemed to act as if it was just a given that Britain was a dystopian hellscape. It was just a “vibe” that everyone got, self-evident.

Interestingly, on the subject of Israel, Morgan pulled a fast one and placed Carlson in the role of Zionist apologist and defender of Israel’s war crimes — asking Carlson why Israel has his backing but Ukraine does not.

Time and again, Tucker Carlson deployed a rhetorical trick of saying “I don’t even know what that means” in response to some term or word or another. This aims to make the interlocutor question their core premises and foundational beliefs. One word where this tactic was deployed was “ally”, which Morgan could easily, and somewhat bemusedly, explain, define, and contextualise.

In the end, what the Tucker vs. Morgan debate amounted to was a juxtaposition of the old centre, represented by Morgan, and the world of right-wing internet ideas, represented by Tucker. Piers Morgan’s “bulldog liberalism” is not complex or difficult to understand; I’ve been force-fed it all my life. Yet it is, in many ways, the political formula that led us to where we find ourselves in the 2020s. Conversely, I’m left to wonder what Tucker’s ideology, based on internet talking points and truth nukes, actually amounts to. We understand what we don’t want, but what do we want?

It’s crucial to ask because simmering under the surface of the clash between the two men, a question was being asked: In the post-woke, Trump 2.0 era, which of these men actually constitutes the centre? In the end, I think they were wondering that, too.