Trump’s travel ban is cruel, outrageous and exactly what voters want ...Middle East

The extent to which Donald Trump has normalised extreme behaviour is extraordinary. His statement on Wednesday declaring a ban on travellers from a 12 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan and Iran, can only be understood by reference to his notorious “Muslim ban”. That ban was first propositioned at the end of 2015, when he ran for the Republican nomination on the first occasion in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

At that time, the other candidates going for the nomination denounced his calls for a “total and complete shutdown” of the country’s borders to Muslims in unequivocal terms. They looked, however, like “woke”, liberal wimps. Trump appealed as the strongman, tough on immigrants and all those who threatened America.

For his base, it was a winning move. Like the effective mass psychologist he is, Trump couched the Muslim ban in terms of fear and uncertainty. Fear drives votes, and nobody has used fear as an electoral weapon as effectively as Donald Trump.

In 2015, Trump crowed that “Donald J Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what the hell is going on”.

It was outrageous. It was cruel, but it combined theatricality and absurdity to an extraordinary degree. His vulgarity and extremism were strangely compelling to watch. His base went wild. I remember thinking that he had won the primary then and there.

For all his awfulness to liberal opinion, it was easy to see the appeal. Strong, simplistic slogans, an insistent demand for force and ruthlessness.

When he became president, the pledge took the form of a temporary travel ban which blocked the citizens of seven countries from entry to the United States. This was announced in January 2017 by Trump, only a week after entering office. It was blocked by judges and was the subject of litigation for an entire year until December 2017, when the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could come into full effect.

This was the cartoon business mogul image he had projected for more than a decade on his successful reality TV show, The Apprentice. Of course, Trump was no mega business brain – he only pretended to be one for television. His skills have always been dramatic. Display and showmanship have always been his hallmarks.

So on Wednesday, I got the distinct impression that this was a performer, probably past his best, reheating old material for the purposes of titillating his fan base. Like an overweight Elvis, in his Vegas period, Trump lacked the dynamism and conviction of his former years.

The ban seems a lot less outrageous now. It didn’t seize the attention of the media in quite the same way that the “Muslim ban” did.

Trump has always made issues of identity central to his pitch. His fans are part of an America which is bewildered by change and hankers after an older America, one untrammelled by political correctness or the so-called “woke” agenda .

To these people, Trump’s true believers, the borders of the United States have taken on an existential significance. They fear that “millions and millions” people will arrive from what Trump called “shit hole” countries who will destroy the America Trump and his followers believe to have once been great.

I was puzzled by the optics of the announcement yesterday. “We don’t want ‘em”, he bawled in his characteristically petulant way. Behind him, bizarrely, there were pictures of what I assumed were his mother and father, as well as other close relations. Was that meant to humanise the message?

square JAMES BALL

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You can’t be sure. What is certain, however, was that the announcement was supposed to shore up his core support, at a time when his popularity is sinking, when his economic plans regarding tariffs are unpopular and increasingly erratic. It must also be remembered that his pre-election pledge to bring peace to Ukraine on “day one” of his presidency now looks absurdly hubristic, even by his standards.

A leader under pressure reverts to type. A performer under the gaze of a disapproving audience, will seek to please his listeners by playing the old tunes, the “best hits”, as it were, of his repertoire.

The usual talking points were trotted out on Wednesday. He referred to “Biden’s open door policy”. He talked of “millions and millions of illegals” who should not be in America. He played a variation of the America first tune, saying that “we will not let what happened in Europe happen in America”.

Of course, opponents will point out the fatuous cruelty and inefficiency of the policy of a blanket ban on people coming to the United States. Trump’s incoherence was apparent when he made a reference to the incident in Boulder, Colorado.

The suspect was from Egypt, but Egypt was not on the list of banned countries. To Trump and his fans, none of this matters. The message is everything, even if the policy behind the headline is ineffective or incoherent.

Yet, the distinct impression I had was that, after 10 years in presidential politics, Trump’s power to shock has faded. He will cause havoc and mayhem, but the random chaos he generates is a sign of weakness. I think now even some of his Maga base are beginning to see that.

Kwasi Kwarteng is a former Conservative MP. He served as chancellor between September and October 2022 under Liz Truss

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