'Seriously, not literally': how should the world take Donald Trump?

Anthony Scaramucci found a way to interpret Donald Trump's more controversial comments while serving briefly as White House communications director during the president's first term. "Take him seriously, but don't take him literally" was Scaramucci’s advice to journalists and the world at large.

That's a useful way to try to make sense of Trump's startling plan to "seize control of Gaza, raze what's left of it, remove its Palestinian inhabitants, and 'develop' it into the 'Riviera of the Middle East'", said The Nightly. But will we have to use it for the next four years as White House rhetoric and reality look likely to become increasingly blurred?

What did the commentators say?

Trump's plan to "take over" and "own" Gaza is "not going to happen", said the BBC's Jeremy Bowen. Arab states reject it and, after its "catastrophic intervention in Iraq in 2003", an American return to the region would be "deeply unpopular in the US". So why worry? Because "Trump's remarks, however outlandish, will have consequences".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Of course Trump's plan should not be taken literally, said David Kaufman in The Telegraph. Instead we should "focus on the essence of his messaging", which is essentially that "it’s time for the Arab world to take responsibility for looking after people they profess to care about".

The whole farrago is another example of what The New York Times described as "one of the more peculiar aspects" of Trump's political appeal. A lot of his supporters "simply do not believe he will do many of the things he says he will". One businessman supporter said that Trump's recent call for "one really violent day" in which police would crack down on property crimes was "just a sound bite".

What next?

Seriously, not literally may be "a great analytical insight into how then-candidate Trump communicated with his supporters", said Jonah Goldberg in the Chicago Tribune. But "it is fairly ridiculous hogwash" as a manifesto for how to treat an actual president.

Fundamentally "what a president says matters" and "credibility is a finite resource", one that is easily depleted "when you think you'll never be held to account for what you blurt out".