Ask American viewers what line of accessories Ivanka Trump sells, or where Melania Trump sleeps, and most will answer accurately (jewellery and Trump Tower). It is doubtful that even a tenth is aware that the world is facing its biggest famine in 70 years. You can hardly blame them. The cable channels are so busy feasting on President Donald Trump they have scant airtime for starvation. Trump, the story, is bigger than the world and the rest of America combined.
Such monomania suits Mr Trump’s purposes. The more time everyone spends reacting to his tweets, the less we focus on the US president’s in-tray, including the largest famine since the second world war. Mr Trump has said nothing on a crisis that spans Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, northern Nigeria, and threatens up to 20m lives. Any of his predecessors, Republican or Democrat, would have made it a priority by now — George W Bush perhaps more than any. The Trump administration has contributed nothing to the $4.4bn UN emergency appeal.
Why should he? Mr Trump came to office promising to rip up the playbook that has guided all postwar US presidents. This includes the chapter on humanitarian aid. Sure enough Mr Trump has proposed a 30 per cent reduction in the budget for US foreign aid and diplomacy. America has spent far too much, and far too long, paying for other people’s problems, in his opinion. The more America spends on foreigners, the less it spends on itself. This is the essence of Mr Trump’s world view. The rest is transactional.