Now, why was this person in the White House for a meeting? He’s not part of the project. He’s had nothing to do with politics for years. He made some horrible decisions while he was PM. But he was there. From CNN:
Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister who led his country into the war in Iraq and whose eight-year tenure as a Middle East envoy got — at best — mixed reviews, raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he attended a White House summit on the future of Gaza. To the casual observer, Blair’s presence may have been a surprise. While he is a former world leader with experience in the Middle East, his official activities in the region over the past decade have been mostly limited to private business ventures and sporadic media appearances.
Tony Blair. I can’t see where he would have anything to contribute. Sure, he has some Middle East experience, but he’s been out of the game for years. His knowledge isn’t up to date. His decisions are appalling. Hell, he looks like hell these days. Trump doesn’t like people when they don’t look good, so that’s right out.
Blair became an unpopular figure and was close to being declared a persona non grata in the West Bank city of Ramallah, because of what the PA saw as his bias towards Israel. Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and non-resident senior fellow at Brookings, told CNN that while Blair’s presence at the meeting could help Trump get the attention of wealthy donors, it will hurt public opinion in the Middle East and internationally. “(Blair’s) legacy of backing the Iraq war and his financial and political ties to rulers in the Middle East have undermined his reputation in the Middle East and elsewhere,” Telhami said.
There we go. He’s not well known anymore, and he was quite the unpopular PM for the UK. He’s not trusted by many countries. Yet Trump wanted him there, and we don’t know why. I would think it would hurt, rather than help, when it became publicly known.
Palestinians are already deeply distrustful of the Trump administration and its plans for the future of Gaza, and Blair’s involvement in the discussions is unlikely to ease their concerns. In the UK, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrat party, Ed Davey, demanded that Blair brief the UK parliament on the meeting, saying that the UK must “leverage all the information at our disposal to make (Trump) do the right thing.”
WHAM. His reputation precedes him. He needs to fade back into obscurity. Is he jumping on the Trump Train? Just his name is a hindrance, not a help. We need to know why he was there. WHY? Give us that information! (There’s a lot more to the article. You can read it here.)
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Better Blair than the despicable Farage.
Back when he was PM, he was known as “Bush’s bitch”