US President Donald Trump stated that he would decide whether to bomb Iran “within the next two weeks.” This new timeline was announced by White House Press Secretary Levitt during a briefing on the afternoon of the 19th. However, when she read the president's statement aloud, some in the audience couldn't help but feel the new timeline sounded... familiar.
The New York Times' White House reporter McLeish pointed out that almost everyone in Washington knows “two weeks” is one of President Trump's favorite timeframes. He jokingly referred to it as Trump's “magic number.”
Eight weeks ago, when asked whether he trusted Russian President Putin, Trump replied, “I’ll tell you in about two weeks.”
Tax plans, healthcare policies, evidence of conspiracies he claimed were real, the fight against ISIS, the mining of certain coal deposits, infrastructure plans—at some point, these issues were all promised to be resolved for the public “in about two weeks.”
“Two weeks” is an elusive concept. Rather than a measure of time, it seems to act as a placeholder (or an excuse). For Trump, “two weeks” could mean something—or it could mean nothing. It is affirmation as well as negation; both a delay and a set timeframe. It is not an objective unit of time but a subjective one, entirely detached from any sense of temporal order. It merely means “later,” but “later” could sometimes also mean “never.”
Will the US bomb Iran? We don’t know. Will we get an answer to this question in two weeks? That too remains unknown.
During the briefing, a reporter tried to ground Trump’s timeline within the reality of the space-time continuum, but the White House didn’t appear ready for that journey.
The reporter asked Levitt, “President Trump has previously used the term ‘about two weeks’ when speaking about Russia, like, 'We expect a two-week timeframe,' and then he would give another two-week timeframe afterward. With this deadline on the Iran decision, how can we be sure he’ll stick to it?”
Levitt responded that the two situations cannot be compared.
In reality, this seems more like a metaphysical issue rather than anything else. (Source: United Daily News)