Opinion
Thomas L.
Friedman
A Plea
for President Trump With a Fragile Country on Edge
Sept. 12,
2025
Thomas L.
Friedman
By Thomas
L. Friedman
Opinion
Columnist
Dear
President Trump,
I am
writing this as I ride through the night on a train from the Poland-Ukraine
border to Kyiv. I should be thinking about the Ukraine war, but I am thinking
about you and why the aftermath of the awful murder of Charlie Kirk may be the
most important turning point in your presidency — depending on how you turn.
Let me
put this bluntly: You are not going to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which you so
covet, by mediating between Ukrainians and Vladimir Putin or in Gaza between
Israelis and Palestinians. Neither of these conflicts is ripe for a solution
right now. But you have a chance to win something much more significant and
historic:
The
American peace prize.
Make
peace at home. Make peace between Americans. That is the peace prize that you
don’t have to wait for anyone to confer on you. It is there for your making and
the taking. This American peace prize will not be awarded by Scandinavians. It
will be awarded by history. It will say that when Americans came closer to
civil war than perhaps any other time since the Civil War, President Donald
Trump surprised everyone on the upside: He called Barack and Michelle Obama,
Bill and Hillary Clinton, George and Laura Bush, the Democratic and Republican
leaders of the Senate and House and all nine Supreme Court justices and said:
Come to the White House and let the country see us standing together against
political violence and vowing that we will model civil discourse and
disagreement — in our speeches and online — and we will call out the opposite
when we see it among our supporters as well our rivals.
Getting
through the next week is important, Mr. President. The challenge is starting
today to try to make peace and then to keep going.
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Even on
this train to Kyiv, I can hear the voices in America saying: Donald Trump will
never, ever do that. It is not in his character. He has never surprised us on
the upside.
Just the
opposite. On Wednesday he said that he plans to unleash the full weight of his
administration against those who contributed to an environment of “radical left
political violence.” On Friday he said more of the same.
Mr.
President, if you treat the cancer of political extremism eating away at the
soul of our country as coming only from the far left and not also the far
right, you will destroy your legacy, and you will destroy the country.
After the
signing of the Abraham Accords, you called me and told me that I surprised you
— that you thought The Times would never let me write such a supportive column
for your Middle East peace breakthrough. Well, I am begging you now, Mr.
President: Surprise me. Surprise all of us and make peace in America. Nothing,
absolutely nothing, would isolate the extremes on the left and the right more
than if you did that. And nothing would be better for the country than to
attempt to calm and unify people.
As
unrealistic as it may sound, I refuse to foreclose the possibility that you
will elevate the country, not just divide it even more — because the stakes are
so high.
Do not
kid yourself: If you go after only the far left voices, you will be ignoring
what I consider to be Abraham Lincoln’s best piece of advice to all of his
successors, delivered in his address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of
Springfield, Ill.:
At what
point shall we expect the approach of danger? … I answer, if it ever reach us,
it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our
lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we
must live through all time or die by suicide.
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