A Portrait of Trump Lost in Translation
“She cared much more for her roses than for the Armenians … no, she could feel nothing for the Albanians, or was it the Armenians?” That’s how Virginia Woolf sketches Clarissa Dalloway’s apolitical poise against her husband Richard, a Conservative MP, in Mrs. Dalloway (1925). A century later, the world feels turned upside down. On August 19, 2025, on The Mark Levin Show, Donald Trump bragged about brokering peace in “one of the seven” conflicts: “You saw the Aber-baizhan. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years… with, uh, Albania. Think of that!”
It went viral, particularly, in Armenian social media. Though surprised by Trump’s blunder, I’ve grown used to such mix-ups. As an Armenian medical interpreter in the United States, a non-trivial part of my calls involve nurses—and sometimes doctors—confusing Armenian, Albanian and Amharic. One nurse even urged me to “just try” interpreting for an Albanian patient, assuming our languages were as similar as their names sound. But exactly 0% of those clinicians had brokered a normalization deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia eleven days earlier.
Think of that indeed. Who would have thought that a hundred years after Mrs. Dalloway, someone muddling Armenia and Albania would be the number-one politician in the world’s most powerful country? To Clarissa’s credit, the nations she confused both existed. And to Trump’s credit, he got one thing right: the timeframe—about 34, 35 years. This is not surprising, since being primarily an entrepreneur, Trump obsesses over numbers more than names or substance.
Eleven days earlier, at the White House, Trump turned to Armenia’s Prime Minister Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev and invoked the thirty-one-year Congo–Rwanda conflict: “You have them beat—thirty-five years.” It was the same scoreboard mentality—war and suffering reduced to sporting stats. But his math is selective. He logged the Central African conflict in his tally of six conflict settlements while ignoring the 140–300 people killed after the mid-July deal he touted on August 8, and the dozens more who died before he boasted about his achievement again on August 19. Ironically, three days later, he donned his red cap declaring in all caps: TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.
As an entrepreneur, Trump counts first; names—and meanings—come second. His fixation on racking up “settlements,” even as he muddles Armenia with Albania, fits a larger pattern: scoreboard one-upmanship, Nobel Prize ambitions, and authoritarian reflexes. The rhetoric kitsch that gives him away is often lost in translation (e.g. in Armenian and Russian) and polished into diplomatese. This pattern has shown up across four recent events: June 21 on Iran; August 8 at the White House with Pashinyan and Aliyev; August 18 with Zelensky; August 19 on The Mark Levin Show.
What sounded less like diplomacy and more like a ChatGPT-style hallucination—“Aber-baiyan … with, uh, Albania”—was his garbled nod to the August 8 White House signing with Armenia and Azerbaijan. The parties issued a U.S.-brokered Joint Declaration and initialed a peace framework that included mutual recognition, non-use of force based on the Almaty borders, an unimpeded Nakhichevan link through Armenia under Armenian jurisdiction with reciprocal connectivity, and a U.S.-branded development track called TRIPP. Omissions: no right of return for Artsakh Armenians, no POW releases, no cultural-heritage guarantees, no accountability measures. Moreover, Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh, the bone of contention, is not even mentioned in the document. How could Trump be expected to challenge Aliyev over the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh while sponsoring an eerily similar process in Gaza, to which he referred as just an ocean front property on par with the French Riviera?
The signing sits awkwardly beside Washington’s 2023 vow. On September 14, 2023, Acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim assured the Senate that the United States “will not countenance” ethnic cleansing or tolerate military action against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. Less than ten days later, Azerbaijan attacked, forcing over 100,000 people to flee. And the “consequences”? Trump himself provided the answer in October 2024 on Truth Social: “Kamala Harris did NOTHING as 120,000 Armenian Christians were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced in Artsakh.” Two years later, the same man waived the 1992 ban on U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan, offered no return path for the persecuted and ethnically cleansed Christians, and allowed Aliyev to walk away with a fresh SOCAR–ExxonMobil deal.
The pattern isn’t just American; Europe laid the groundwork. In July 2022, as Brussels scrambled to replace Russian gas, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen flew to Baku to sign an energy MoU, hailingAzerbaijan as a “reliable partner” and a “trustworthy energy supplier.” The taps stayed open through the Lachin blockade, the starvation of Artsakh, and the September 2023 ethnic cleansing.
For Armenia, the immediate risk decreased—above all the danger of losing Syunik—even as the staging normalized an erasure already accomplished.
Inside Armenia and the Diaspora, the omission has widened a rift. The opposition and much of the diaspora fault the government for excluding “Artsakh” and any “right of return.” I share the disappointment—but after a decisive defeat, those demands do not reflect the power reality. Keeping the Artsakh page formally open, without palpable leverage, risks inviting a new war whose likely cost would be more Armenian land. The evidence since 2020 is plain: calibrated Azerbaijani incursions and pressure along Armenia’s borders, including Syunik, show how quickly slogans can become cartography.
On the legal front, critics (including the Lemkin Institute) argue that withdrawing cases from international courts trades justice for optics. Armenia did have favorable posture in several filings and interim measures. But court victories rarely move border posts. Refusing to sign while pressing those suits might have satisfied principle—and triggered a fresh offensive. There’s a cautionary parallel next door: as European governments signaled recognition of a Palestinian state in August–September 2025, Netanyahu convened a response and weighed formal annexation of parts of the West Bank, while his government approved major settlement projects—moves that even prompted a UAE warning to the White House that annexations could unravel the Abraham Accords. In that counterfactual, “winning on paper” could have meant losing on the map. That is the cruel arithmetic of defeat.
With the trilateral signing in Washington, the thirty-year limbo known in Armenia as “no war, no peace”—which inspired my 2016 minimalist poem Par and Weace (Խաղերազմ և պատաղություն)—is said to have ended. For now. Whether it outlasts Moscow’s war in Ukraine is an open question; until then, the scale tips slightly toward peace.
“Peace through strength!” exclaimed—not Trump, not Aliyev—but Pashinyan, after signing the document. Coming from the only person at the table without leverage, the Reagan-era slogan sounded both cringeworthy and bitterly ironic, especially after Trump and Netanyahu recently revived it to justify the June 2025 Iran strikes. The statement was an ill-considered line that inadvertently humiliated Iran—the only Armenia-friendly power in the region and, until now, a soft deterrent to an Azerbaijani attack. More to the point, this is peace through strength, but not through Armenia’s strength. It is peace through its opponents’ strength. It is peace achieved by giving up your claims.
A more fitting reference would be not Reagan, but Armenian Catholicos Khrimyan Hayrik, albeit with one favorable difference. After the 1878 Berlin Conference, Khrimyan warned that while other nations came with iron ladles; ours was paper. Now, too, others arrived with iron and the Armenian ladle again was paper. It was dipped in the soup, and it did soften, but, unlike 1878, it did not disintegrate completely. Armenia was able to retain jurisdiction over the Syunik crossing.
Trump stood to gain personally––the “peace” signing was a trophy hunt for a Nobel Peace Prize. Just a week before the signing, on July 31, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt boasted from the podium that the president had secured “about one peace deal or ceasefire per month” in his first six months, and that “it’s well past time” he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Each deal thus becomes merely another step toward the ultimate trophy he craves.
At the ceremony itself, the flattery became choreography. Both Aliyev and Pashinyan, sensing Trump’s appetite for recognition, even signaled willingness to co-sign a letter to the Nobel committee. Pashinyan said Trump “deserved to have [the] Nobel Peace Prize” and pledged to “promote” it; Aliyev proposed a “joint appeal to [the] Nobel Committee.”
For Trump, outlasting and outshining others are the truest measures of greatness—and winning a Nobel would not only crown his presidency but also settle an old score with Barack Obama. When the two South Caucasian leaders asked to be invited to the ceremony, Trump jumped in: “Front—front row. You’ll be front row.” Minutes later, he feigned modesty playing down the odds: “No matter what I do, they won’t give it up … I’m not politicking for it,” he said in the Q&A.
If awarded, Trump would be only the fifth U.S. President to receive this honor. But he could take solace in a different distinction: the first laureate who openly pursued peace for the prize, rather than pursuing peace as an end in itself. He would also be notable as someone who abetted a genocide (in Gaza)—nominated by two leaders facing genocide allegations themselves (Netanyahu at the ICJ; Aliyev in an IAGS resolution deeming the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh genocidal and the 2023 expulsion ethnic cleansing)—and seconded by Pashinyan, the elected head of a nation scarred by genocide.
Trump’s appetite isn’t only for prizes; it’s for longevity and unilateral command. Near the end of the August 8 Washington summit, bowing his head and torso forward, tilting slightly left, Trump looked up at the dictator of a small, obscure republic in the South Caucasus with the measured admiration one reserves for a role model.
“How long have you been in the leadership position?”
“Twenty-two years,” said Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, sitting confidently upright, legs spread wide.
“Twenty-two years! It’s pretty good” Trump said—with a measly four and a half nonconsecutive years in power to his name—turning back to the audience. “That means he’s tough and smart.”
An awkward, elongated smile crossed Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan’s face as he sat to the right of Trump in the White House. The smile seemed to split apart the very foundation of his leadership. For years, Pashinyan had done almost everything “by the book,” democratically, to impress the West—sometimes at his own country’s expense. His nation stood as an island of democracy surrounded by autocratic regimes, only to witness the world’s democracy exporter publicly admire the longevity of a dictator who has driven his opponents either to the grave or to prison, while plunging his nation to the bottom of every freedom and democracy index.
In that instant, Trump seemed to invert the meaning of democracy, recasting authoritarianism—even totalitarianism—as virtues. This was not the first time he had done so; rather, it was one more entry in a long catalog of moments praising a dictator. When it comes to authoritarian leaders, Trump’s compliments flow freely: “Genius” (Vladimir Putin), “highly respected President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko,” “my favorite dictator” (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt); “fantastic leader” (Viktor Orban of Hungary); “a hell of a leader,” “a tough man, ”a strong man” (Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey).
Yet Trump’s admiration for strongmen is not some aberration in U.S. foreign policy. American history is crowded with presidents who favored dictators, and with administrations actively installing them— toppling or assassinating democratically elected leaders along the way: Italy (1948 intervention to block the left and preserve fascist-era cadres), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), the Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965–66), Greece (1967), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976), Iraq (1980s), Afghanistan (1980s and 2000s), and more. The difference is that Trump says it out loud. Among MAGA loyalists, this bluntness is worn like a badge—proof, they say, that “he’s saying it like it is.” There’s a perverse virtue in the candor—no Bush-style missionary theater about “spreading democracy.” But Trump’s distinction is starker: he not only favors authoritarians; he yearns to become one.
Trump’s preference for authoritarian style shows up again in his Ukraine talk. He openly bristled at Zelensky’s adherence to Ukraine’s Constitution that requires a nationwide referendum to alter borders. “I’m a little bothered,” Trump said, adding: “He’s got approval to go into a war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap?” To Trump, U.S. Congress is often an obstacle, which he demonstratively bypassed on June 21–22, 2025 with U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan without congressional authorization. Longevity and unilateralism are proof of strength—which is why Zelensky’s referendum talk annoys him while Aliyev’s “22 years” delights him.
Calling Aliyev “tough and smart” isn’t self-deprecation or meekness; it’s marketing—a subliminal pitch to the American electorate: the U.S. Constitution is “outdated,” and amending presidential term limits would be “tough and smart,” not undemocratic. The alliterative branding is already on the official Trump Store: Trump 2028—“Rewrite the Rules.”
And he’s been publicly toying with scenarios to get there. During the August 18 meeting with Zelensky and European leaders, a revealing exchange about wartime elections occurred: “So you’re saying during the war you can’t have elections?” Trump asked, yanking the conversation from a hot zone back to what he calls “the hottest country in the world,” the United States. “Three and a half years from now, if we happen to be in a war with somebody—no more elections? That’s good.” Think of that—words from a man fixated on a Nobel Peace Prize.
A day later, on The Mark Levin Show, he practically spelled it out: “You’re going for the presidency of the United States. I would call that the gold ring.” Like Gollum clutching “my precious,” what won’t he do to keep it? The answer sits in Herbert Marcuse’s 1964 question: “Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger?” The logic has held so far: scores have been settled via proxy wars. How long before could a blunder alter the course? Could the world turn into warld?
The world has already had a glimpse of what it looks like when Trump starts a war.
“The strikes were a spectacular military success.
Wonderful job they’ve done.
Completely and totally obliterated.
Magnificent machines.
Spectacular generals.
We love you, God!”
These lines come from Trump’s June 21, 2025 address announcing massive “precision” strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities. This isn’t just bluster; it’s showman’s militarism—Riefenstahl’s cinematography translated into prose. “Magnificent machines” and “spectacular generals” aestheticize violence, making war feel like performance art rather than a delivery system for death and destruction. The key word isn’t success; it’s spectacular—from spectaculum, a theatrical performance—echoing Jean Genet’s compression, “Fascism is theater,” and Walter Benjamin’s verdict that “the logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.”
A week earlier, on June 14, Trump didn’t just praise these machines; he paraded them—tanks rumbling down Constitution Avenue in the capital’s largest military display since 1991. This pageant was staged on the Army’s 250th anniversary (which also happens to be Trump’s birthday). The display, coupled with hardware worship and the pleonastic drumbeat of “completely and totally obliterated,” performs what Susan Sontag anatomized in “Fascinating Fascism”: “history becomes theater,” a “characteristic pageantry” of massing and choreography; the erotic sheen on uniforms and machinery—beauty as alibi. It literalizes the Russian proverb “Красота требует жертв”—beauty requires sacrifice.
The same register bleeds into diplomacy. At the August 8 Summit, opening the trilateral meeting with Pashinyan and Aliyev, he called it “a big, beautiful honor to welcome everyone to the White House.” “Big, beautiful” functions as a stock epithet—a delexicalized intensifier worn thin by overuse (semantic bleaching). It’s a house style with many variants: the “big, beautiful wall,” the “big, beautiful tax cut,” and the July 4, 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill”—a tax relief for the wealthy, and tighter belts for everyone else. The words flatter, but they also flatten.
Do these signals survive translation? Not always. Armenian and Russian coverage tends to domesticate the kitsch into bland diplomatese. While the Armenian Government’s simultaneous interpretation of the August 8 Summit was overall impressive (no interpreter credit in the official video), certain minutiae deserve closer examination when delving into Trump’s rhetoric kitsch. For instance, Trump opened the Summit with Aliyev and Pashinyan by calling it a “big, beautiful honor”––interpreted live in Armenia as «մեծագույն պատիվ» (an utmost honor). This translation preserves the hyperbole but misses the oddity of “beautiful.” But that one telling line that emphasized his scoreboard mentality vanished in translation: comparing Artsakh’s 35 years to Congo–Rwanda’s 31, Trump said, “You have them beat—35 years.” Possible options for translation: “Նրանց տվել-անցել եք,” “Նրանց հաղթած ունեք,” “Գերազանցել եք նրանց”:
What characterizes Trump’s speeches is not just policy but pattern: a verbal motif of delexicalized superlatives—tremendous, spectacular, magnificent—a mix of conduplicatio and epimone that turns adjectives into a refrain. Overuse bleaches their meaning; they become mere hype, a metronome for consent. In Armenian translations, his repeated use of tremendous is interpreted with varying adjectives in each instance: “tremendous diplomatic assistance” became “դիվանագիտական լրջագույն աջակցություն”; and “tremendous suffering” became “վիթխարի տառապանք”. Then there was the redundancy in “very historic peace summit,” which was eradicated by dropping “very.” So, “պատմական գագաթնաժողով” should have been “շատ պատմական գագաթնաժողով”. In Armenian, his repeated use of tremendous at the Washington summit was interpreted with varying adjectives in each instance whereas just “վիթխարի” could have done the job:
tremendously important document – մեծագույն կարևորության փաստաթուղթ
tremendous diplomatic assistance – դիվանագիտական լրջագույնաջակցու
tremendous suffering – վիթխարի տառապանք:
In the Iran speech translation, both Azatutyun (Armenian) and RBK(Russian) translated “spectacular military success” as “տպավորիչ”/“впечатляющий” (“impressive”), while Russian Meduza went with “захватывающий” (“captivating”). These translations are defensible—but they sever the link to spectacle. “Spectacular generals”—his second use of spectacular—competes with, but doesn’t quite trump, the pathetic “tremendous patriots” of 2019. It also exposes a translation snag: Russian “захватывающий” shades toward “capturing,” absurd for generals; Armenian “տպավորիչ” works idiomatically for people and thus erases the awkward collocation. Haykakan Zhamanak at least chose “դիտարժան” for “spectacular,” which preserves the spectacle root; paired with generals it’s jarring—which is exactly the point. To keep the original’s truth, “зрелищный” and “դիտարժան” retain the spectacle; they jar, and the jolt is the point.
As for “completely and totally obliterated,” Azatutyun shaved off the redundancy, rendering it simply as “լիովին ոչնչացվեցին.” RBK kept a doublet but upgraded it to logic: “полностью и окончательно уничтожены”—which turns pleonastic hype into a claim of irreversibility (“once and for all”). More accurate Armenian and Russian renditions would be: “լիովին և ամբողջությամբ” (as translated at civilnet.am or ամբողջովին,
At the end, Trump turns the usual denouement of a presidential address on its head. Before the expected supplication—“God bless America”—Trump flips the grammar of piety from petition to fait accompli, thanking “everyone involved… and in particular, God.” Embedded in that line is more than worship; it’s brag. The subtext is unmistakable: look what I achieved; I didn’t just win militarily—I secured God’s endorsement. He casts himself not as a servant under judgment but as a kind of divine negotiator, someone who can bring God to the table. The prayer becomes a boast. In the performance, he collapses commander, preacher and anointed victor, reviving the medieval “by the grace of God” conceit, where power is proof of blessing and a ruler’s acts arrive pre-blessed.
And it leaves a harder question: if victories arrive pre-blessed, how much warse can it get? Is the warst yet to come?
“She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.” Remove the pronoun and the attribution, and many would assume this was written about Trump. It wasn’t. Virginia Woolf wrote it a century ago to capture Clarissa Dalloway’s ignorance and self-absorption—her obliviousness to the Armenian genocide. That old portrait has found a new subject.
P.S. Some will say words matter less, claiming Trump is a man of action. Yes, actions speak louder than words, but words speak first. Words can buy time for prevention or counteraction. They often foreshadow deeds, unless they’re lost in translation. Which is why translators and interpreters must resist smoothing the shock: preserve the kitsch; keep the oddities odd; let the spectacle show through—lest fascism slip by undetected; and let the language warn us before words become deeds.
Author’s Note: This essay was written prior to the administration’s announcement
