The Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States not­ed in a breezy aside to re­porters in the Oval Of­fice on Tues­day that fish­er­men in the south­ern Caribbean are afraid to ply their trade, fish­ing, and he could un­der­stand why.

“To be hon­est, if I were a fish­er­man, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t want to go fish­ing ei­ther. Maybe they think I have drugs down­stairs.”

Fish­er­men are as smart as the rest of us. They can fig­ure out the lim­its of US in­tel­li­gence. The Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, seems over­ly-ea­ger to be Trump’s best friend in the hemi­sphere, and has sup­port­ed the strikes on the boat and the killing of their oc­cu­pants.

The Prime Min­is­ter, an at­tor­ney and a for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al, is ful­ly ac­quaint­ed with habeas cor­pus, a bedrock le­gal prin­ci­ple. The ac­tions that have been tak­en in the past against drug smug­gling sus­pects at sea are in­ter­cep­tion, in­ter­dic­tion, search, seizure, ar­rest, de­ten­tion, tri­al. If con­vict­ed, im­pris­on­ment. The key­word there is “sus­pect­ed”.

Trump’s courts at 20,000 feet that de­liv­er cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with­out tri­al are a clear vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law, re­gard­less of whether the US slapped the la­bel of “ter­ror­ist” on the sus­pects.

Trump said in a so­cial me­dia post on Fri­day night that US forces had blown up an­oth­er boat in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters in the south­ern Caribbean. He shared video of the strike, and said three peo­ple were killed. It was his third such post, but he told White House re­porters last week there’d been a fourth strike that was not made pub­lic.

In con­ven­tion­al crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings in the US, es­ti­mates vary about the num­ber and pro­por­tion of con­vic­tions that are over­turned an­nu­al­ly. The Na­tion­al Reg­istry of Ex­on­er­a­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Irvine School of Law record­ed 141 last year.

In ad­di­tion, the late US sec­re­tary of state Col­in Pow­ell did last­ing dam­age to trust in US in­tel­li­gence with a Feb­ru­ary 2003 Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion at the UN, on Sad­dam Hus­sein’s phan­tas­mic weapons of mass de­struc­tion. Wash­ing­ton’s in­tel­li­gence for bel­liger­ence should al­ways be ap­proached with cau­tion.

On mat­ters of war­fare, Trump is a con­tra­dic­tion. He bad­ly wants to be award­ed the No­bel Peace Prize. He and his staffers talk con­stant­ly about why he de­serves it.

They boast about the num­ber of wars he has end­ed; a num­ber that varies ac­cord­ing to the day of the week and de­pends on who is talk­ing.

And yet, he has or­dered mis­sile strikes on a num­ber of tar­gets—from boats in the south­ern Caribbean, to Iran’s nu­clear fa­cil­i­ties, to the Houthis in Yemen.

Trump com­plet­ed his sec­ond state vis­it to the Unit­ed King­dom last week. Af­ter be­ing fet­ed by the Roy­al fam­i­ly to Wind­sor Cas­tle, he trav­elled the 43kms by he­li­copter to Che­quers, the prime min­is­ter’s coun­try­side re­treat.

In a joint news con­fer­ence with Prime Min­is­ter Sir Keir Starmer, he spoke of end­ing the war be­tween “Aber­bai­jan and Al­ba­nia”. He meant Azer­bai­jan and Ar­me­nia. He can ac­tu­al­ly take cred­it there for bring­ing to­geth­er two deeply dug-in sides, but in that case and oth­ers, long-stand­ing wars did not end be­cause he willed it and talked to the lead­ers of the com­bat­ant sides.

The war be­tween Con­go’s army and Rwan­da-backed rebels con­tin­ues, de­spite his claim that he end­ed it. And no, Pres­i­dent Trump, you did not end hos­til­i­ties be­tween Iran and Is­rael. They’re sim­ply on hold.

Mean­while, Is­rael, on whom the US is said to ex­er­cise in­flu­ence and lever­age, did con­sid­er­able harm to one of Trump’s ac­tu­al diplo­mat­ic ac­com­plish­ments—strength­en­ing al­liances with a num­ber of Arab states—by bomb­ing tar­gets in the Qatari cap­i­tal, Do­ha, in an at­tempt to kill Hamas ne­go­tia­tors gath­ered there. Is­rael al­so bombed tar­gets in Gaza and Lebanon in the past week.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar is sched­uled to go to New York this week for meet­ings of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA).

Her speech be­fore the as­sem­bly is on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 26. As usu­al, there will be bi­lat­er­al en­gage­ments on the mar­gins. She has spo­ken pub­licly about meet­ings with coun­tries such as Ghana, but a source in her gov­ern­ment told me that top of her wish/plan list is a meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Trump … if he at­tends UN­GA.

She has spent po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal she had in Cari­com in pur­suit of that mo­ment.