It was Trump the showman who gave his maiden address to the UN General Assembly this week. And he didn’t disappoint. Though he appeared to let the speechwriters do most of the talking for him — there was a little something for everyone. And parts of it had no one’s stamp on it but his. Such as when Mr Trump felt at liberty to say before an international audience of so-called peace loving nations that he may have to, like, totally destroy North Korea’s Rocket Man and his regime. This much was to be expected, given how at home the unquiet American is playing to the cheap seats. Not to mention how his one-man crusade against ‘fake news’ has led him to cross the line to position himself as every click baiter’s dream. Also singled out as a rogue state was Iran. This, too, had been on the cards. As was Trump’s insistence on framing the Tehran regime as having vowed death to the US and threatening to annihilate Israel. By doing this, he succeeded in neatly circumventing the pesky detail of Tel Aviv being the Middle East’s de facto rogue nuclear state. Naturally, no mention was made of confirmation by the IAEA that Iran is playing by the nuclear rulebook. Well a man has to prioritise. And this lack of attention to detail served us well here in Pakistan. Given that no mention was made of the selling of our nuclear secrets. Actually there was no mention of Pakistan at all. Which was, frankly, surprising. Especially considering how we have, this month alone, come under immense fire over the state apparatus’ support for and harbouring of terrorist groups that pose a threat to regional security and beyond. There was no talk of dropping us as an ally. It was left to Afghanistan to appeal to us directly for neighbourly dialogue to eliminate terrorism and contain extremism, with President Ashraf Ghani calling upon “Pakistan to engage with us on a comprehensive state to state dialogue on peace, security and regional cooperation leading to prosperity”. Yet there ought to be no celebrations along any of our corridors of power. For although Trump didn’t name and shame us — he did name and shame those whom we stand accused of aiding and abetting, namely Al Qaeda and the (Afghan) Taliban. Meaning that just as had happened back at the beginning of the summer when the apprentice-president, at the Riyadh summit, appeared to have got tongue-tied when talking of a nation that had suffered the brunt of Islamist terrorism and ended up naming India instead of us — this was no presidential oversight. As hard as it may be to believe, sometimes there is more weight to what Donald Trump doesn’t say. * Published in Daily Times, September 21st 2017.