Is the US president distracted as mid-terms near, or is it all deliberate?

WASHINGTON — From trolling Canada about a lake to suddenly talking about Kim Jong Un, US President Donald Trump’s recent distractions speak louder than words.

The former reality TV star has long been known for his reliance upon a simple tactic: when you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.

But the 80-year-old’s recent stunts appear to be even more targeted than usual at wrestling the news away from the Iran war and the economy as difficult midterm elections loom in November.

“This president specializes in diversions,” William Galston of the Brookings Institution told AFP.

The war on Iran is proving a major drag on Trump’s approval ratings, which polls show are consistently in the low 30s, but there is no end in sight to the conflict as it hits the six-month mark.

The Atlantic reported that the White House’s strategy was to try to push the conflict into the background, avoiding more military action and focusing on less newsy economic measures against Tehran.

One way of doing that is by making people look the other way.

On Thursday, Trump called the press into the Oval Office for a stunning announcement: he was signing an order to rename Lake Ontario, on the border with Canada, as “Lake America”.

The move followed days of a headline-grabbing trade war with Canada, all reinforcing the “America First” narrative Trump sells to his political base.