Blowing hot and cold?

Reader question:

Please explain this headline: Nuclear: Donald Trump blows hot and cold with Iran.

My comments:

Donald Trump, that is, President of the United States.

On the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, Trump has been walking on both sides of the street at the same time, so to speak.

A few months ago, he said he “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ten days ago, he said Iran was literally weeks away from building a weapons-grade bomb.

As of now, of course, he is, alongside Israel, still bombing Iran – having been doing it for days, having killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of attack.

Trump, in short, has been making exact opposite arguments and they cannot be true at the same time. Either Iran has a nuclear capability or it does not. It cannot lose its capacity one day and regain it the next day or in a matter of months.

So, what gives?

The closest thing to the truth is perhaps that Trump is lying on both assessments, but that is not what we’re here for.

What we’re here for is to understand what “blow hot and cold” means.

It means extreme fluctuations, simply put, such as what we experience, for instance, in extreme weather. You know, sometimes during seasonal changes, the wind may be blowing cold today, hot the next day, and chilly again the day after.

In the form of human conduct, to blow hot and cold is for someone to vacillate in terms of opinion or position, to waver, to be shifty and indecisive due to a lack of certainly or conviction.

The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer believes this phrase comes from one of Aesop’s fables, explaining thus:

The expression comes from Aesop’s fable about a satyr and a traveler eating together on a cold day. The traveler blew on his hands to warm them and on his soup to cool it. Observing this, the satyr threw him out because he blew hot and cold with the same breath. The term then came to mean hypocrisy (“These men can blow hot and cold out of the same mouth to serve several purposes,” wrote William Chillingworth about the Protestant religion in 1638). However, it also was used to describe simple indecision (“It is said of old, soon hot, soon cold, and so is a woman,” in Thomas Percy’s 1765 collection, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry).

From the web, I’ve culled The Man and the Satyr in its entirety. It reads as follows (a satyr, by the way, is drunk, lustful woodland god with a horse’s ears and tail):

A man and a satyr, having struck up an acquaintance, sat down together to eat. The day being wintry and cold, the man put his fingers to his mouth and blew upon them. “What’s that for, my friend?” asked the satyr. “My hands are so cold,” said the man, “I do it to warm them.”

In a little while some hot food was placed before them, and the man, raising the dish to his mouth, again blew upon it. “And what’s the meaning of that, now?” said the satyr. “Oh,” replied the man, “my porridge is so hot, I do it to cool it.” “Nay, then,” said the satyr, “from this moment I renounce your friendship, for I will have nothing to do with one who blows hot and cold with the same mouth.”

All clear?

All right, here are media examples of people who blow hot and cold:

1. “Good fiction” means something different to everyone. To me, good fiction not only entertains; it educates, it elucidates. At its best, the word is mightier than the sword (so said the Assyrian sage Ahiqar, 2 1/2 millenniums before Edward Bulwer-Lytton gave us the more familiar version of the maxim). But the Age of Trump challenges writers of fiction, and particularly writers of political fiction, to produce work that meets this standard.

For starters: Any day’s news supplies plots so fantastic that most make-believe story lines pale in comparison. Elections stolen in collusion with the Kremlin? A White House spokesperson endorsing the Orwellian concept of “alternative facts”? Another denying that Hitler used chemical weapons against his own people? A president firing the Director of the FBI – even as the agency investigates charges of Russian interference in that president’s election?

One might argue that Trump is doing the author’s work for him; the professional fabricator need only take notes, and books practically write themselves. But when a story feels implausible, it doesn’t work. And Trump’s version of reality feels palpably far-fetched. Using a patio at a Florida golf club as a makeshift situation room during a North Korean missile test – as a guest posts pics to Facebook? Really? An author describing this scene risks taxing suspension of disbelief beyond repair. Real and plausible are not the same thing.

Moreover, good fiction plays by rules; otherwise readers feel cheated. Agatha Christie sets a murder mystery on an island, and we trust her not to reveal a hidden teleportation device in the final chapter. Frederick Forsyth sends a fictionalized assassin after Charles de Gaulle, and we trust him not to play fast and loose with documented history. But Trump’s presidency begs the question: What are the rules? Is there any convention he will not cheerfully toss over the side when it suits his purpose? Our shared sense of what is possible – what is reality – vanishes in a haze of “alternative facts.” Without a shared sense of reality, a writer cannot create tension; there are no stakes, no rules understood by the reader.

Yet another challenge: The political climate under Trump is, to put it lightly, tumultuous. Nobody knows what’s coming next. But novels take a long time to research and write, polish and publish. It’s hard enough under the most stable of circumstances to peer two years into the future. In the Age of Trump, how can one foresee what will be relevant in two weeks, let alone on some far-future publishing date?

My upcoming novel concerns the Israel/Palestine conflict – an unhappily evergreen topic. After Trump’s victory, I considered tweaking the book to reflect the signals the president-elect was sending. During those first heady weeks, he rejected the long-standing U.S. ambition of a two-state solution, endorsed a fraught relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and cuddled close with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud-led coalition. But of course, shiftiness is Trump’s defining characteristic. His words and his deeds enjoy a tenuous relationship at best. Recognizing that I was powerless to predict the direction of these particular geopolitical winds, I inserted only a single line: “Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, blew hot and cold.”

- Trump is stranger than fiction: John Altman on writing thrillers today, by John Altman, LATimes.com, May 12, 0217.

2. KATE Middleton was left “heartbroken” by her first love, who “blew hot and cold” with the Duchess, a school friend has revealed.

Before falling for Prince William, the then 19-year-old had been dating Harry Blakelock whom she met at Marlborough college.

And a fellow pier has described how the Duchess of Cambridge had been “hung up” on the hockey captain when she headed to Florence for her gap year in 2001.

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, the friend revealed: “She spoke about him all the time and he seemed to have messed her around quite a bit.

“He seemed to have blown hot and cold with her when they were at school and she was always talking about how she could get him back.

“He was also in Florence at the same time but from what I can remember, nothing happened.”

Both William and Kate had taken gap years before finding themselves in the same halls of residence and studying Art History at St Andrews University in 2001 – although William later switched to a Geography degree.

It was here that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge began dating.

- Kate Middleton was left ‘heartbroken’ by her first love and was ‘pining’ for HIM when she met William, says school pal, The-Sun.com, November 15, 2020.

3. Arsenal’s journey under Mikel Arteta has long been a reference point for Chelsea’s owners. It is part of the club’s shift towards youth and potential after the Roman Abramovich era. Chelsea have built with a long-term view and, seeing how Arteta has reversed Arsenal’s decline since his appointment as manager in December 2019, have been keen to find a young coach capable of becoming a similarly galvanising force at Stamford Bridge.

It is not an easy task. Chelsea briefly thought they had their rising star when they hired Graham Potter in September 2022, only for his reign to end after seven months. Now there is hope that Liam Rosenior can become Chelsea’s answer to Arteta. Rosenior is young, confident, talented and a little unconventional in the way he presents himself. It is early days but the 41-year-old has made an encouraging start, winning eight of his first 12 games, and has transmitted enough authority to keep jibes about his inexperience at bay so far.

Does he have it in him to match Arteta though? More pertinently, will he be given the time to succeed? Just over six years on from turning to Arteta after firing Unai Emery, Arsenal stand five points clear at the top of the Premier League before hosting Chelsea on Sunday. They have benefited from a stable environment. Rosenior, by contrast, is the fifth permanent head coach under the ownership of Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly. Chelsea have had nine managers, including interims, during the Arteta era. It is impossible to ignore the upheaval when it comes to working out why Chelsea have not mustered a title challenge since winning the league in 2017.

They remain a strong cup team, capable of raising their level in one-off games, but the consistency required to keep up with Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City in the league has been lacking. Rosenior has already felt it. Chelsea have been at their careless worst in their past two league games, home draws with Burnley and Leeds the consequence of a repeated inability to stay focused and defend a lead in mature fashion.

Dropping 19 points from winning positions this season says a lot about the squad’s mentality. Rosenior has to tackle the listlessness. Behind closed doors he should make clear that he did not like Malo Gusto wasting a promising attack with a pointless no-look pass against Burnley. Chelsea cannot afford to be cocky. They have to be honest about where they are short. They have to acknowledge that they have a discipline problem. They have had eight red cards this season and were pegged back by Burnley – whose stoppage-time equaliser arrived when one of Rosenior’s players dozed off at a corner – after losing Wesley Fofana to a needless second yellow card.

The frustration is that there are times when Chelsea look like a serious team. They have beaten the champions of England, Italy, Spain and France in the past 12 months. They face Paris Saint-Germain in the last 16 of the Champions League and it would not be a surprise if they went through. Chelsea are different in the big games. They have a daunting run-in but are not fearful of top opposition. The problem is more that they switch off when expected to win.

…

It remains an issue for Chelsea that, for every hit, there is a signing struggling to meet expectations. Joao Pedro has shone since signing from Brighton last summer but Liam Delap has been disappointing and Alejandro Garnacho is still the winger who blew hot and cold at Manchester United. There has been too much volatility. Erratic performances are not a surprise. Chelsea are still to prove that their project will work. Their bet is that hoovering up some of the best young talent in the world will give them a team to fear. They are convinced that their collaborative structure, with a head coaching working in tandem with five sporting directors, breeds stability.

Yet it will take more than handing Rosenior a six-and-a-half-year deal to show that Chelsea understand why Arteta has flourished at Arsenal. There will come a time when the heat rises. Chelsea’s faith in Rosenior will be tested. How will they react?

- Rosenior has talent to be Chelsea’s answer to Arteta but can chaos club hold their nerve? TheGuardian.com, February 27, 2026.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）