The Second Coming of President Trump
By Jide Osuntokun
Donald John Trump was sworn in as president of the United States of America to succeed Joseph Biden the Democratic Party incumbent after a bitterly fought campaign against Kamala Harris on January 20.
Former president, Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris did everything to the letter to make the transition perfect and in order, starting from the certification of Trump’s election by the Congress headed by Kamala Harris, and the actual swearing in on January 20.
I am not sure President Trump got the message because, in January 2021, Trump was not at the swearing in of Biden as president because he said he was robbed of the presidency by rigging while in the previous December, he had wanted his own Vice President Mike Pence hanged by the Trump inspired mob. What a world! And this happened in the so-called home of modern democracy as often claimed by the United States.
Now Trump is president and the whole world is watching. The first thing he did on the first day of his second coming was the signing of about a hundred executive orders that carried the weight of law while bypassing the Congress and affecting virtually everything his government was going to do with the exception of the financial appropriations to run his entire government.
This would have been a bridge too far. But he has signed executive orders freezing all foreign assistance, removing illegal immigrants from the United States soil, firing civil servants and asking Elon Musk to cut the fat out of the unnecessary bureaucracy and trim the federal departments. He is banning automatic citizenship of children born in the States by illegal immigrants, stating that there are only two genders recognized by law – male and female and presumably all others would be illegal; withdrawing the USA from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and stopping the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) from communication with the WHO. He has also withdrawn from the UNESCO, and from the Climate Change Convention. He has mercifully not withdrawn yet from the UN and its specialized organizations and NATO.
He has maintained threatening postures to Canada and Mexico and renamed, unilaterally, the Gulf of Mexico the gulf of America. Some of his orders are actionable and a judge in Washington State has declared ultra vires his order of denying citizenship to children born in the USA by illegal immigrants. There will be several court actions against his orders. Some American hemispheric countries to which immigrants are being dumped have protested that his agents brought back their nationals in chains but he has threatened them with tariffs if they refuse to take back their nationals who have illegally entered the USA. These actions of President Trump are hugely popular with his Republican base and with white Americans who, over the years, have feared that the flood of immigrants may make them a minority in their own country.
Whatever the reasons for the overwhelming victory of Trump last November, his promise to radically change things was one of them and immigration and inflation were at the top of the whole table of restructuring promised by Trump. He has not started tackling the issue of inflation yet but he has given orders to members of his cabinet that they will have to fight inflation which is hydra-headed wherever it rears up its ugly head. Well; talk is cheap. Everyone is waiting for Trump’s action on inflation now that his controversial cabinet has virtually been stream-rolled through Congress. The most controversial being Pete Hegseth who narrowly passed Senate confirmation only when the also controversial Vice President James David (JD) Vance cast a tie breaking vote for him in a Senate dominated by the Republican majority.
This fact indicates that the Republican majority may yet be a restraining instrument for the rather wild and unstable president.
The big things he promised would have to go to Congress. Such issues as medical care and tax reduction for the rich, reform of the Pentagon and his plan for infrastructure would have to be tabled before Congress where his party does not have the kind of overwhelming support given to him country-wide in the last election.
His choice of ambassador to the UN is already raising eyebrows because he said there is no such people as Palestinians and his ambassador designate to Israel says the Lord Almighty gave the land of Israel to the Israeli people and there is nothing like West Bank of the River Jordan but Samaria. Now these are the people who will be trying to conduct United States’ diplomacy in the Middle East, the gun powder tinder box of the world where the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are dangerously existing in close proximity and therefore needing expert hand to prevent ever ready explosion.
Trump himself on the day people are remembering the liberation by Soviet troops in 1945 of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where over a million Jews were incarcerated and incinerated, carelessly said Gaza Strip, home to over two million Palestinians may need to be cleared of the Palestinians. While he was pandering to Jewish conservative politicians including Netanyahu who may want to annex the West Bank and Gaza, his policy super czar, Elon Musk was attending the Alternative for Germany (Alernatif Fur Deutschland) party regardless of it being branded a neo-Nazi party and even giving a NAZI salute and asking Germans not to feel guilty about the sins of their ancestors.
The contradictions surrounding Trump gives one a lot of worry and many right thinking Americans are beginning to worry. One of such people is the Independent Senator from Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders who rightly claims that the American government has been captured by oligarchs just like that of Russia and that Elon Musk alone virtually outspent the Democratic Party and used the influence of money to buy the presidency in which he now is going to play a prominent part in which he may even eclipse old man Donald Trump!
Donald Trump’s policies when they finally materialize may disrupt the system as he himself has said he wants to do. He will upset many leaders of countries in the world beginning from the Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which has been asked to spend five percent of their budgets on defence when many of them are still struggling to meet the two or three percent which was previously the benchmark.
Certainly most of the European countries like Germany and France would not be able to meet this target on ideological grounds and in peace time. Is Trump going to exit NATO as he has done to other international organizations? Is he also going to militarily annex Greenland from Denmark a fellow NATO ally? Is he going to attack Panama in order to seize the Panama Canal?
I was in Canada last summer and the province of Ontario patriotically shows visitors how they fought the British and even their Southern neighbours the USA in the 19th century and if push comes to shove they probably will fight again. Trump should not take Canadians for granted because they are justifiably proud of their country. Yes, Canada benefits from trade with the USA but so does the USA benefit from trade with Canada. The same can be said for Mexico that Trump with little sense of history has been threatening and insulting. It is not necessary to make enemies of the amigos!
The same goes for the Chinese and the members of the EU that the American president has been threatening with high tariffs. No country is an island. We live in a symbiotic world and the world is interdependent. It is true that the USA is the linchpin of the world economy but China is the workshop of the world making goods from consumer to industrial and sophisticated goods like chips without which the USA Silicon Valley will not thrive. Yes it is true Chinese prosperity has been largely due to her access to American market but this has been on bilateral basis and Chinese interests hold trillions of American bonds. The point I am making is that the economy of the two superpowers have become intertwined that sudden separation will not be without serious consequences.
The so-called third world including us in Africa, the proverbial wretched of the earth, are not totally useless in this struggle for survival. Some of our countries out of desperation for fairness in an unkind world have joined the BRICS group apparently as a threat to dollar imperialism. We have got also the market as small as it may be; we also have the natural resources, forests and land. Mr Trump had better be careful not to burn down the bridge and destroy the tremendous goodwill which previous American administrations had built over the years.