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America, What are you Thinking?

Could the American people really be about to elect a man as obviously unfit for high office as Donald Trump as their next commander in chief?

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally. Photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon

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You may have missed this if you happen to have spent the past few months living under a rock, but in just a matter of days citizens of The United States of America will have the responsibility of deciding who is going to be their next President.

This is a matter that should be decided by the American electorate and only the American electorate, but the implications of this are global. So, even though I do not have a vote in this election, I still have an opinion.

Here it is. How is this a close-run thing? What are you thinking? With all due respect, what are you thinking?

If a writer were to set out to compile an exhaustive list of all the things that are wrong with the former President, Donald Trump, and what should be things that should exclude him from getting anywhere near the Oval Office ever again, that would be a very long list indeed. But, let’s have a go.

Before reminding everyone of the spectacular levels of malfeasance that Trump has been responsible for, a few words about his opponent in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris.  One of the criticisms levelled at her is that voters simply don’t know enough about her policies. Well, that’s not because she hasn’t gone into details. For those of us who still respect expertise, and who have a particular interest in economics, here’s an endorsement of the Harris economic plan from 23 Nobel Prize winners in economics. And, to add to that, here’s an endorsement of the Harris candidacy from another 82 Nobel Laureates.

Now, back to Trump, and the danger that he poses not only to the United States, but to the wider world.

The first thing about Trump is that he is a walking grievance. Almost every one of his utterances is about some perceived unfairness against him, or his campaign. When he has been fact-checked, he calls that bias, or election interference. He is always the victim. He always has a complaint. 

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But he’s not hard done by, nor is he the target of some coordinated slur campaign or witch hunt. For his false allegations of election interference, he has called for TV channels to lose their broadcasting rights. He’s not a victim, he’s the villain. He’s not hard done by, the many convictions against him have been based on unbiased reviews of the evidence against him through perfectly fair legal processes, of which, more are pending.

So what does that point to? He is a man for whom the rule of law has always been an inconvenience. He does not only have a trail of recent legal rulings against him, he has a trail of unpaid contractors and bankruptcies behind him. Despite the golden rule in the casino business being that the house always wins, he managed to bankrupt six of them.

Here’s something that is startling, there’s no prohibition on a convicted felon seeking or holding the office of the President of the United States. But that is only because nobody could ever have envisaged a scenario in which one would run, and certainly not a scenario where that convicted felon might actually gain the most powerful position on the face of the planet.

Donald Trump has 34 felony convictions. While the details of that particular case were salacious, the proven charges boiled down to falsifying financial records with the intent of influencing an election by hiding hush money payments to a porn star. Some might posit that this is a matter of character. I’ll posit that this shows how remarkably susceptible to blackmail he is.

While we are on the subject of his lifelong philandering, his penchant for younger women and his relationships with an infamous child sex trafficker are known facts. So what is it with his support from people who declare themselves to be devout Christians? Is it because his supporters will go on stage to warm up for his show by denouncing his opponent as the “Anti-Christ”?

Aside from being, in every way, a person unsuited for high office through personal flaws, we should also recall how spectacularly bad he actually was in that job that he’s asking to get back. He was laughed at, openly mocked, by other world leaders at a United Nations General Assembly for lying about his accomplishments, of which there were none in his first term in office. The GOP got tax cuts for rich donors, nothing else of note.

Donald Trump, the BBC and the Real ‘Foreign Interference’ in this Election

Why is the BBC giving so much coverage to a complete non-story about Labour and the Democrats, just because the Republican candidate would like them to?

The United States had one of the worst Covid responses in the world, for a variety of reasons. The first was that Trump had the pandemic playbook thrown out. The second was a combination of his incompetence and lack of regard for others. The third was because the party that this person leads wanted to make a culture war out of a pandemic and that led to denial of science being encouraged and more deaths than there would have been.

In the many “I was in the room” books that have been written about the first Trump presidency, it is commonly characterised as chaotic. Trump was lazy, his time was spent watching people stroking his ego from a large TV screen. He never learned to listen to the President’s Daily Brief, because he didn’t understand it and because Trump’s actual priority is, Trump. 

Back then, though, alongside the kids that came along for the grift, there were people with principles in the room. He will not have people to forestall his most stupid and appalling whims in a second administration, his own VP candidate and various other stooges like Sebastian Gorka call for absolute loyalty to Trump. Gorka, who would like to be in charge of Human Resources in a Trump 2.0 scenario, has stated that not following Trump’s agenda to the letter should be considered treasonous.


The ‘F’ Word

Which brings us to fascism. What Gorka is calling for is certainly that. Project 2025 is an element of that too. The hijacking of the Republican Party by Christian Nationalists like Mike Johnson is another example, specific to the American context.

But the word fascist has now entered this debate not because of something that Trump’s opponents started. Trump has been described as a fascist by several members of his own administration. Not because of sour grapes following a sacking but because they have worked with him, seen and heard him. That Trump is a fascist is the considered opinion of his own former allies.

I have written on these pages before about the things that Trump, and Vance, have said about Ukraine. As a writer based in Ukraine of course my chief concern is what a second Trump presidency would mean for my home country and the people who live here. That, future essential aid to Ukraine, is not the subject of this article, but it does open one last door. And behind that door stands war criminal Vladimir Putin waiting with a glass of champagne.

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The US must not elect Trump because of his character, his stupidity, his ignorance, his criminal history, his authoritarianism. The US must not even consider electing to lead their country a man who is very obviously in awe of the repressive and corrupt way that Vladimir Putin runs Russia.

While Trump talks about supposed “enemies within” being more of a threat than Russia, he’s signalling in advance that he will continue to ignore the fact that Russia considers themselves at war with the United States. That person cannot be Commander in Chief.


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