MICHAEL BASSETT: THE SECOND DONALD TRUMP DISASTER

Fourteen months ago the world watched with increasing unease as American President Joe Biden showed everyone that he was in no fit state to contemplate another term in the White House. Today, many around the world are asking whether Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, has reached the same stage in life where his cognitive powers are at such a low ebb that he ought to retIre. Yet, Trump has more than another three years left of his second term, and there is an infinite amount of damage he can yet do to America, and the world.

Americans have elected for themselves and the world some amazing presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower, Clinton and Obama each had skills well beyond the ordinary. They all knew the Constitution, the powers, the conventions as well as the limits they impose on presidential authority. Sadly, Biden, and now Trump reveal the dangers of holding office when their grey cells are no longer functioning properly.

At least Biden, in a long political career, had at some stage read and understood the Constitution of the United States. Trump’s behaviour suggests that he’s the first President never to have done so. Nor does he know or care about the conventions that have built up over the 236 years since George Washington became the first elected president. The main constitutional requirement is to accept the will of the people as expressed through full and free elections. No other president has refused to accept an election outcome like Trump did in 2020. Beaten fair and square in the Electoral College, and by a plurality across America of nearly seven million votes, Trump tried on 6 January 2021 to overthrow the result by encouraging a rabble of thugs to crash Congress on the day Biden’s victory was being officially certified. Trump subsequently showed no remorse, and promptly, when he returned to the White House, released from prison those convicted for their crimes. This President shows no respect for others elected to office under any banner other than Republican. Los Angeles, Washington DC, Baltimore and Chicago controlled by Democrats have each been subjected to trumped up stories about increasing crime. He’s busy turning the National Guard, which the Constitution says is under the control of each state’s governor until a special emergency, into a private army to advance his personal whims. Bizarre, but he shows no respect for democracy which has been the cornerstone of America’s existence since the 1780s.

Recently, Trump, J.D. Vance and their honchos announced they intend cracking down on liberal groups around the country after the killing of Charlie Kirk. This, despite failing to produce any evidence that the crime of one obviously unhinged young man was part of any network. Trump’s motto seems to be “Invent a narrative, then act”. When a TV station broadcasts something Trump disapproves of, he threatens to remove its licence. He’s even taken to firing people from their federal jobs when he doesn’t like their parents! Whatever happened to free speech enshrined in the US Constitution? Trump only favours free speech if it’s a speech that he favours. Hitler and Mussolini were pretty much the same.

One of the cornerstones of the modern American economy has been the Federal Reserve system where interest rates are set by a panel of experts rather than politicians playing political games. Many with long memories recall President Nixon’s economic problems in 1971 and Robert Muldoon’s a decade later. Sane politicians have learned to live with the independence of the Federal Reserve and other reserve banks. Not Trump. He’s criticised the man, Jerome Powell, whom he himself appointed to chair the Fed, and has urged Powell to bow to presidential pressure. He even fired one of Powell’s panel. Fortunately, she bravely resisted pressure, pointing to the President’s failure to produce any reason for her sacking. Trump has indicated he’ll appeal this all the way to his beloved Supreme Court where there is a majority of Republican appointees, three of them appointed by him in his first term. Inflation hovers in the US, as was widely predicted after Trump’s extraordinary tariffs were implemented. Stability at the Fed is in the free world’s best interests. New Zealand’s Mike Moore, who was Secretary-General of the World Trade Organisation, must be turning in his grave over the damage Trump’s tariffs are doing to world trade. Most serious economists think the tariffs will be self-defeating.

I haven’t mentioned the President’s roller-coaster foreign policy: his weird infatuation with Vladimir Putin, his erratic relationship with Ukraine, his deliberate insults to European leaders, his uncritical endorsement of every outrage the Israelis inflict on Gaza, or the way he has pushed India into the camp of those dictators that met recently in Beijing to acknowledge 80 years since the end of World War Two. Suffice it to say that Trump’s knowledge of world history and of the fundamentals of world peace that the US signed up to in San Francisco in 1945, seems lamentably limited. We are now living in a world where no friend or foe of the United States knows from day to day what President Trump might do next. The only thing that is predictable is Trump’s unpredictability. International accidents could easily occur in this environment.

The Constitution of the United States recognises that circumstances might arise where steps need to be taken to remove a president from office. Such an event occurred in August 1974 when another Republican, Richard Nixon, reached the brink of impeachment over his blatant obstruction of the inquiry into his Watergate conduct. He agreed to resign at the urging of the leaders of his own party. Today, the Republican leadership remains committed to Donald Trump with declining enthusiasm, although a few Congressional Republicans have criticised some of their President’s antics. With three and a half years left, Trump’s standing with the public is slowly declining, and in my opinion it will be a miracle if he reaches 20 January 2029 without Republican demands that the by-then 82 year-old, the oldest president in American history, be removed from office for health reasons.