Trump is a product of American democracy; the American electorate has to live with its choice, may be for the next four years. Africans say if you give birth to a problem-child, you have to take responsibility for him. Americans have the duty to rein in Trump before he does incalculable damage to both the country and humanity.
There was a popular song when I was a child titled, “Come and see American wonder.” It was not so much about the celebration of the perceived wonders of the United States (US). It was more about the incredulous things emanating from ‘God’s own country’.
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Some of us thought that as far as the US was concerned, we had seen it all. But the bizarre ways of President Donald Trump and the antics of his fellow billionaires like Elon Musk, tell us: “You ain’t seen nothing yet”; the worst is yet to come.
How does a rational being wake up in his home and say he is donating the population of another country, 10,726 kilometres away, to other countries? Who, but a clown, would say he wants to turn a land like Palestine, which many had fought and died for, into an holiday resort, perhaps a private golf resort?
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But Trump must not be taken for granted because, in his mind, he might have mapped out Gaza, the hotels he hopes to build on the corpses of the Palestinians, and the private profits he and his fellow business people hope to make by seizing the territory.
Nobody should take the American president for a clown. Or if he truly is, then he is a deadly one willing to carry out genocide for the profits he hopes to make.
This is not the first time he wants to donate land, that he does not own, to other people or businesses. He has done more bizarre things. Four years ago, as he was leaving office, Trump issued an American Presidential Declaration donating an African country and member of the African Union, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), better known as Western Sahara, to Morocco.
This year, he says he has renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. That is a name that has been in existence for over four centuries. In trying to implement this brainwave, Trump’s leg men gathered information that some media were not adhering to the pronouncement. So, an Associated Press (AP) reporter was barred from the White House because the news agency insists on sticking to the international name.
He also renamed the 100-year-old Panama Canal owned by Panama as the American Canal. In January, he threatened to seize the canal for allegedly making too much profit. Then a month later, he repeated his threat to invade and take over the canal, but this time for allegedly allowing the Chinese to run it.
He is also working hard to cripple the American public sector. He sacked more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on cases involving the 6 January 2021 riot. He is also scrutinising thousands of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who investigated the riot. So, he has no qualms punishing public servants he perceives as enemies, even when they were merely doing the job they are paid to do.
He also threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark for America’s “economic security”. Trump has also asked neigbouring Canada to become the 51st state of the US and erase its 5,525-mile long border with it. He said of Canada: “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100 per cent certain that they’d become a state.”
Interestingly, Canada, with a land area of 3,855,103 square miles, is bigger than the US with 3,794,083 square miles. So, if Trump’s clowning is to be taken at face value, USA should join Canada and become its 11th province.
However, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in February warned his country’s business leaders to take Trump’s threats seriously. He told them the Trump administration is “very aware of our resources, of what we have and they very much want to be able to benefit from those (Trump) has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country.”
Trudeau who had dealt with Trump in his first term as US president, added: “Not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have, but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state.”
Trump had gone on to impose a 25 per cent additional tariff on Canada and neigbhouring Mexico which, he says, he has suspended for one month. Meanwhile, he has imposed an additional 10 per cent tariff on imports from China.
In his first seven weeks in office, the Trump administration rounded up 14,000 undocumented immigrants, some of who were packed into aircraft and dumped in their countries of origin.
He has also ordered the construction of another immigrants detention centre in the Guantanamo Bay, a Cuban territory that the US has occupied since 1898. The administration says it is targeting 600,000 immigrants whom it alleges have criminal records.
Today, US democracy has delivered what is perhaps its most unique verdict and most powerful president since its 4 July, 1776 Declaration of Independence. Trump, operating outside the majority Republican Party, seized the party with his Make America Great Again (MAGA) group, which is now the dominant faction.
He is also working hard to cripple the American public sector. He sacked more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on cases involving the 6 January 2021 riot. He is also scrutinising thousands of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who investigated the riot. So, he has no qualms punishing public servants he perceives as enemies, even when they were merely doing the job they are paid to do.
He is also dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in such a cruel manner, that hundreds of its staff posted across the world have no idea what to do. They are virtually abandoned abroad with their families.
Today, US democracy has delivered what is perhaps its most unique verdict and most powerful president since its 4 July, 1776 Declaration of Independence. Trump, operating outside the majority Republican Party, seized the party with his Make America Great Again (MAGA) group, which is now the dominant faction.
He won both the popular and Electoral College votes. The party he dominates controls both the Senate and House of Representatives. In addition, his party has a 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court. So, perhaps for the first time in US history, one man has control of the Executive, Congress and Supreme Court. But for the fact that this is happening in the US, it would have been called a dictatorship.
Conscious of his powers, Trump is even by-passing the Congress and side-tracking the US constitution by trying to run the US on the basis of Executive Orders. Given their number, it would be a miracle if he can remember the Orders he is signing.
Having cornered and virtually conquered his country, Trump is trying to rule the world with sanctions and threats. Europeans who have always been allies of the US are on the edge. They are not sure what to expect. So they are meeting to plan some resistance, and possible retaliation if he imposes tariffs and sanctions on them. He will certainly be resisted, but he can do much damage.
Trump is a product of American democracy; the American electorate has to live with its choice, may be for the next four years. Africans say if you give birth to a problem-child, you have to take responsibility for him. Americans have the duty to rein in Trump before he does incalculable damage to both the country and humanity.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
