Trump in Washington

Yasmeen Aftab Ali

Clinton won nearly three million more votes more than Trump so the angst wave in America upon his winning is understandable. The same thing happened with Al Gore. He too won the popular vote and lost the presidency.Like the jack of the pack of cards it’s a wild card – only time will tell how Trump’s America and Trump for America will term out. Following Dwight Eisenhower, he is the first President who is not a politician.How do people and media view Trump? Keep in mind the media too has their ‘favourites’ more often than not.“Most of the things he promised to do in order to get elected make no sense. And for that reason alone he may not do them. There is also the fact that even a Republican Congress may very well resist his policies, by, for instance, refusing to fund construction of the proposed wall bordering Mexico. He may not negotiate new trade agreements as president, but it is highly unlikely that he will back out of existing agreements. He probably knows enough economic history to want to avoid the disastrous protectionism of the 1930s that prolonged the Great Depression and doomed the Republican Party to oblivion for two decades. China, Mexico and the Middle East are places where American businessmen, including Mr. Trump himself, make money. He knows, as just about every economist knows, that global trade creates far more jobs than it destroys, and that growing the middle class while cutting off trade is impossible.” (NYT)A very, very interesting angle is presented by Armen Orujyan for Fortune, “Trump and his voters, on the other hand, are carrying a bucket of very cold reality that, if they make it to the White House, would make selective memory impossible. They may be unintentional bearers of truth who follow a political embarrassment, but once in power their political blunders just might accidentally save us from our greatest problems before it is too late.”(March 29, 2016) What are these blunders? Orujyan talks of national debt. (Quoted as $14,000,000,000,000 minus another $5 trillion in Federal Accounts) US population is quoted as above 323 million. This means $44,000 per American. Fifteen percent Americans live below poverty line. That’s roughly 50 million Americans. “Some 130,000 of them live on the streets of Los Angeles. They don’t have representation in Washington. They don’t have lobbyists on K Street. They don’t have a voice, and in many cases they lack housing and food.” He writes.He poses an interesting question: “Would a Trump presidency fix our national problems? Probably not. But, his presidency should not be viewed through that lens. A Trump presidency would likely produce alarming missteps, yet in the process it would expose the real problems our nation faces—problems that, if not corrected today, will cause far graver damage tomorrow. The worse he does, the better it may be for the country.”Trump’s oft repeated statement of making America great again if viewed from the prism of this exceptional piece makes a great deal of sense and does not relate to White Supremacy over the world.“Mr Trump’s rhetoric on immigration came to define his presidential campaign.But since the election, he has quietly dropped his call to remove all undocumented immigrants from the US, a move that, aside from being so impractical it might be impossible, experts warned would damage the US economy by taking too many people out of the labor market. Instead, in his first televised interview after winning the election in November, he vowed to immediately deport up to three million illegal immigrants with criminal records in one of his first acts as president.” (The Telegraph Jan 19, 2017)The White House reportedly deleted its climate change web page, tweets Sherry Rehman on January 16, 2017, “And are obviously redoing the healthcare, civil rights pages.” In his inauguration speech he vows to eradicate radical Islamic Terrorism. The Telegraph states, “A Trump presidency would break from the traditional Republican commitment to free trade, imposing a set of protectionist policies to close America’s economic borders. He will immediately announce his intention to “renegotiate” the North American Free Trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.” “First, President Trump must immediately start campaigning to win the trust and respect of a constituency he completely ignored until now: foreign leaders and foreign publics. Trump can best advance American interests by mobilising other countries to partner with us. Specifically, we urge President-elect Trump to prioritise outreach to NATO allies, Japan, South Korea, and Israel. Presidents and nations need friends — and the Trump presidency will start on a stronger foot if it does not start off in isolation. Doing so will give President Trump a stronger and more responsible hand should he seek to take audacious steps such as confronting China over trade imbalances or revisiting the nuclear deal with Iran.” (Foreign Policy Nov 9, 2016)In an interesting piece by The Atlantic June 2016 issue, “Across his lifetime, Donald Trump has exhibited a trait profile that you would not expect of a U.S. president: sky-high extroversion combined with off-the-chart low agreeableness. Like Bush, a President Trump might try to swing for the fences in an effort to deliver big payoffs—to make America great again, as his campaign slogan says. As a real-estate developer, he has certainly taken big risks, although he has become a more conservative businessman following setbacks in the 1990s….Because he is not burdened with Bush’s low level of openness (psychologists have rated Bush at the bottom of the list on this trait), Trump may be a more flexible and pragmatic decision maker, more like Bill Clinton than Bush: He may look longer and harder than Bush did before he leaps. And because he is viewed as markedly less ideological than most presidential candidates (political observers note that on some issues he seems conservative, on others liberal, and on still others nonclassifiable), Trump may be able to switch positions easily, leaving room to maneuver in negotiations with Congress and foreign leaders. But on balance, he’s unlikely to shy away from risky decisions that, should they work out, could burnish his legacy and provide him an emotional payoff.”