Jesus A. Garcia-Rojas
International Policy Analyst
“No human being fits into a single diagnosis. It takes a long time to realise that”, and the now ex-President Trump, as a human being, is the beneficiary of that diagnosis left to us by Manuel Vilas. He is the only president in the Republican history of the United States of America to have undergone the Impeachment procedure twice. With the aggravating circumstance that in the vote of the representatives in the American Congress, ten legislators from his own party voted against him.
Let’s add three additional facts that are endorsed to Trump’s management: his party, the Republican, has just lost the majority in the Senate, crucial for many legislative procedures. He also lost his majority in the House of Representatives in the previous mid-term election and, in addition, has created a deep divide in the GOP (Grand Old Party) as his party is also known. He is very interesting, as he is a businessman acting in politics and has become the president of the most powerful country on the planet. Rivers of ink are waiting.
The Impeachment procedure will continue. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California and speaker of the House, has already sent it to the Senate where it will probably be approved. By the time this happens, Donald J. Trump will have left the White House. In his concluding speech defending the Impeachment, the Democratic majority leader and Maryland state legislator, the experienced Steny Hoyer, made it very clear: “We are fighting this battle because of our principles. We are fighting this battle because of our principles, because of our convictions, and because of our commitment to the American Constitution. So it is not a question of taking Trump out of the Oval Office, as he has already left the most powerful position in the world as of today. It is about creating a precedent for history, and at the same time, abolishing the political future of Trump, who today still enjoys a popularity of nearly 75% in the Republican ranks. Basically the former president is accused of “stimulating, inspiring and organising an attack on the United States Congress”.
There is no doubt that before leaving, Trump has sought to leave doubt floating in the air as to the result of the last presidential elections, although no objective evidence has been provided. He lies again and again, that something is left. We believe that Trump’s main cancer-causing agent has been the COVID-19, which has been mishandled due to the lack of a muscular public health system in the United States. The United States is the country most affected by the pandemic, in terms of people infected – over 23 million – and the number of deaths from the virus, over 390,000 to date. However, beyond the obvious, this situation leaves us with several lessons. One of them, which is inalienable, is that not even the President of the United States can skip the law for free. Another is that in that country there is a complex political and legal mechanism of control, balance sheets and counter-balances that allows even the White House tenant to be subjected, judged and condemned when the conditions are right.
In his “Democracy in America,” Tocqueville said that “Equality” was the greatest social and political idea of his time, and that the United States offered the most advanced example of Equality in action. Today it is demonstrated and American democracy is strengthened. Another experience associated with this is the suspension of Trump’s access to some social networks, which can be seen as censorship and an attack on freedom of expression, but also as a duty to prevent the former president from encouraging a violent, massive and illegal act by making irregular use of those networks. And another aspect is the sieve of racism owing to the different manner, means and results with which the security forces in Washington DC managed the protests staged by the “Black Lives Matter” and “Antifa” last June, in which the demonstrators were mostly black and were met with violence, without any consideration, which led to hundreds of arrests; in comparison with the assailants to the Capitol, where almost all of them were white supremacists, and found few police officers and weak resistance, only a few tens of arrested and where some police officers are observed in cordial dialogue with riot.
Beyond Biden’s Inaguration Day, it is “right and necessary” to remember some milestones of the Trump era. Domestically, it stimulated the American economy and achieved historically low unemployment rates of up to 3.5% in Dec 2019. Almost total employment. The New York Stock Exchange’s Dow Jones index has risen to record levels. He appointed THREE justices to the Supreme Court, which is made up of only nine “justices” for life, tipping the balance towards the conservative side, and also appointed 54 justices to the Courts of Appeal – the level immediately below the Supreme Court – while Obama only appointed 30 in his two terms, and in general he appointed 24% of the active judges.
In the international arena, Trump can also showcase interesting things. He has imposed all kinds of sanctions on the most undemocratic and criminal regimes in the Americas, including Cuba and Venezuela. He committed himself to restoring democracy in this oil-producing country, though he did not succeed in ousting the dictator Maduro. He also darted the Iranian theocracy, beginning with the elimination of Qassem Soleimani. In the environmental field, Trump opted for excessive deregulation and withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, sparking strong criticism from environmental movements. He made diplomatic moves that underpinned peace processes, such as the case of Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, the dialogue between the Taliban and the Afghan government, and the agreements between several Muslim countries and Israel. Trump did not start any war. He denounced and halted China’s overpowering advance against the American economy, in which it enjoyed unfair trade advantages. He always left something clear: “America first”. It is his country.
His greatest vanity? I think it was the wall on the southern border, which he turned into a mantra to reduce illegal immigration. Today there are nearly 600 kilometres of a border of over 3,000 built.
Curiosity? He governed almost through Twitter …
And finally. No, Mexico did not pay for the wall.
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