Trump’s Chaotic First Couple of Weeks
On
Saturday in its front cover page the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel posted
an illustration of the U.S. President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of
Liberty. It depicts a cartoon figure of Trump with a bloodied knife in one hand
and the statue's head, dripping with blood, in the other. It carries the
caption: "America First". The cartoon says it all as to the direction
Trump is trying to take America.
The
artist who designed the cover, Edel Rodriguez, a Cuban who came to the United
States in 1980 as a political refugee, told The Washington Post: "It's a
beheading of democracy, a beheading of a sacred symbol."
No
wonder that just weeks into the new
administration, a new survey has found that about half of voters in the U.S. wished
Barack Obama was still in office. This result was announced by a group called
Public Policy Polling, or PPP, which asked registered voters at the end of
January, "Who would you rather was President: Barack Obama or Donald
Trump?"
Of the 725
participants, 52 percent responded with Obama, 43 percent preferred Trump, and
5 percent weren't sure. The group's press release also revealed that 40 percent support Trump's
impeachment.
According to Dean Debnam, president of Public
Policy Polling, "Usually a newly elected President is at the peak of their
popularity and enjoying their honeymoon period after taking office right now.
But Donald Trump's making history once again with a sizeable share of voters
already wanting to impeach him, and a majority of voters wishing they could
have Barack Obama back."
The issues that voters appeared most unhappy about included Trump's recent
immigration order and his team's handling of it in addition to the growing
influence of controversial adviser Steve Bannon.
The USA remains a divided country and rather than closing the gaps Trump is
widening this division with his authoritarian behavior. Not only has he
surrounded himself with hateful and highly polarizing guys like Bannon he is
behaving like an autocrat who has no tolerance for any criticism, esp. from the
media. Anyone who does not agree with him is deemed a foe by the White House
who must, thus, be shut down.
Trump issued an
executive order - travel restriction order (TRO), more commonly called the ‘Muslim
Ban’ that barred citizens of seven Muslim majority countries to entering the
United States. The travel ban, which Trump says is needed to protect the United
States against Islamist militants, sparked travel chaos around the world.
Millions of concerned citizens around the globe – from the USA to Europe to
Australia
to Asia in
places such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco,
Atlanta, St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Austin,
London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Sydney,
Jakarta and Manila - rallied
against the ban condemning it as racist and discriminatory. “We say
no to a ban on immigrants and we say no to walls,” read one poster in Berlin,
referring to Trump’s vows to build a wall on the Mexican border.
Trump’s
actions and tough talk on a number of issues in his first two weeks have deeply
unsettled many world leaders. In France, where President Francois Hollande
has spoken out against Trump, saying the new U.S. administration is
“encouraging populism and extremism,” about 1,000 demonstrators and a
large group of American expats took part in a march against Trump in front of
the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
In
the Philippines, protesters burned a giant portrait of Trump at a rally outside
the U.S. Embassy in Manila, the capital. Some protesters carried a
large banner that read: “Fight Trump! Resist fascism and imperialism!”
Last Saturday
a Seattle judge blocked the executive order saying that it was
unconstitutional. The Washington state lawsuit was the first to test the broad
constitutionality of Trump's executive order. Judge James Robart explicitly
made his ruling apply across the country, while other judges in similar cases
have so far issued orders concerning only specific individuals. The challenge
in Seattle was brought by the state of Washington and later joined by the state
of Minnesota. The judge ruled that the states have legal standing to sue, which
could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond
immigration.
Judge Robart probed a
Justice Department lawyer on what he called the "litany of harms"
suffered by Washington state's universities, and also questioned the use of the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States as a justification for the ban. He
said no attacks had been carried out on U.S. soil by individuals from the seven
countries affected by the travel ban since that assault. For Trump's order to
be constitutional, Robart said, it had to be "based in fact, as opposed to
fiction."
Washington Governor Jay
Inslee celebrated the decision as a victory for the state, adding: "No
person - not even the president - is above the law."
Trump tweeted, “The opinion of this so-called judge,
which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous
and will be overturned!” However, his government moved swiftly Saturday to comply with a federal
judge's order halting his immigration ban -- even as he denounced the judge.
Democrats immediately
hailed Robart's decision, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump's
criticism of the judge will be cited in the Supreme Court nomination of Neil
Gorsuch.
"The President's
attack on Judge James Robart, a Bush appointee who passed with 99 votes, shows
a disdain for an independent judiciary that doesn't always bend to his wishes
and a continued lack of respect for the Constitution, making it more important
that the Supreme Court serve as an independent check on the
administration," Schumer said in a statement.
"With each action
testing the Constitution, and each personal attack on a judge, President Trump
raises the bar even higher for Judge Gorsuch's nomination to serve on the
Supreme Court. His ability to be an independent check will be front and center
throughout the confirmation process."
The judge's decision
was welcomed by groups protesting the ban.
U.S. Customs and Border
Protection told airlines they could board travelers affected within hours of
Friday's ruling. Qatar Airways was the first to say it would allow passengers
from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to fly to U.S. cities
if they had valid documents. Air France, Etihad, Spain's Iberia and Germany's
Lufthansa all followed suit after the federal judge's ruling. The White House late
Saturday filed a notice of appeal of the judge’s order and has said that
the president’s actions were lawful.
Tech companies, which
rely on talent from around the world, have been increasingly outspoken in their
opposition to the Trump administration's anti-immigrant policies.
The
world is in a mess for quite some time. And Trump’s presidency is not easing
growing tensions anywhere.
One
reported contender for the post of Trump’s envoy to the EU, businessman Ted
Malloch, has already stirred controversy. In a BBC interview last month,
Malloch appeared to liken the EU to the former Soviet Union, suggesting that
“maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming.” He later said the
comment had been tongue-in-cheek.
Trump is indifferent to Russia’s belligerent behavior in Ukraine
and Syria (although the US Ambassador Nikki Haley had some harsh words
for Kremlin).
He has been accused of war crimes. On
January 29, Anwar al-Awlaki’s eight-year-old daughter, American citizen Nawar
Anwar al-Awlaki, was murdered, along with about 30 other civilian
non-combatants, in the course of a raid by the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six in
Yemen.
Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since
Trump took over office. Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn said
the Washington was putting Iran on notice over its "destabilizing
activity," and Trump tweeted Tehran was "playing with fire".
What triggered this virtual
ultimatum from the Trump administration? Iran-backed Houthi rebels, said Flynn,
attacked a Saudi warship and Tehran tested a conventional missile. It should be
noted that the 2015 U.N. resolution "called upon" Iran not to test
nuclear-capable missiles. It did not forbid Iran from testing conventional
missiles, which Tehran insists this was.
“The Saudis have been bombing the
Houthi rebels and ravaging their country, Yemen, for two years. Are the Saudis
entitled to immunity from retaliation in wars that they start?” asks
Patrick Buchanan. “Where is the evidence Iran had a role in the Red Sea attack
on the Saudi ship? And why would President Trump make this war his war?”
Iran brushed off the US
threat. "We are working day and night to protect Iran's security,"
head of Revolutionary Guards' aerospace unit, Brigadier General Amir Ali
Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. "If we see smallest
misstep from the enemies, our roaring missiles will fall on their heads,"
he added.
Despite the heated
words, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Saturday he was not
considering raising the number of U.S. forces in the Middle East to address
Iran's "misbehavior," but warned that the world would not ignore
Iranian activities.
Mistrust
of Trump runs very deep in Europe. Both
before and after he took office, Trump has been vocal in his support of
Britain’s vote last June to exit the European Union, and has made repeated and
almost offhand references to the likelihood of the bloc breaking up. He has
also called NATO “obsolete”.
Mainstream European political figures — already worried about
populist challenges and the specter of Russian interference in their own
upcoming elections — have been rattled by a rapid-fire series of controversial
presidential directives and combative behavior, including a getting-to-know-you
call with Australia’s prime minister that reportedly ended abruptly when Trump
became irritated over a refugee agreement.
In
Valletta, the ancient fortress-capital of the Mediterranean island nation of
Malta, leaders arriving for the EU’s first gathering since Trump’s inauguration
had some sharp words for the Trump administration — some centering on policy
disagreements, and some on the president’s unorthodox style.
Trump’s
remarks have been read by many in Europe as a sign that the new U.S. president
has little regard for international institutions widely credited with
underpinning decades of peace and economic progress. French President Francois
Hollande, who spoke with Trump last weekend, was perhaps the most openly
combative in his view of the U.S. leader.
“It
is unacceptable that there should be — through a certain number of statements
by the President of the United States — pressure on what Europe should or
should not be,” the French news agency AFP quoted Hollande as saying as he
arrived at the informal summit.
EU
President Donald Tusk had taken the
unprecedented step of warning in a letter to European leaders that Trump’s
policies posed a potential “threat” to the bloc.
The
prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, said the U.S. president’s values
were “not the values I’m fighting for.”
If Trump does not rein upon his authoritarian
tendencies, instead of making ‘America great again’, he will be held responsible
for just doing the opposite, which was so aptly displayed when the protesters in
Paris held a big poster with Trump’s tongue hanging out like a dog that said, “Make America hate again.”
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