Does the U.S. deserve Donald Trump?

Last week’s piece by Vijaya Chandrasoma in the Sunday Island (Sept. 10) was illustrated with two attention grabbing cartoons. One of them, depicting Donald Trump shackled by the ball and chain of a prisoner and a senile looking Joe Biden with a walking aide was particularly arresting. It eloquently depicted the stark choice before the voters at next year’s presidential elections in the U.S.

Trump entered the political scene in 2015, with no previous experience in politics or governance. His main claim to fame was his role in the popular reality TV show, The Apprentice, which he hosted for 14 seasons. He was fired by NBC for the derogatory, racist remarks he made about Mexican immigrants during the announcement of his candidacy for the 2016 presidency under the aegis of the Republican Party.

Donald Trump inherited a fortune of nearly $300 million on the death of his father, Fred Trump, in the late 1990s. Since then, he has had a checkered career in real estate, including the ownership of several international golf courses and hotels, office buildings and a now defunct casino in Atlantic City.

Fred’s career was no less checkered. He was arrested at a 1927 Memorial Day Ku Klux Klan parade, when 1000 white-robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica, Queens neighborhood, spurring an all-out brawl in which seven were arrested, one of them being Fred Trump. Of course, Donald Trump denied these charges. “He was never arrested. He had nothing to do with this”, Donald told the Daily Mail during a 2015 interview. He added, “This never took place. And he was never even there. It’s a completely false story”. These comments parroted almost to the word the protestations Trump made in his defense for his role in the January 6 insurrection.

Never took place. Never even there. Completely false story. Fake News.

Fred Trump had inculcated a culture of racial discrimination in his son, a streak of racism and white supremacy that has never left Donald Trump. Trump had his college education at the prestigious Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he claims he graduated at the top of his class. However, late Professor of Marketing at Wharton, Dr William Kelley, said that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had”. In 30 years of teaching.

Fast forward to 2015, when he embarked on his political career, leaving behind six bankruptcies, two wives, five children, 28 cases of sexual assault and numerous frauds and unpaid debts in his wake. Trump was one of 17 candidates for the Republican nomination in 2016, through which he bullied and lied his way to win by a large majority. A presidential contender with experience only in business failures and sexual assaults, running against undeniably the most qualified candidate for the presidency in US history.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016, graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. Having served as a congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas, where she married Bill Clinton, whom she had met at Yale Law. She served as the First Lady of Arkansas (1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992), the First Lady of the United States (1992 to 2000) and Senator of the United States (2001 to 2009). She lost the Democratic nomination to President Barack Obama in 2008, who appointed her to his cabinet as Secretary of State in 2009.

With an impeccable record in politics and governance, running against a vulgar, failed businessman and sexual predator, Hillary was the overwhelming favorite to win the 2016 presidency. As election day neared, Hillary was enjoying a comfortable lead, when her popularity started eroding with news about the use of her private server for government business; but she was mainly outmaneuvered by false rumors spread about her on social media, with a little bit of help from friends of Russian President Putin, who seemed to have a special bond with Trump.

Trump won the 2016 presidency with a comfortable Electoral College majority of 304/227, though Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million votes. Trump inherited from President Obama a healthy economy, with 72 continuous weeks of economic growth and the lowest unemployment and inflation rates in decades. Trump immediately claimed that this great economy was created by him alone.

The four years of Trump’s first and only term cannot be fully described with justice in this comment, but three “achievements” are worthy of special mention. He immediately showed his appreciation of his donors with a tax cut of $1.5 trillion, which reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, helping only the super-wealthy and leaving the most vulnerable out in the cold; the denial of the deadly spread of the Covid pandemic and the stubborn refusal to impose protective measures, which caused hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths; and the piece de resistance – planning and inciting a violent insurrection at the seat of the nation’s democracy, the Capitol, in a desperate attempt to cling on to power.

The mystery for the ages is that a man who has been allowed to polarize the richest, most powerful nation in the world to the cusp of civil war; who has been charged, arrested and on bail for 91 felonies, including obstruction of justice, espionage and sedition; and who has vowed to imprison his political opponents if he wins the 2024 election. Such a man is still the favorite for the Republican Party nomination for the presidency, with a fair chance of regaining the White House in 2024.