In less than 48 hours Americans will be going to the polls to elect a new President, one that would take over power from Barack Obama whose 8-year tenure ends next year January. The interesting three televised debates between the Republican nominee, Donald Trump and Democratic Hillary Clinton had come and gone with a winner and loser. According to the US presidential election observers the 2016 poll represents both history in the making and the triumph of a controversially ‘special’ candidate against all odds.
Whilst history could be made if Mrs Clinton wins come Tuesday this week another negative history has already been made with the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who represents everything but decency and moral force a presidential material must possess to be able to lead the world. In Trump one sees nothing great but fraud, misogynism, hubris, babbles and egocentrism. America we know is more than such things! America was made great by the tireless efforts and sacrifices of immigrants including Africans and Hispanics he is denigrating.
Donald Trump (70) has not changed after winning the Republican party presidential nomination for the November 8 US election. The fellow has remained stupidly aggressive and incorrigibly brash. Yet scandal upon scandal he has surprisingly maintained a political balance that is sending shock waves down the global political circles. Donald Trump is a babbling bumbling business mogul whose many dark sides should have ‘destroyed’ any other candidate for the White House. But he has exploited his rabble-rousing qualities and the lingering private email server usage of her opponent during her years as Secretary of State to his advantage.
The former failed Republican nominee in the last presidential election in the US, Mitt Romney, had months back vitriolically taken on Trump in a classical campaign of denunciation. According to Romney: “Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud …His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing members of the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat…dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark,” pointing to his “bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.”
The major problem with Donald Trump remains the fact that he believes money can buy everything, including the conscience of some racist White supremacist Americans. It is going to be very interesting indeed to see this big man of little mind assume duties (in all improbability though) at the Oval Office as the 45th President of the United States! A Trump presidency promises to be the most raucous in the history of the American politics; it will mark the beginning of an era in its most awkward, in its most untested uncharted course.
Donald Trump is a bad democrat and a potential bad loser going by his declaration that he would only accept defeat if he was convinced that he had lost fairly! This buffoon from New York represents a clear present and future danger for millions of Americans (especially immigrants) who until now are happy working and residing in Uncle Sam. There would be definite repercussion if he wins and if he loses there may be far greater repercussions given his body language and repeated unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud and media manipulations.
In the most unlikely event that he wins then the world in general — politically, diplomatically, economically and socially — would no longer be the same. With Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman, throwing his weight behind him it will be interesting, in all intents and purposes, to see how Trump would go about accommodating the Russian national interest in a proud nation in perpetual conflict of interest with Moscow. Trump has confessed his admiration of Putin even once saying the dictator was more effective than President Barack Obama in a demonstration of a crazy mindset incompatible with the American greatness.
Trump began his campaign for the White House by making some unguarded unpresidential statements to wit: building a wall in the US/Mexico border to prevent the Mexican ‘criminals’ from entering the US illegally. He accused the poor Mexicans of migrating to the US to vend drugs, do prostitution and commit all manner of crimes against the US economic interests. He declared his intention, upon his election, to deport most of the ‘illegal immigrants’ taking up jobs and paying little taxes to the state.
Trump has proven to be a racist, a misongynist, a chauvinist and a divisive figure in a nation of immigrants. Even his wife, Melania whose nude pictures were published earlier, was once an illegal immigrant to the US! Melania must have gotten married to Trump because of his billions and not love. Now that many ladies had come forth with claims of sexual abuse and harassment against Trump one wonders what she would be thinking seriously about her man and his nasty ways.
But Trump’s greatest undoing might be connected to his sex scandals and lascivious attitude toward women in general. Some weeks back a new video was published which ‘caught’ Trump talking about women: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,…When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
If the above statement was not irresponsibly horrible enough then nothing else would ever be so shocking from a man who aspires to the most powerful seat in the world. If Trump wins (God forbids) then the White House would witness sexual scandals that would make the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky lewd affair a child’s play. To be President of a great nation with redoubtable military and nuclear capabilities a serious aspirant to the office must be a wo(man) of impeccable character. A uniting figure who loves every race and every culture. Not a polarizing one who sees nothing right in what every other person(s) are doing from a narrow prism of patriotism or hawkishness.
When the ‘Grab ’em by the pussy’ controversy erupted in October many pundits had thought Trump was finished politically but he somehow rebounded. After the publication of that shocking take on women many Republicans including John McCain started dumping Trump accusing him of being an executive bully and a chauvinist. His poll rating plummeted and that of Clinton soared. But recent voter-intention polls indicated that it was too close to call; the two candidates are neck-to-neck.
The history Trump is up against is greater than him. He has not what it takes to mutate that history. That history happens to be glorious in many senses. It concerns the making of a seasoned political amazon (Hillary Clinton) as the first female President of the free world. It is about America producing the most powerful woman in the world who would displace the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to give America her place of pride in global schemes. It involves the triumph of gender in an American political establishment with the men dominating the political landscape supremely for centuries.
History must be made come Tuesday and the Democrats must unite to make that history. For doing so would amount to defending freedom, free enterprise and centuries-old tradition of America being the land of freedom and free folks. The American dream must be defended and upheld! What Trump wants to introduce — division, disunity, hate, antagonism among nations and marital infidelity — must be repudiated but the choice, we recognise, lies with the American people in their democratic maturity.
In an article published late March this year entitled “The Trump(eter) of Armaggedon” I had argued that “America is too great a country, too sophisticated a heterogeneous society to want to embrace or accommodate the trumpet of Armageddon being recklessly blown by Donald Trump”. I still stand by that submission. But let me quickly add: may the best candidate win come Tuesday!