Donald Trump, with all the attributes of a modern day facist, knew his fate had been sealed even before the votes were cast. The COVID 19 pandemic which has taken the lives of almost a quarter million Americans, put the nail in the coffin of Trump. He trivialised, lied and was most of the time in denial about the deadly nature of the pandemic. He misled the American people with dare consequences – the economy took a hit, driving millions of Americans into unemployment and poverty.
Knowing that defeat was inevitable, Trump has been sowing lies calculated at derailing the democratic process. As votes were being counted he declared himself winner of the election. He filed series of suits to stop the counting and complained of “tremendous corruption and fraud in the mail-in ballots.” He had been making all these allegations without evidence.
Trump rode on the waves of populism (aka fascism) which swept across Europe into America four years ago to become President. Against the run of play as they say in football, everyone woke up on that November day in 2016 to the news that Trump had been elected President. In the last four years at the helm, Mr Trump has managed to exhibit traits of a facist. He succeeded in whipping up nationalistic favour among his narrow supporters, often using slogans, lies and half truths to raise the dust. Through his troubled presidency, Trump employed fear as a tool to manipulate and intimidate the American people and the international community.
His racial diatribes transcend the racial divide in America to make immigrant his scapegoats. He used that to good effect, labelling Latino migrants from Latin America and Africans with derogatory names – these were sub-humans to Trump whose grandfather migrated from Germany as a poor bricklayer. His grandmother was a poor maid from Scotland. Rampant cronyism and corruption trailed Donald Trump these four years. He was afraid and hostile to foreign governments which didn’t pander to his bizarre cravings. He befriended despots and neo-fascists such as Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Nigel Farage, England, Matteo Salvini, Italy, Marie Le Pen, France, Viktor Orban, Hungary, Andrzej Duda, Poland and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, to erode America’s great tradition of challenging totalitarian and xenophobic fervour.
Trump was a danger to world peace. He undermine international treaties and unilaterally destroyed them. He was for the destruction of the European Union but thanks to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel who stood up to him from the word go. His attempt to also undermine NATO met with resistance from the duo of Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron. Trump suffered multilateral organisations such as the United Nations – the World Health Organisation, WHO, became the fall guy for his failings in tackling the COVID 19 pandemic. He attacked the free press in his onward match to erode democracy, and used the social media to misinform and incite his disgruntled supporters.
Trump has diminished America in the eye of the world. I visited the US a year into his presidency, I was greeted with the word “sorry” everywhere I went on that visit by Americans upon the knowledge that I was a European, and when you ask why “sorry?” They were full of regrets that Donald Trump was ever elected the 45th President of their nation. Looking back now to what happened on November 3, 2020, you can’t help but to salute the courage of the American people in standing up to an attack dog called Donald J. Trump. Thank you America! This is the beginning of the end of populism.
