Donald Trump would be fairly low down in my choices for President of the USA but I’d certainly vote for him if he were standing against Joe Biden or likely replacements, such as Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and Michelle Obama.
I finally watched the full debate between Trump and Biden and was not particularly impressed or dismayed by either. Biden was quite bad, mumbling and appearing confused, but not as bad as was reported – or as he is now believed to be by Democrat grandees who up to a moment ago were telling us all how fit and able he was. I thought Trump won clearly but he should have done better. As a president I thought Biden was a disaster and Trump did pretty well, better than the two presidents before him, Obama and Bush Jnr. But I have no very strong feelings about him. Most people in the USA do, and so does the global elite.
Trump has a huge and adoring constituency of supporters, mainly drawn from working people, blue collar workers, tradesmen, soldiers and the unfashionable lower middle classes, usually from the USA interior – described by Hillary Clinton as a “basket of deplorables”. But there is a huge army of people who hate him with passion, who practically foam at the mouth at the mention of his name. These people are from the coastal elites in the USA and from the global elite around the world, a superior class of people with a similar background: university educated, often at the most distinguished institutions, seldom doing degrees in engineering; socialist in leaning; well-paid in professional jobs, journalism and cinema and the arts; reading, viewing and believing the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, and in South Africa the Daily Maverick and the Mail and Guardian. They look down their noses at people who work with tools in their hands. They are often afflicted by “Trump derangement syndrome”, and become mentally unbalanced when talking about him. To see what I mean, google Robert de Niro (a Hollywood actor said to be worth $500 million) on Trump.
Last week as Trump and Biden were debating, Britain held a general election. Labour won handsomely and the Conservatives were annihilated, exactly as the opinion polls predicted. But the whole election campaign seemed to me strangely muted. There were no high emotions. The voters disliked the Tories for the utter mess they have made in almost everything but they were weary and dismissive rather than angry; there seemed to be no great love for Labour, but it was the main opposition party, so they voted it in without expecting much from it. But in the USA there are high emotions over Trump, and in France there seem to be somewhat similar emotions over Marine Le Pen and National Rally. Why does the elite hate Trump so?
(A digression on the UK election. As I say, the opinion polls were right on the number of votes, as they nearly always are, even though they are continually criticised. In the recent South African elections, they were pin-point accurate, especially those of the Social Research Foundation. The other thing to notice was the different results of the elections in the UK and South Africa because of the different voting systems. In the UK, Labour only won 34% of the votes but got 64% of the seats, giving them a huge outright majority in parliament. In South Africa, the ANC won 41% of the votes, more than Labour in the UK, but only got 41% of the seats.)
“Not one of us”
Why does the elite hate Trump so? An obvious reason is that Trump is “not one of us”. He’s rich all right but he is not part of the elitist establishment. He may be compared to a rich scrap metal merchant who is as rich as the dukes and barons but would never be accepted into their circles. He has not got beautiful manners; on the contrary, he is rude and crude and loud, and always speaks to everyone, high and low, in exactly the same way, usually wearing exactly the same long red tie. He is a sexual rascal but not as bad as Presidents Clinton, Kennedy, and Roosevelt before him.
President Trump’s actions and policies in office were surprisingly mild and irenic. Unlike his predecessors, he did not start any stupid war. Bush Jnr was responsible for the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and spread Islamic terror and chaos throughout the Middle East. Obama was responsible for the brutal overthrow and murder of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, causing more death and terror throughout North Africa. One of the most sickening things I’ve ever heard was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, gloating with delight over the slaughter of Gaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died!” – followed by peels of girlish laughter. No such bloodthirsty words or actions ever came from President Trump, who surely must be one of the most peaceful of recent USA presidents. Yet I hear our branch of the global elite (someone from the Daily Maverick, I think) warning about the terrible dangers to the world if Trump won in November.
President Biden’s manner of withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disgrace, which would never have happened under Trump. I suppose America had to withdraw sometime, even though everyone knew that the Taliban would take over in a reign of terror and end the women’s rights and freedoms that the Americans had given them. But the withdrawal should have been orderly, protecting soldiers and innocent civilians with all the considerable power that the American armed forces could muster. Instead it was a hasty, shameful, bloody shambles. Biden was entirely to blame.
Abortion
In the debate, they were both asked about abortion, a big issue in the coming election. Trump unfortunately never seems to think things through to a logical end nor, even worse, to listen to his advisors, often very well informed, unlike him. But he was quite good on abortion. Because I am an atheist, and so can only define human life in physical terms, I say human life begins at the moment of conception, and so all abortion is the taking of human life. But sometimes it is lawful to take human life, for example in war, self-defence and in the cases of doctors having to switch off the life-support machine of a doomed man to save the life of a man who could be recovered to good health. Sometimes I’d authorise abortion.
Trump said the same; he would too, even though he knew some of his supporters disagreed. He condemned abortions in the third trimester, as I do, and then made the strange statement that in some American states babies were aborted after being born. He was not questioned on this. I suppose he meant that in some states the baby in the third trimester may be delivered by Caesarean section and then killed. I don’t know if this happens. Biden took the woke-fascist view of approving nearly all abortions.
On the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, Trump did quite well but should have done better. The storming was a disgrace but it was not an armed insurrection. It was a non-violent invasion by a mob of hooligans and clowns, nominally in protest against Trump’s defeat in the election, which some claimed was rigged (it wasn’t). Trump originally suggested a big protest and then backed off and urged peace. None of the invaders had guns. Five people died but only one was killed. A black policeman shot dead an unarmed white woman Ashli Babbitt, without warning, as she clambered through a window. She was trespassing but this is not a capital offence. The woke media were silent about her killing.
How do you think they would have reacted if a white policeman had shot dead an unarmed black woman? The leader of the break-in, in so far as it had any leader, was Jacob Chansley, also known as the QAnon Shaman, Q Shaman, and Yellowstone Wolf. Here is an extraordinary 1 min 49 sec video of him wandering through the capitol, with a painted face, a fur hat with horns and an American flag, being lead through the corridors by friendly policemen, whom he praised. Bing Videos. He then held a prayer meeting on the floor of the senate, giving thanks to the police. How does this square with reports of a violent insurrection against the state?
Climate change
Climate change came up. Biden spoke the normal anti-science rubbish – dangerous rubbish that could harm humanity and the planet if serious attempts are made to achieve “net-zero”. Trump countered the rubbish on a political and economic front but did not present the overwhelming scientific evidence showing that rising CO2 is causing no harm at all. Trump had taken the USA out of the absurd Paris Climate Accord of 2015, which wanted to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 C above that of “pre-industrial” times. Actually, if you define the pre-industrial era as from 9000 BC to 1700 AD, you find that temperatures now are lower than they were for most of that era. But Trump did not give the obvious scientific reasons for withdrawal, even if he had a renowned physicist and climate expert, Prof William Happer, working for him. He obviously never consulted Happer, or if he did, never bothered to understand him. It is the same now. He brushed aside climate alarm as nonsense, which it is, but didn’t explain why. Biden has taken the USA back into the Paris Accord, and so endangers the American economy and the environment.
The southern border of the USA is a top priority in the election. Trump started building a border wall to keep illegal immigrants, including criminals, drug dealers and child-smugglers, from flooding into the USA. Essentially Biden and his Democrats, especially his Vice-President Kamala Harris, opened the border to all, with disastrous results all over the USA. Biden didn’t know what to say about this and blustered unconvincingly. On this issue, Trump won hands down.
Trump did very well on the economy in his first three years, with high growth, record low unemployment, especially among blacks (which Trump didn’t hesitate to point out), and low inflation. Unfortunately he is a protectionist and raised tariffs against imports, of which free marketeers such as I disapprove. To my dismay, he is now promising even higher tariffs. This sends a shiver down my spine, reminding me of the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1929, there was a stock market collapse in the USA, caused by the bursting of a huge speculative bubble. If nothing had been done, weak firms would have gone under and strong ones survived, and there would soon have been a recovery. Unfortunately something was done.
The USA passed high tariff acts, including the dreadful Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which shut down world trade and caused massive unemployment all around the world – except in Germany, where Hitler, who was economically illiterate, and his Economic Minister Hjalmar Schacht, who was something of an economic genius, solved the unemployment problem. I don’t think Trump will do anything so stupid on tariffs but I wish he wouldn’t do anything at all. What felled him in his fourth year as president was Covid. He was very badly advised by Fauci and the medical authorities, and accepted their ruinous lockdown and promoted their untested, dangerous, unnecessary and ineffective Covid vaccines. The economy sank and Trump’s chances with it. However, in his final months, the economy was showing strong signs of recovery, unless something was done to hinder it.
Inevitable inflation
Something was done by the incoming President Biden, who grossly expanded the money supply and benefits, bringing on the inevitable inflation, from which the USA is still suffering. Because it is so capitalist, the USA economy is fundamentally strong, but it could be stronger, and I think it would under Trump if he could be talked out of more tariffs. I’m very worried about the colossal USA national debt, which neither Biden nor Trump shows any sign of wanting to reduce.
Trump says he would end the Russia-Ukraine war by January if elected. He also says that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine nor Hamas Israel if he had been USA President. This might be true. Trump appears loud, aggressive and unpredictable, which scares potential enemies around the world, but is often quiet and pragmatic, and might just end the awful war in Ukraine. I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that the best solution would be for Ukraine to cede Crimea and parts of the Donbas to Russia (perhaps after referendums) and agree never to join NATO, in return for Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence, and agreeing never to use armed conflict against her. Trump might be the man to persuade both sides to accept such a settlement. I don’t know what he could do in Gaza.
I really can’t think of any reason the global elite should hate Trump on his policies. I think they hate him on style and on whom he represents. They loved Obama, because he was obviously one of them, a very stylish, slick one, a polished orator and a glamorous statesman, wowing crowds around the world. His polices were awful but his image was great. Trump is not one of them. He is crude and unpolished. He speaks for ordinary people and very directly to ordinary people, whom the elite despises. He is gaining support among blacks and Hispanics just because he speaks to them without patronising them, which infuriates the elite. I think pure snobbery explains much of the elite’s hatred of Trump.
The elite sneer at Trump for MAGA (Make America Great Again). I also rather wince at this term. But I think it should be read as “Be proud of America for all of her faults and sins”. But the global elite does not believe that any Western Country should be proud of itself, and the fact that ordinary people in each Western country (Britain, France, Italy, and so on) are proud of their countries makes the elite despise them even more. The global elite tends to dislike Israel just because it is Western, and supports Hamas just because it isn’t.
I’m more worried about Biden’s policies than his failing health and signs of senility. I think he has been an awful president and want him gone. My first choice for president would have been Ron DeSantis, and then Tulsi Gabbard. But now, if I were American, I’d vote for Trump.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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