By Emma Anya, Associate Editor
He unwittingly set the trap that cost him the most powerful office in the world.
Donald Trump, against all odds, had been elected President November 2016 but he never realised that there was a wild gulf between being a showbiz impresario cum private business mogul and public office.
Trump entered the Oval Office with the mentality of a tin god. He was everything a President should not be.
Here was a man that his “chi” (guardian angel) more than loved. He was a gambler. He always staked everything knowing that his “chi” would always ensure his success. But Trump’s irrationality blinded him. He failed to realise that other humans have “chis” that aggregated against him for the good of the people and their nation.
Were he to be an African President, he would have easily retained the coveted seat by manipulating the system. He did try in several ways but the strong American institutions, that he didn’t take cognisance, stood on his reelection part. Poor loquacious Trump! He is now sulking.
Trump will no doubt go down in history as the most hated and controversial leader of a country that styles itself as the beacon of democracy.
Before the election that threw up Democrat Joe Biden as his successor, The Economist and his niece, Mary Trump, had taken him to the cleaners.
Their whitewash of Trump’s Presidency had earlier been trumpeted by the Biden/ Harris Campaign team.
“Take back your democracy,” was the Campaign Team’s theme anthem. It reverberated across the globe.
In fact, Ms Trump, in her tell-all memoir titled: “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” warned that her uncle’s reelection “would be the end of American Democracy”.
That caution sank deep into the American electorate. They have reclaimed their democracy in the most keenly, but bitterly contested election ever in the United States.
The London-based 167-year-old globally respected magazine dubbed its October 31 – Nov. 5, 2020 edition cover: “Why it has to be Biden.”
“After almost four years of his (Trump) leadership, politics is even angrier than it was and partisanship even less constrained.
“Daily life is consumed by a pandemic that has registered almost 230,000 deaths amid bickering, buck-passing and lies,” the magazine wrote.
It noted that the one-time presenter of “The Apprentice” and real estate magnate fell “short less in his role as the head of America’s government than as the head of state”.
“He and his administration can claim their share of political wins and losses, just like administrations before them.
“But as the guardian of America’s values, the conscience of the nation and America’s voice in the world, he has dismally failed to measure up to the task,” it adds.
The magazine added that its “bigger dispute with M. Trump” is his repeated desecration of “the values, principles and practices that made America a haven for its own people and a beacon to the world”.
In defending its position, it advised ‘those who accuse Mr. Biden of the same or worse should stop and think”.
“Those who breezily dismiss Mr. Trump’s bullying and lies as so much tweeting are ignoring the harm he has wrought,” it added.
It then went ahead to list Trump’s other un-doings to include his regressive tax cuts, harmful deregulation, poor handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, a ‘debacle’ health-care reform, controversial immigration policy as well as his relationship with China, North Korea and Iran.
According to the magazine, Trump exploited tribal politics, even though it predated his administration, to take himself from the green room to the White House and took it an unimaginable level.
“Whereas most recent presidents have seen toxic partisanship as bad for America, Mr. Trump made it central to his office.
“He has never sought to represent the majority of Americans who did not vote for him.
“Faced by an outpouring of peaceful protest after the killing of George Floyd, his instinct was not to heal, but to depict it as an orgy of looting and left-wing violence—part of a pattern of stoking racial tension.”
In yet another brutal assessment of Trump’s Presidency, the magazine wrote: “The most head-spinning feature of the Trump presidency is his contempt for the truth.
“All politicians prevaricate, but his administration has given America alternative facts.”
“Nothing Mr. Trump says can be believed—including his claims that Mr. Biden is corrupt. His cheerleaders in the Republican Party feels obliged to defend him regardless, as they did in an impeachment that, bar one vote, went along party lines.’’
Pointing out that “partisanship and lying undermine norms and institutions”, The Economist says: “That may sound fussy—Trump voters, after all, like his willingness to offend. But America’s system of checks and balances suffers.
“This President calls for his opponents to be locked up; he uses the Department of Justice to conduct vendettas; he commutes the sentences of supporters convicted of serious crimes; he gives his family plum jobs in the White House; and he offers foreign protection in exchange for dirt on a rival.
“When a President casts doubt on the integrity of an election just because it might help him win, he undermines the democracy he has sworn to defend.”
It adds that Trump failed to realise that partisanship and lying undermine policy and hence the reason why the U.S. has recorded unprecedented COVID-19 deaths.
“Look at COVID-19. Mr. Trump had a chance to unite his country around a well-organised response—and win re-election on the back of it, as other leaders have.
“Instead, he saw Democratic governors as rivals or scapegoats. He muzzled and belittled America’s world-class institutions, such as the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Ms Trump, a holder of a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology, waited for the right time to land immeasurable damage to her uncle’s already sagged image by releasing her book a few months before the November 3 polls.
In the book, she dubbed the outgoing POTUS a fraud, bully, and “narcissist”, who now threatens the life of every American.
She wrote: “Donald is not simply weak; his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.
“Donald shredded norms, endangered alliances, and trod upon the vulnerable.
“Lying, playing the lowest common denominator, cheating and sowing division are all he knows.
“By the time this book is published, hundreds of thousands of Americans will have been sacrificed on the altar of Donald’s hubris and willful ignorance.”
The assertions of Economist and Ms Trump, among others, finally put a wedge into Trump’s second term ambition on Saturday.
