By Ofwono Opondo
The US midterm elections are over and President Donald J Trump is bullish on twitter, and press conferences, although looked distraught calling for middle ground with Democrats and sections of the media that has railed him over alleged lack of civility and political correctness since taking office twenty one months ago. With the election euphoria, Trump fired his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions whom had berated for months as cowardly. Sessions follows former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and the colourful Press Secretary Sean Spicer, among other senior figures.
True the Democrats won Congress while Republicans retained the Senate, but it wasn’t the Blue Wave that had been predicted. Most of the US media had made people believe that Trump and Republican Party would lose the midterm elections, and Democrats were set for a landslide. In their observation, Trump’s performance had been poor especially because of his abrasive approach to both domestic and international.
In fact, to many observers, and the so-called experts in international politics, diplomacy, economy, trade, security, military, immigration, human rights, and climate change, Trump has been managing as if he was in unending hostage situations. Trump either wins or you lose in a zero sum game without a middle ground.
The republicans were focused that even when they lost Congress, they won the swing states like Florida, Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, ending with majority State Governors and Senators, while Democrats took the House of Representatives. We now look forward to unending investigations, subpoenas and filibusters, and hopefully some trade off on important issues. Trump, has over his tenure created a narrative that the US is under attack and being cheated or taken advantage of by even some of the wealthiest and prosperous nations like China and Europe.
He aggressively boasted, marketed, and quite often exaggerated without figures, how he has in a short period reversed America and Americans’ fortunes by creating jobs, opportunities, and respect, although some may say fear, around the world. His boast of a growing economy and hard-line views on anti-immigration which targeted his base appear sold out. The US economy is doing well under Trump, unemployment is at lowest across board, but that credit ought to go to Barrack Obama who laid the foundation that dug America out of the 2008 economic crisis.
It seems America is tired of leaders whose claim to fame is mere rhetoric and wants leaders who will tell them the hard truth, and in Trump, they seem to have found that leader. He has been so bold for example to tell his US allies in NATO that it’s high time they funded their security and stop sucking the US. In response, this week, French President, François Hollander, made a call to his EU colleagues that it was time they founded a European army and stopped relying on the US for their security especially, as he put it, against, Russia and China.
Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic Party candidate who lost the ticket to Hillary Clinton in 2016, had warned Americans, and fellow Democrats, that the US was tired of identity politics such as race, gender gay rights and among others. According to Sanders, Americans wanted to hear how the economy would be fixed to reclaim their global position as the unchallenged economic giant amidst threats from emerging economies of China, India, Russia and Brazil.
But, either most mainstream media in the US have a biased agenda against Trump, or are simply incompetent not read the American mood since 2015 when he first appeared on the political horizon. They have been caught flat-footed with each passing day in their combined attempt to fail him politically. Characteristic of him, Trump takes them head to head, exposing what he views as open biases, and incompetence, asking them to let him run the country because after all, their media houses are ‘failing’. In fact, he continues to strip them naked and appears to be winning at least, so far.
For a long time the media and journalists in the US have captured the political elite and made them dance to their tunes. Trump has refused that capture and no wonder they are relentlessly smearing him with all the dirty they can conjure. Like in Uganda, President Museveni has refused to tow the media narrative coached to the Western agenda. In Trump’s mind most of them are charlatans who are exaggerating their worth.
Whereas, previous US presidents were consumed with aggressive tendencies of being everywhere and nowhere, Trump chose to fix America first before popping his nose in the affairs of other countries. The real American taxpayers are tired of spending their monies on useless and hegemonic foreign ventures that don’t bring economic returns.
As Trump’s first term comes to its end, he may perhaps change, but remains an enigma who has defied the conventional ways, what Americans call “political correctness,” in running the US and the world. He has defied traditions of pretence disguised as diplomacy and speaks from his heart. To most Americans and indeed the world such are the leaders we deserve.
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