The 'new politics' of Trump

This country and Caricom itself should start preparing for the deportees soon to be sent down by the new Trump government. The database should be collected on deportees’ background, etc, for obvious reasons.

This is one reason why Donald Trump’s victory seriously concerns the Caribbean. The “identity politics” which embraced the Trump vs Kamala Harris campaign itself is also a lively Caribbean topic.

There were some interesting demographic shifts in the results. For example, Harris unexpectedly got fewer Latino votes than Biden got in 2020, while Trump’s Latino share increased from 2020. Also there was no avalanche of black or women voters for the pro-abortion Harris. She won some big cities, multi-ethnic New York in particular, but the American countryside largely came out for Trump.

So why did Harris lose? Why and how did Trump win?

In fact, I am not at all surprised. This column on September 15 was headlined “Hard for Kamala to beat Trump.” Hear part of the column’s reasoning: “During the 90-minute or so debate on September 10 with Harris, Trump confidently declared, after bitterly complaining about illegal immigrants: ‘They are invading or country…they are eating dogs, cats and even your pets.’” Scary.

Harris burst out laughing. But for Trump it wasn’t funny.

I then added: “Prim and proper intellectuals could laugh but Trump wasn’t there just to debate Harris. He was there to speak to the American voters – a particular kind of voters.” He got a reported 72,753,330 votes.

In Trump’s scaremongering but vote-catching campaign, he further warned his clapping, flag-waving crowd: “Many countries are sending their criminals to America so that while those countries are having less crime, we are having more.”

And to this, he added his pledge to “quickly deport” all illegal immigrants, “tighten borders,” etc. And an aroused “old America” got the message.

His political appeal increased when the bullet grazed his ear and he defiantly shouted, “Fight fight, fight,” during his Ohio campaign.

Harris’s campaign had no such drama, contrived or authentic. Her language was also far different.

So the question is raised: Is a lot of winning votes in electoral politics about disguised lies and propaganda rather than reason? Maybe we should stop expecting more than what is politically possible.

It is surprising that in America, Trump could have one of his platform speakers, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, mock Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage,” to loud applause. And this without any rebuke from Trump. Or how could a presidential candidate like Harris afterwards be called “trash” by Trump’s Vice President candidate, JD Vance? Certainly this is not the “golden age of America” promised by Trump.

His proposed secretary of state, Mario Rubio, is a warlike extremist, and this with an evangelist-type conservative, 69-year-old Mike Huckabee, as US Ambassador to Israel. And helping to swing America and the world around, Trump proposed another deepened loyalist, 42-year-old Matt Gaetz, as his attorney general, and then “Kamala-hater” and newfound Trump loyalist, 43-year-old Tulsi Gabbard, as director of national intelligence.

For Trump, loyalty trumps all things, including merit and experience.

Well, the world now waits to see what will happen to the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars.

I wonder whether Trump will now lie back and introspect into becoming “presidential” instead of trying, as he hinted, to chase down prosecutors and others who opposed him.

“The enemy within,” he declared.

Trump promised to hire “a special prosecutor to prosecute the most corrupt president in American history, Joe Biden.” Wow!

The clear and present danger is that he does have constitutional ammunition. That is, the Republicans control both Senate and House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court recently ruled that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for official acts done by him. The Republican Party now virtually controls the federal government. The expected checks and balances may become softened.

The 78-year-old Trump should sagely recognise that he leads the most powerful country in the free world.

One of the worst blights for a democracy to have is a leader with power but who is thin-skinned, excessively arrogant, spiteful – in short, terribly bad-minded.