One small time, one big difference - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

We reached the four-week mark in the term of U.S. President Donald Trump last week. It only seemed like we had survived the full four-year term instead of having three years and 11 months still to go.

 

President Trump has thrown off opponents, regularly sitting down to sign executive orders to change things and lay off thousands of employees of the FBI and Department of Justice. He stepped in to free 1,500 convicts who had been found guilty of attacking the U.S. capital on Jan. 6, 2021 in an attempt to prevent Trump leaving office after losing the 2020 election. 
Last week he fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, only the second Black man to hold that position. Brown’s public support of Black Lives Matter after the police killing of George Floyd had made him fodder for Trump’s ire.

 

Meanwhile Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, fired Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the second woman leader to have been dismissed under Trump. Trump has complained against “wokeism” - the attempt to give women, Black people and people of various gender categories fairer treatment - in everything from schools to the military, 

 

He has stepped in to set aside federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, although at this writing a U.S. judge has blocked this move. Adams, though a Democrat, has Trump’s backing as long as he supports authorities deporting thousands of migrants living in the city illegally.

 

That’s another of President Trump’s startling promises: to arrest and deport millions of people who illegally crossed the southern border into the U.S. But Americans who voted for Trump and believed his claims that these were all murderers and rapists, have been shaken when they watched law-abiding immigrants who, for years, have added greatly to the U.S. economy, being arrested and deported.

 

So far we haven’t even touched on Trump’s promise to impose a 25 per cent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico, or his claim that Canada should become the 51st state or his calling our Prime Minister “governor”.

 

Then there’s his proclamation that Greenland should be U.S. territory, rather than a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark and his statement that the U.S. should take over the Panama Canal again after relinquishing control under U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

 

Meanwhile, while Trump degrades countries that have long been friends of the U.S., he is redeveloping his friendship with Vladimir Putin, dictator of Russia, to the point of negotiating “peace” in Ukraine without having Ukraine present. 

 

While he praises Putin, he claims Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky is not democratic since he hasn’t held an election recently, though the election would normally have been held during the time when Ukraine was under attack by Russia. Trump says Zelensky’s support is at four per cent (a Russian claim) while other polls show it over 50 per cent.

 

Meanwhile, in another war-torn area of the world, Trump has suggested Gaza would make a great Mediterranean resort (no doubt for his own hotels and golf courses) but first all the people who live there must be moved out to neighbouring Arab countries. You can imagine how unpopular this suggestion is.

 

While the first month of the Trump presidency was playing out, I watched the lengthy U.S. Second World War drama Band of Brothers, about a real-life U.S. brigade of airborne soldiers who jumped into Europe during the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.
The ties between the Trump era in the U.S. and the Adolf Hitler era in Germany show similarities. Hitler quickly accumulated power in Germany. Trump has used the confusion of his first weeks in office to accumulate power, too.

 

The rise of the right wing in the U.S. is duplicated in many European countries. On Sunday in Germany, the right wing AfD party finished in second place in the German election, garnering 20 per cent of the vote. This is in a country that has gained much influence while being a democracy. 

 

Though under attack from Trump himself, our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Ukraine Monday on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion. He also gave Ukraine $5 billion seized from Russian assets in Canada. I wonder what Putin thought about that?
Other European leaders flocked to Ukraine too, their small tribute to the brave democratic nation that stood up to Russia.

 

We’re only in the early going of the Trump presidency. Who knows what the next four years can mean? It seems to mean the U.S. will be friendly to countries that have been enemies, but unfriendly to countries that had been its best friends.