At the height of Donald Trump’s efforts to force Ukraine to sue for peace, a distressed family in England pleaded for people to stop sharing images of their son being savaged to death by a tiger in a Doncaster zoo.
The President of the United States saw fit not only to ignore the plea and put the images on his Truth Social account, but later posted an AI generated sequence of him chasing and subduing a tiger. This utterly distasteful behaviour goes so far beyond what any politician anywhere would do that there can only be two conclusions. One is that Trump is so drunk on power and surrounded with acolytes who refuse to set any boundaries on him, that he feels he can do what he likes as he doesn’t have to face the voters again. The second possibility is that he is mentally ill and should be removed from office.
It is now clear that this should have been considered in the case of his predecessor, the altogether more benign Joe Biden.
Remember it is Trump’s call to launch America’s nuclear weapons, although I am less concerned
about that, than I am for the general welfare of the United States and the world. That’s because the President is highly unlikely to launch nuclear weapons against his new best friends, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. He admires the strong dictators of Russia, China, and North Korea. He shares their lack of respect for democracy as his Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers prepare to intimidate people at the midterm polling stations.
It appears to me we have a new world order on our hands. It looks as if Trump wants Ukraine defeated so he can start real trade with Russia. He would then turn a blind eye as Putin continued to threaten NATO countries who might finally wake up to the need for massive defence expenditure. If not, we can forget about a strong European Union that we are considering rejoining. Europe will become a shrinking island of irrelevance in a world of autocracies, (watch Modi in India), as the United States and Russia are in a loose alliance as China becomes the world’s most powerful economy.
I may have gone over the top, but I do so because our mindset for so long has been that America is the bedrock of our security and shares our values. That is no longer the case. It may be that the
Democrats win the Presidency in 2028 and restore the old order. Two points on that. Firstly, it is very possible that the Republican Vice President, J.D Vance will win. A younger version of Trump who would not display his vile excesses but would take a broadly similar world view. Even if the Democrats win, Trump’s valid question, why is America spending billions of dollars on European defence while they spend their money on welfare and immigrants, is likely to mean a Democrat President will be expecting much more of the UK, France etc.
It is very unlikely the men in white coats will be coming for the President, so we all need to prepare for a very rough ride in the next two years. Trump will be enraged if he loses control of the House of Representatives and possibly Senate next month.
All his worst instincts, already on display, will be heightened.
