The Myth of Trumpism
The making of a fake populist
By: Fahed Alsalem Saqer
Analyst and researcher in International Politics
It goes without saying that all past American presidents have invariably come to the office with distinguished careers, all of them came with a high degree of personal integrity and a proven track record in public service. By and large, after having served as Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, Governors or Congressmen. Not since the first American President Mr. George Washington, or his Vice President Mr. John Adams who later succeeded him, nor their prominent first Secretary of State Mr. Thomas Jefferson, who succeeded Mr. Adams as the third president of the United States did the highest office in the land fell to the hands of a mediocre, shallow thinking and a low caliber individual like Donald J. Trump, who came to the office from a purely business background, albeit a very dishonorable one.
Mr. Trump, the real estate investor, and businessman from New York whose honesty and integrity has been tarnished time and again by the courts in the USA. Who has been ordered on many occasions to pay hefty fines and compensations for his victims and plaintiffs. Or otherwise opt for an out of court settlements, such as in the case involving the now-defunct Trump University, where he was ordered to pay back 25 million dollars to his student victims in two class actions for defrauding them, and one other lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General’s office in August 2013 for illegal business practices. Besides, in November 2019 he was ordered by a New York court to close his Charity bearing the same name and to pay back 2 Million dollars to eight different charities, because he was misusing the funds for personal expenses. In addition to countless other lawsuits, ranging from sexual assaults to sexual indiscretions to breach of trust and shady business deals.
On top of this disgraceful record, lack of decency, class or any standard of ethics, Donald Trump came to the presidency with no political experience whatsoever. His 2016 run for the presidency was his first time ever running for any public office. No wonder that the overwhelming majority of American political elites, whether Democratic or Republican, did not take him seriously. Initially, more or less, his candidacy was considered just another attempt by Donald Trump to gain more public exposure and heighten his profile on the commercial level as a “former presidential candidate.
Ever since Donald J. Trump came to office, the office of Presidency has never been so degraded and so disgraced like it has been under his tenure. Would this -maybe- be the harbinger of America’s eventual decay? I wonder. Who knows? With all the madness and undermining of America’s democratic institutions unleashed by Donald Trump in the aftermath of his loss to President-elect Joe Biden in 2020. It remains to be seen whether historians will begin marking the era of America’s eventual decline with the advent of Donald Trump in 2016. Or is he just going to be a historic anomaly, a mere footnote in an otherwise admirable history.
Donald Trump’s inexperience was no more evident than it was on the international stage. Not only was he a know-nothing President on foreign affairs, but he was not interested to learn, to read or to listen. Simply because he believed that he knew it all, to the extent that he did not need advisors, or experts, or to read the intelligence briefings because, as he proclaimed time and again, he was the expert on everything, “No one knew foreign policy – or anything or everything- better than him” .
Ever delusional and narcissistic he, for the most part, surrounded himself with hypocrites and pretenders “Yes-sir” men or family members. He was, for all intents and purposes a typical third world dictator who ran the White House as a gangster, with the mindset of a mafia boss. Everything Donald Trump did was self-centered around Donald Trump and was only concerned with personal benefit and personal enrichment at the expense of the office. A good case in point is the Ukrainian affair for which he faced impeachment hearings in 2019. In the Ukraine gate, as it were, he reportedly withheld vital military assistance to an ally in exchange for pressuring the Ukrainian President to open an investigation into perceived corruption dealings for his potential Democratic rival’s son Mr. Hunter Biden with a Ukrainian Oil company, for purely personal benefit.
The Donald Trump phenomenon offers scholars a classic case on how ruthless dictatorships originate in the world. It offers a glimpse on the inside workings in the mind of a dictator. How the leader – any leader – morphs from an ordinary person, to an idol, then a god. How addiction of power transforms into a cult of personality and give rise to the phenomenon of the Eternal leader. It offers an understanding on the incurable mental disease that appears to affect all narcissistic leaders, regardless of nationality or race. Previous to Trump, we had mistakenly believed that Western democracies, particularly the United States, were immune to this kind of phenomenon, the cult of the personality.
But, unfortunately for Donald Trump, and fortunately for the world, he appeared in a country with a long tradition of democracy and peaceful transition of power, with laws, and constitutional checks and balances that prevent the emergence of the tyrant-dictator. Had Donald Trump lived in a second or third world country, he would have definitely become a second Vladimir Putin, or perhaps another Hitler.
On the international front, Donald Trump foolishly thought he was the one who invented the wheel. His repeated public insults to the King of Saudi Arabia, for example, clearly demonstrated that he thought he was the first president to discover the historically cozy relationship between the United States of America and the House of Saud. His outlandish bragging at rallies about “extortion” phone calls he made to the 85-year-old Saudi monarch, (who suffers from Alzheimer) in front of the media cameras, was not only morally wrong and grossly indecent, but was also immensely detrimental to US national security, because it simply exposed a close historical tie (international arrangement) that was nearly 90 years old.
On two separate occasions, Trump bragged to his supporters at partisan rallies how he extorted 500 Million dollars from the Saudi King in one phone call in return for protection, citing the fact that it was easier than collecting $238.61 from a tenant in New York.!
“I love Saudi Arabia. Would you say they are rich…? I said King, we are protecting you, you might not be there for two weeks without us, you have to pay for the military…you cannot board your plane without our protection, you have to pay…” ( September 30, 2018 at a rally in Duluth -Minnesota)
Yet, the USA-Saudi extraordinary relationship began during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the Standard Oil Company of California ( Now ExxonMobil) and King Abdelaziz Al Saud ( 1875-1953) signed an oil exploration agreement in 1933. According to which, King Abdelaziz Al Saud ( his heirs and successors) gave up some sovereign rights -among other things- in the form of an appointed American advisor to the king, and a concession agreement was signed which saw a big sum of cash paid to the King, in return for the granting of exclusive rights to explore for oil – which was not yet discovered – in return for the provision of American protection and trusteeship, and USA’s recognition of the king and his heirs as exclusive rulers in the Arabian Peninsula. This agreement was first signed in 1933 and was valid for 60 years. It was negotiated, of course, with the knowledge and involvement of the US government and the State Department.
This agreement which accorded to all US administrations since President Harry Truman hegemony over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is still in effect to this day. It has been invoked ever since, to maximize American interests in oil exploration and most economic aspects in the Kingdom. And to gain preference with the Saudi Kingdom on its bilateral trade and economic relations with the rest of the world. By virtue of this agreement, any American president before Donald Trump had the capacity to pick up the phone and demand whatever he wanted from the Saudi king in Riyadh, and the latter would oblige. But no American President before Trump has disclosed this asymmetric relationship or bragged about it in public to score cheap political points in such a scandalous and humiliating manner, undermining the image of the King in the eyes of his own people and all Arabs in the process.
This protection which Donald Trump is talking about is not to be mistaken as the same as protecting an ally like Germany or Japan against Russian invasion during the Cold War. Not at all. It is rather protecting a corrupt Ruling Family against the wrath of its own people. But Donald Trump does not have the intelligence to know the difference between protecting a nation and protecting a ruling despotic regime, given that he approached the South Koreans and the Japanese in the same offensive manner. He did not have the acumen to know the difference between a client state and an ally. It was reported that the Japanese government had told Trump that he can move your troops out of Japan, we do not need them, they did not succumb to his extortion’s overtures nor did South Korea’s government who similarly has to a certain extent objected to such insulting demands.
The Myth of an electoral base (The big lie)
In the November 3, 2020 elections, Donald Trump received about 73 million votes, while his rival President-elect Joe Biden, received 80 million votes. Which means that the number of voters who cast their ballots in the 2020 election reached an all-time record of more than 155 million voters. The largest voter’s turnout in American history. Anyone who thinks that the 73 million voters who voted for Donald Trump comprise a solid electoral base for Donald Trump is absolutely wrong, this is not true. It is a big myth that is being conveniently perpetrated by Donald Trump to deceive the American people and use this ephemeral support at best, to benefit from it financially, while it last.
In bi-polar political system like the USA, there is a huge difference between voting for a person and voting for a party. The vast majority of those voters who voted for Donald Trump in the November 2020 election were republican voters who would vote for the republican party’s candidate anyway. Of the 73 million who voted for Donald Trump in this election, there are at least 60-65 million of them who have voted republican all their lives regardless. The same is true for the Democratic voters.
These so-called Trump bases are the same voters who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and his father in 1988, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012. No one should be fooled by the narrative being conveniently promoted by Donald Trump and, unfortunately, by the mainstream media, that Donald Trump base of support among the American populace is equal to half the electorate. That is simply not true, and exceedingly misleading. The mainstream media outlets like CNN, New York Times and Washington Post and others, have expediently picked up on this notion of an imaginary “ Trump Base”, in part to explain their utter failure in predicting the outcome of the 2016 election and its aftermath. It is a lie and an insult to the American people and the GOP in particular, to suggest or propagate this narrative too far. Donald Trump bubble has pierced on November 3, 2020. Period.
Contrary to all the media hype, the GOP has a history that extends for two hundred years . If what Trump and his enablers are ranting about is true, then please let Donald Trump run as an independent in 2024 and let us see how many votes he will get. Not get more than five or six million votes at best, and that is what I call the real size of a Trump base, consisting mainly of hard-core white supremacist and racists. In the American two-party electoral system, independent third candidates do not get anywhere.
The myth of a so-called formidable Trump base is no less a lie than him claiming to have won the 2020 election. He is monetizing these two lies to the maximum to raise funds from supporters to pay off his debts and simply line his pockets in a hurry, before leaving office, ignominiously, once and for all on January 20, 2021.
References ( US-Saudi relationships)
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