Ever since the November 2016 USA “shock” election of Donald J Trump, we have seen political alignment and hysteria approaching decibel levels that have never been seen before.
It is now commonplace to see protests, marches and, oh yes, resistance movements, every day. Even from day one of his presidency, before any policy move, there were already protests. It is now normal to do Trump–Hitler comparisons without any push-back. In fact, people who refuse to be drawn into Trump-Hitler talk are demonised as bigots, racists etc. People are losing their minds and their principles over Trump. Unfortunately, many of these people do not realise that this is actually not doing anything to hamper his policies/support with the people who voted for him. More details on this are for another day. What I would like to share with you is that Trump is just like any other politician. Let’s look through the following points:
- Lying: A lot of people are accusing Trump of being a liar. Fun fact: all politicians lie! Tony Blair and George Bush lied their citizens into entering an illegal war. As far back as the 1964 “Gulf of Tonkin incident” presidents have been lying to people. Even the beloved President Obama lies – he promised to close Guantanamo Bay and give single payer healthcare in the USA, which did not happen. There was no hysteria over lying then, why now?
- Abusing the press: People are going crazy over Trump blasting the press either in interviews or on Twitter. Wow! Outrage! How dare he! People are obviously forgetting that the beloved President Obama also blasted Fox News when they lied/when he felt they misrepresented him. You know the Obama administration also prosecuted journalists, and according to the New York Times (and you know the New York Times don’t really like Trump) spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records. Was there mass hysteria? Of course not! But Trump chants “fake news” on Twitter and people go bonkers!
- Drain the swamp: So Mr Trump promised to change the system and then went into Washington and continued the system. He appointed billionaire donors to his cabinet and chose a Goldman-Sachs executive as his treasury secretary among other issues – outrage! We conveniently forget that Mr Obama’s first treasury secretary Tim Geithner was from – oh wait – Goldman Sachs! This same Mr Obama made a number of his campaign donors ambassadors. You mean Obama the beloved gave diplomatic positions to his campaign donors? Is that not worthy of outrage too? Of course not, but when Trump does it – carnage. Hillary Clinton made speeches at and collected money from Goldman Sachs – where was the outrage then?
- Drone strikes/wars: Last week Trump ordered a military strike targeting a Yemeni terrorist that ended up killing an 8 year old girl (who is a USA citizen) among others in Yemen. People were aghast that a US citizen had been killed. Of course, people are leaving out the fact that 12 terrorists were killed in the strike and that President Obama approved a drone strike that killed the 16 year old (USA citizen) son of the same man. You know what Mr Obama’s (remember Obama was a former constitutional law professor) press secretary said at the time? “Maybe he should have had a more responsible father.” Mr Obama inherited wars in 2 countries and left with bombing in 7 countries.
- Immigration: Trump signed an executive order banning people from seven countries coming to the USA for 60 days, which was greeted with a global outcry. Of course, the seven countries were highlighted by the Obama Administration. 2 million pe0ple were deported under President Obama – the largest deportation ever. Fun fact: the “temporary ban” was already in place. Ask any non-EU/non-Japan citizen applying for a US visa – many of them were put on “administrative processing” that lasts sometimes for up to a year. This has been going on for a long time.
- Russia hysteria: Back in the 2012 presidential election debates, Mitt Romney mentioned that Russia was a threat and should treated as such. President Obama and the Democrats mocked him. Now guess who is spiking up the outrage on Russia-Trump-election hacking talk? Obama and the Democrats. Insane hypocrisy on all sides.
So here you have it folks – Donald Trump is like any other politician in terms of lying, deceit and policies. So far, The Donald has conducted his policy business just like all his predecessors/main stream politicians have done/continue to do.
Olufisayo Olanrewaju
Featured image courtesy of ‘Gage Skidmore’ via Flickr.
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