2019 Trump is ‘Home Alone'

Trump’s Christmas tweet on the eve of December 24 describes his psychological state, “I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!”

Although it may appear to be a normal tweet from President Trump, who has been venting his anger and even policies on Twitter, there are simmering currents within the US establishment which point towards an incoming storm.

Peter Bergen, a CNN National Security analyst, decried in his article, ‘Now Trump is at War with the generals’ on Jan 1 in the KITV4, “the degree to which Trump is battling America’s generals is startling, considering how he began his presidency. Trump came into office besotted by military brass… now, two years later, Trump is eager to tear down the generals. After Mattis announced his resignation with a letter distancing himself from Trump’s key foreign policy positions on December 20 and said that he would stay in the job until the end of February to allow for an orderly transition, Trump instead pushed him out at the end of December”.



Trump has found increasing resistance to his policy on Afghanistan and Syria, especially when these were his pre-election promises made to his Republican vote base and the officers and soldiers in the US military. On December 31, he remarked, “I am the only person in America who could say that, I’m bringing our great troops back home, with victory, and get BAD press. It is Fake News and Pundits who have FAILED for years that are doing the complaining. If I stayed in Endless Wars forever, they would still be unhappy.”

Trump did not hold his horses when responding to General McChrytal’s remarks, as reported by CNN on Jan 1, he came out with a very rhetorical tweet saying, “General’ McChrystal got fired like a dog by Obama, last assignment a total bust. Known for big, dumb mouth. Hillary lover!”

This tweet followed an interview that McChrystal gave to ABC’s Martha Raddatz in which he described Trump as both immoral and dishonest.

While the US establishment and the military-industrial complex would want the extensive use of military force to stay as the main policy tool in resolving conflicts, the psychological cost of the long war has started eroding the morale of serving soldiers as well as veterans, how can any country absorb the cost of this war where 20 veterans are committing suicide every day and a whopping 60,000 veterans took their lives in the past decade in the Continental US.

This list of prominent White House aides and secretaries fired by Trump or those who resigned due to increasing pressure include White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Communications Director Michael Dubke, FBI Director James Comey, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Adviser on African-Americans Omarosa Newman, National Security Adviser Gen HR McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defence Secretary General James Mattis, US representative in UN Nikki Haley and the White House Chief of Staff Gen John Kelly.

Some of the White House aides and secretaries fired by Trump as well as journalists having close association with the White House have written books in the past two years, more important ones include, “Fear” by Bob Woodward, “Fire and Fury” by Michael Wolff, “The Briefing” by Sean Spicer and “Unhinged” by Omarosa M Newman. These books have one major conclusion that Trump has been the most difficult President in the history of United States, and it was challenging for a sane and honest person to work in the Trump administration.



As I pointed out in my previous articles on Trump, the calls for impeaching Trump are becoming louder. Andrew Sullivan in his article, “Can Donald Trump be impeached?” in The New York Times, highlighted why the clause of impeachment was kept in the constitution. But President Trump has already contemplated the issue of impeachment and is building a legal firewall for the last-ditch battle. As per the CNN report of June 4, 2018, President Trump asserted that he has the right to pardon himself, but suggested that he won’t use that power, adding that the special counsel investigation is unconstitutional. He tweeted “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong”?

Trump’s major challenges include the Russia-gate inquiry being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, scandal involving hush money paid to adult movie star Stormy Deniels, democrats controlling the House of Representatives, growing instability in the White House where the aides and staff are finding it difficult to go with unique style of his governance, Trump’s handling of foreign policy and international trade, his obsession with the Mexican Wall and the war with the military establishment and intelligence community.

Trump’s bullheadedness and constant fight with the US military and establishment has made it very difficult to run the White House in good order, half of the time, his aides and staff is busy managing Trump on a host of policy issues. This has created an environment of mistrust and fear amongst his staff and aides, no wonder he is finding it difficult to appoint full-time aides and advisers.

There is a big question mark on how democracy works in the free world, which begets some basic corollaries: Is populism the panacea for the challenges faced by mature democracies and why there is increasing rise of Right Wing populist leaders in the West? Why a popular President who was elected by direct vote of millions of Americans finds it difficult to meet his basic election promises? Why was Trump forced to fire a number of staffers who either crossed the red lines of the establishment or failed to toe the defined lines of foreign policy, national security, international trade and even environmental issues? Why is the most mature democracy leading the free world, grappling with the issues of governance in an era of “The Great Disruption” and “Post-Truth” politics.

To conclude, I find that Trump is ‘Home Alone’ these winters, and the year 2019 may witness a huge power struggle within the White House and the Capitol Hill, with fireworks to be watched by the entire world.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2019.

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