Trump — the post-truth tribal chief

We have followed Trump, even before his election in 2016 and regularly written along with our syndicate in the Pakistani press about various aspects related to his style of governance — why the White House became ‘The Fired White House’; how Trump could be harbinger of peace in Afghanistan; and why PM Imran Khan developed a chemistry with Trump in his maiden visit to US.

We also try to follow major campaigns and debates on the Hill and in the sitcoms and political comedy shows ranging from #MeToo to current impeachment process hovering around the ‘Quid Pro Quo’. Despite our best efforts, we have failed to understand the Trump phenomenon and how it fits into the most mature democracy called the United States.

The post-truth environment has turned the world into humongous tribes marauding the cyberspace with Twitter hashtags bewildering the masses, who spend enormous amount of time through garbage of trivia and fill the echo chamber with howling of millions. And Trump is probably the first Post Truth POTUS, who precisely knows how to play the hardball. The way he wears his hair and the necktie, makes faces and blatantly calls the main stream media as ‘fake news’ is all deliberate. His constituency loves it and democrats have not presented a single tribal chief of stature of Trump in their ranks, no wonder the platoon of candidates fielded by democrats look like kids when seen by the Republican tribe, who follow the Pied Piper in Trump.

In one of our recent write-ups, The Fired White House, we had predicted: “Merely six months have passed since Trump moved into the White House and its becoming difficult to count the number of staff fired. With that speed, President Trump may have to line up more than 100 people for prospective high position jobs to keep White House running in good order till 2021.”

Another of our articles, Trumpy Way of Things’, opined: “Apparently Trump’s way of governance has been based on a simple theory: kill the problems creating chaos by accentuating further chaos, something Trump has done in his building up of Trump business empire; but, Trump should understand that United States is not a Trump Tower on the Chicago River. International system does not go to sleep during hiring and firing breaks in the White House, and, every day counts in enhancing or retarding the American National Interest.”

Unfortunately the perception of instability in the White House may tend to convince the international community that they can do without waiting for a nod from America in the day-to-day business of international relations.

Is Trump going to survive the current ‘quid pro quo’ impeachment drive? This is a million-dollar question. In our opinion, he will. There are five major factors which make us believe that the post-truth tribal mentality would keep the Republican voter glued to Trump, despite his shenanigans. If Stormy Daniels and Christine Blasey Ford (Justice Kavanaugh fame) could not affect Trump, quid pro quo won’t work either.

The impeachment process is too long to complete before November 2020. Trump’s tenacity and deflection tactics to throw trivia on hourly basis would keep America in good humor on a daily basis.

Trump will get a boost due to emerging chaos in the Middle East, especially the developing story on Iran, where the temptation to tweak the implosion of Iranian inner front will motivate a lot of hawks on the Hill to support the Commander-in-Chief in his crusade against the Iranian regime.

The platoon of candidates fielded by Democrats will appear as an assortment of Don Quixote’s and keep the Blue and Swing voters divided well into 2020. Contrarily, Trump will become the ‘knight in shining armour’ and dismantle Democrats one by one.

Trump’s approval rating has maintained a steady graph, similar to Bill Clinton’s and has hovered around 42% for the last 18 months. While small dents may be expected till the start of 2020, it will pick up as the Democrats primaries result in the bruising and collateral damage of their candidates.

The only possibility of Trump leaving the scene is a heart attack, but that can happen to a lot of oldies in the Democrat camp as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2019.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.