Commentary by Ron Cheong
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. November 4, 2024: America’s adversaries and various despots are eagerly wishing for a Trump victory. They know that a little prodding of his deeply dysfunctional narcissistic vanity or some small flattery is all it takes to get everything they want. As Vice President Kamala Harris said: “In many ways Donald Trump is a ‘non-serious man,’ but the consequences of Donald Trump’s return to the White House are extremely serious.” He is truly a flawed, unstable and vindictive man who is unfit to be president.
How could a man have changed the country in this way?
Once the US was against Russia and anyone who stepped out of line with this policy risked severe punishment at home and abroad.
Cuba has been under a crippling US embargo for nearly 70 years due to its excessive relationship with Russia. The small island of Grenada with a population of less than 100,000 was invaded by Ronald Reagan – whose Republican Party was strongly against Russia because the Cubans were helping them build an airstrip.
Now Trump calls despot Putin’s invasion of Ukraine genius and shrewdness: “This is genius. Putin declares a large part of Ukraine – Ukraine. Putin declares him as an independent… Here is a guy who is very smart… I know him very well. Very, very good.”
Three months after his inauguration in 2017, Trump hosted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office — a privilege few have been afforded. A Russian photographer was allowed to take pictures, but no American journalists were allowed to be present.
Meanwhile, he said of American hero John McCain, the son of an admiral, who was shot down over Vietnam suffering serious near-fatal injuries and spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war at the infamous Hanoi Hilton: “He is not a hero war. He was a war hero because he got caught. I like people who didn’t get caught.”
And his MAGA supporters wear t-shirts declaring: BE RUSSIAN THAN A DEMOCRAT.
There is a popular TikTok-type video on social media purportedly made by a MAGA zealot – whether it’s a genuine MAGA zealot or a fraud, it contains some concise and alarming truths.
Here is an excerpt:
“…He wants to suppress and leave everyone else who is a woman, that’s Brown, that’s Black, that’s not Christian, that’s gay, LGBTQ, whatever the hell it is.
He wants to keep them under us.
That is all that man is trying to do in a nutshell.
Keep the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I’m honest with you, he doesn’t care about anyone but rich people if you’re honest.
And to be honest, I know Trump is a narcissist and only cares about himself.
And I know he’s normalizing narcissism.
I know he’s normalizing immorality in humanity, racism, white supremacy, white nationalism, misogyny, all of that,
He is normalizing lying, he is normalizing fraud, he is normalizing criminal activity, he is normalizing betrayal, he knows it…”
No Benefit of Doubt 2016 to 2024
This is not 2016 when Trump was apparently given the benefit of the doubt, despite declaring bankruptcy 6 times and being embroiled in over 4,000 lawsuits, including almost 200 involving unpaid taxes) over the years.
Trump is a known quantity now. Just days earlier at a campaign event in Arizona he launched a dangerously inflammatory attack on Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, urging: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels firing on her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when guns are trained on her face.”
Is there any doubt that he would turn the military against American citizens who disagree with him, or as he puts it, the “enemy within?”
This is the thought process of the individual who wants to be the next President of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world – and with his finger on the nuclear button.
Imagine that, an unprincipled, duplicitous, inept, unbalanced, xenophobic, convicted felon and aspiring despot – within a hair’s breadth of becoming 47th president of the United States of America.
It’s not as if the alarm hasn’t gone off. A year ago, CNN ranked 24 of his most prominent aides, cabinet members and allies — those who know him best, who declared him unfit and would no longer support him, and the list has only grown:
1. His Vice President, Mike Pence: Who almost hanged himself. When told that Pence was in very serious danger, Trump said, “So what!”
2. Attorney General, Bill Barr.
3. His first SDefense Secretary James Mattis.
4. His second Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper.
5. Cchairman of the Joint Chiefs, retired Gen. Mark Milley.
6. SSecretary of State Rex Tillerson.
7. orAmbassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. After failing in her bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, she fell back into line.
8. Vice President of the Presidential Transition, Chris Christie.
9. His second National Security Advisor, HR McMaster.
10. His third National Security Adviser, John Bolton.
11. His second Chief of Staff, John Kelly.
12. His former acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
13. One of his many former Communications Directors, Anthony Scaramucci. “He is the domestic terrorist of the 21st century.”
14. Another former communications director, Stephanie Grisham.
15. His Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos,
16. His Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao.
17. His first Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer.
18. His first National Security Advisor, Tom Bossert.
19. His former lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen.
20. His White House lawyer, Ty Cobb.
21. A former Director of Strategic Communications, Alyssa Farah Griffin
22. A senior aide in charge of his outreach to African Americans, Omarosa Manigault Newman: “Donald Trump, who would attack civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would go after grieving black widows, who would say there were good people on both sides, who supported a accused child molester; Donald Trump and his decisions and behavior were hurting the country. I couldn’t be a part of this madness anymore.”
23. A former deputy press secretary, Sarah Matthews.
24. The latest aide to his chief of staff, Cassidy Hutchinson. Trump claimed he didn’t know her like he didn’t know E. Jean Carol.
These are some of the officials who have worked directly with Trump, there are many others including military leaders, legal scholars, hundreds of lawyers, Republican members of the house and senate, Republican governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, officers in his businesses and many others.
Not the Mexican wall, but the American one
Ever since he came making the escalator, he has been a scourge on America. He left behind a mess that ranged from the deficit increase due to his property tax cuts to the fallout from his botched response to the Covid-19 outbreak, for which his solution was to inject Clorox.
As for his big braggadocious promise to build a border wall and make Mexico pay, he built all 2 miles of the border wall – and no, Mexico didn’t pay for that either.
Now they want to go further with Project 2025 – cut the social safety net and replace government workers with only sycophants loyal to him
America’s opponents and various despots are eagerly wishing for a Trump Victory. They know that a little prodding of his deeply dysfunctional narcissistic vanity or some small flattery is all it takes to get everything they want.
The Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, caused Trump to explode and brag about the “love letters” between him and Kim. And all it took for Harris in their argument was a little negative nudge about his “crowd size” to infuriate him into going on a “dog-eat-cat tirade.”
He is a deeply flawed, unstable and vindictive man who is unfit to be president. One would have thought that his cat-and-dog-eating tirade would be the end of his presidential aspirations, but apparently there must be a market for that kind of talk.
If Donald Trump wins by some catastrophic quirk of fate, he won’t need his wall to keep out migrants, murderers and rapists, as he says. But he may need to build walls to keep those who have the means to flee his version of the United States of America.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ron Cheong, born in Guyana, is a community activist and dedicated volunteer with an extensive international background in banking. Now residing in Toronto, Canada, he is a Fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto.
