About a week ago, while working on this story, I spoke to one of my friends in the US. A retired academic from the Midwest, he has never been a fan of President Donald Trump. But, this time, I could sense fear in his words. He spoke bitterly about Trump, but then requested me not to identify him. “I would not doubt that there is a database being assembled somewhere of his critics,” he said.
My friend, a white American, said he no longer felt safe in America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. After all, it is now governed by a president who wanted a ten-fold increase in the number of nuclear weapons because during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, the US president had more than 30,000 nukes at his disposal. Trump also did not think twice before riling a trigger-happy North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un on a nonissue. “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old’, when I would never call him short and fat?” tweeted Trump. Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump has shown that it is okay to be angry and you do not lose votes by showing your anger.
On November 29, Trump caused a major diplomatic storm by retweeting three Islamophobic videos posted by a far right group called Britain First. Several world leaders, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, rebuked Trump following the tweet. “It is wrong for the president to have done this,” May said in a statement. Trump replied immediately, however, to some other Theresa May. “Don’t focus on me,” he tweeted. “We are doing just fine.” The real May told Trump that working together with the US “does not mean that we’re afraid to say when we think the US has got it wrong.”
Trump became president by successfully channelling the anger among working class Americans who have been unhappy about changing demographics, losing jobs and growing multiculturalism. Surprisingly, he won a significant proportion of votes from rich, college-educated Americans as well. Initially, not even Republicans gave Trump a chance. Jeb Bush thought Trump needed therapy. Rand Paul called him a delusional narcissist, while Mitt Romney felt Trump lacked the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader. Yet, when America voted, Trump was its choice.
Trump has been an aggressive competitor since childhood. Young Trump would sometimes accompany Fred, his dad, when he went for collecting rent from the apartments he owned in the New York suburbs of Queens and Brooklyn. Fred always stood to the side of the door after ringing the bell. Young Donald was curious and his father told him that it was a precaution, because in the tough New York neighbourhoods, sometimes the tenants would shoot right through the door. The boy learned an important lesson, that the world is a dangerous place and you could get killed unless you killed first. “Some of Trump’s nervous predisposition has roots in his formative years, wherein despite his wealthy family background, his psyche was saturated with a sense of danger and a need for toughness and that the world cannot be trusted,” said Dr Roshan Jain, senior consultant psychiatrist at Apollo Hospitals, Bengaluru.
Moving anger: This photo of a woman giving Trump the finger as the presidential motorcade leaves the Trump National Golf Course in Sterling, Virginia quickly became an internet sensation | AFP
The instinct to vanquish his opponents was reinforced in Trump’s psyche from a very young age. “Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat,” was what he said in a 1981 People interview. That is probably true, even in his relations with women. Remember his infamous words from a 2005 Access Hollywood tape, “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” said Trump, about a much married lady. “Grab ’em by the p**sy. You can do anything.” Trump later downplayed his comments, calling it locker-room banter.
“When you hear a public figure and a father of female children speak so foul concerning women, it’s very disheartening,” said a 55-year-old African American, who is a social worker from Philadelphia. “As president, Trump has the power to make decisions about women’s healthcare, pay scale and just basic rights. His thinking about women is affecting his choices and not in a positive way,” she said.
Although this is the season of ‘Me Too’ hashtags and women speaking up about sexual harassment at the hands of influential men like Harvey Weinstein, complaints against Trump have gone largely unstuck. The New York Times broke a story last year about a woman who was molested by Trump. Jessica Leeds, 74, spoke about what happened to her in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York three decades ago. She said she had never met Trump before, and 45 minutes into the flight, Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. She had to leave the first-class cabin and flee to the back of the plane. When asked about the allegation, Trump said Leeds was not attractive enough to draw his interest. Nineteen more women have alleged that they were sexually harassed by Trump. The White House, however, rejected the charges. More importantly, none of the allegations caused any real damage to Trump. Leeds herself said that Americans wanted a change and therefore they were willing to go along with Trump.
Rocky ties: Trump shares a testy relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, seen here at the launch of the ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 | AFP
Adding another interesting angle to the debate, Shamaine Daniels, a Venezuelan American, said if she were younger, she would have been appalled, but not anymore. “I have been in male-dominated employment spaces for a very long time. In some ways, his statements help me feel less insane. He seems to resemble the way men act towards women in the workplace,” said the 39-year-old attorney from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Race relations continue to be another issue of concern. “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City” was the headline of the first story featuring Trump to appear in The New York Times. The story, dated October 16, 1973, said the department of justice was initiating legal proceedings against Trump for racist business practices. Trump, then 27, was president of a company which owned 14,000 apartments in New York and the suit alleged that the company discriminated against African Americans in allotting apartments. Trump was not punished and the case was settled out of court.
Many more such allegations have come out. In the eighties, whenever Trump visited his casinos at Atlantic City in New Jersey, his African American employees reportedly had to stay out of his sight. In his 1991 book Trumped, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino president John R. O’Donnell mentions a conversation he once had with Trump about one of his African American accountants. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it.... I think the guy is lazy. And, it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks,” said Trump.
Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville violence on August 12 was criticised by a lot of people for his lack of empathy. At Charlottesville, Virginia, during a fight between white supremacists and counterprotesters over the removal of Confederate symbols in the Southern states, an Ohio man ran his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a 32-year-old woman and grievously injuring 19 people. As the world stood shocked by this act of blind hatred, Trump chose to apportion blame equally. To his mind, the neo-Nazis and their opponents committed the same crime. “You had a group on one side and a group on the other and they came at each other with clubs—there is another side, you can call them the left, that came violently attacking the other group,” said Trump.
Last stand: Rosary Solimanto, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, protests outside Trump Tower in New York against the new tax bill, which will affect insurance cover of poor patients under Obama care | AFP
Hispanics, too, have been a major target of Trump’s ire. Sensing a political opportunity, Trump kicked off his presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, and with a promise to build a border fence along the Mexican border. It turned out to be a smart move as it enthused his base.
Among his first executive actions as president was the order to ban the entry of citizens from Muslim majority states. Some of his advisers and cabinet colleagues, like chief strategist Steve Bannon, national security adviser Mike Flynn, attorney general Jeff Sessions and treasury secretary Steve Munchin have not been the best advocates of racial harmony. Bannon and Flynn are no longer with the administration.
Flynn was the first senior official to quit as early as in February after reports that he misled the White House about his interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. On December 1, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the issue, cutting a deal with Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, who is probing Russian interference in last year’s presidential election. Flynn confirmed that he acted with clearance from a senior member of the Trump transition team and his revelations have the potential to seriously hurt the White House.
In May 2016, Trump targeted Gonzalo Curiel, a federal judge, who was hearing a class action law suit against Trump University for duping students. “He is a Mexican,” Trump told CNN. “We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. He is giving us unfair rulings, rulings that people can’t even believe,” said Trump.
Murder most foul: A vehicle drives into a group of people demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. Trump chose to blame both groups equally | AP
While Trump’s gender and minority policies have an impact largely limited to the United States, his foreign policy is of concern to the whole world. A Pew Research survey conducted in June covering 37 countries found that only 22 per cent has confidence in Trump to do the right thing, although he is still in his first year in office.
His decisions to walk away from the Paris climate accord, abandon the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), undermine the nuclear deal with Iran and restrict immigration have caused a great deal of concern across global capitals. Not even its closest allies supported the US on the climate change question and in the case of the TPP, the remaining 11 countries are going ahead with the initiative. In the case of the Iran nuclear deal, the European nations have openly rejected Trump’s position. Federica Mogherini, the foreign affairs head of the European Union, said the deal did not belong to any single country. “And, it is not up to any single country to terminate it,” she said.
Immigration reform is another issue on which Trump has discarded expert opinion. He has targeted H-1B visas and green cards. Trump sees little merit in family based green cards and the lottery system. In October, he ordered the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) to review requests for H-1B renewals as thoroughly as they would review initial applications. Frank Cissna, the new USCIS director appointed by Trump, said the move would protect the interests of US workers. It could, however, complicate matters for thousands of Indians already working in the US and it follows the Trump administration’s efforts to push back as much as it can on H-1B petitions.
According to USCIS data, between January and August this year, the agency challenged 85,000 petitions, up 45 per cent from last year. A bill aimed at raising the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders from $60,000 to $90,000 was approved by the judiciary committee of the House of Representatives on November 16. It also stipulates that no American is replaced by an H-1B holder.
The move has clearly rattled tech companies. When contacted for this story, Infosys, TCS, Wipro and Cognizant refused to respond. NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), too, chose not to speak. The sense of fear is palpable. Students are also worried. Sarabjeet Singh, a final year student of electronics and communication engineering at the Seth Jai Parkash Mukand Lal Institute of Engineering and Technology at Yamuna Nagar, Haryana, said he had given up on his American dream. “After Trump became president, we have been hearing of hate crimes and racist attacks. I am worried and my parents are no longer prepared to send me to the US. I am now looking at doing my master’s from Germany,” he said.
Apart from the concerns about immigration issues, however, the Trump administration has been largely favourable to India. Firm handshakes and warm hugs have marked his meetings with Prime Minister Modi. Trump has been largely sympathetic to Indian concerns on a range of issues from terrorism to threats from China. Last month, he sent his daughter Ivanka to Hyderabad to attend the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit co-hosted by the US and India.
Yet, Trump does not seem to be a big fan of conventional diplomacy. His Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in a hurry to push out senior diplomats. More than 100 senior foreign service officers have left the state department in Trump’s first year and only 10 of the top 44 positions in the department have been filled so far. According to reports, the state department is planning to push out nearly 2,000 diplomats by next October. Even as the North Korea crisis worsens, there is no assistant secretary for East Asia or ambassador to South Korea. Similarly, there is no assistant secretary in charge of Middle East or ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt.
In the case of Afghanistan, Trump, who became president by promising to bring the soldiers back home, ordered in September to send 3,000 troops to join the 11,000 already stationed there. According to The Washington Post, Trump dithered a lot about sending more troops, but finally gave in to his security team’s advice. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster apparently managed to convince Trump by showing him a black and white photograph from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts on the streets of Kabul. McMaster told the president that it was possible to take Afghanistan back to the days when miniskirts were fashionable.
Such an unconventional president in the White House has not only enraged his political rivals, but also turned the normally staid mental health professionals into activists. Professor Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist from Yale School of Medicine, has brought out a book titled The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump, with the help of a group of 27 mental health experts. The book says anyone as mentally unstable as Trump should not be entrusted with the life-and-death-powers of the presidency. The group gave its opinion notwithstanding the Goldwater rule, which states that it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorisation for such a statement. “I can tell you as an expert on violence that President Trump has shown many signs of dangerousness,” said Lee in an interview. “The most obvious ones might be verbal aggressiveness, history of sexual assault, incitement of violence at his rallies, attraction to violence and powerful weapons, [provoking] hostile nations, an endorsement of violence and sparring with another nuclear power that has an unstable leader.”
Several Congressmen and senators, too, have questioned Trump’s competence. Republican Senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker, who is the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, recently called the Trump White House an adult day care centre and warned that the president was leading the US on the path to World War III. Six Democratic lawmakers got in touch with Lee to discuss the president’s condition, and California Congresswoman Jackie Speier called for invoking the 25th amendment. Under section four of the amendment, the president can be removed from office if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet send a declaration to the Congress that the president is unable to perform his duties. Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon had warned the president that it was the 25th amendment, not impeachment, that posed the biggest threat to his future.
Leaked stories from the White House do not inspire confidence. In October, Vanity Fair reported citing unnamed White House sources that his advisers struggled to contain Trump who was routinely consumed by dark moods. “I hate everyone in the White House. There are a few exceptions, but I hate them,” Trump reportedly told his longtime security chief Keith Schiller. To minimise the fallout from the president’s unpredictable behaviour, the White House chief of staff John Kelly is said to be doing his best to sequester him as much as possible. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, screens fixed-line phone calls made to the president and also keeps a watch over guests who mingle with him. Even Schiller was not given unfettered access to his boss, which finally forced him to quit, according to the report. However, even Kelly is unable to prevent Trump from tweeting and using his mobile phone.
Yet, despite such allegations of anger, craziness and incompetence, Trump’s core constituency remains loyal to him. Although his approval rating is down to 38 per cent in the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 81 per cent of Republicans are solidly behind him. “Trump is trying to clean up the mess left behind by the Clintons and the Obamas,” said a 57-year-old registered nurse from Philadelphia who is an ardent Trump supporter. “The media and celebrities have not given the man a chance to make America great again. If he runs again, he will get my vote, 100 per cent.”
Trump has established total control over the Republican Party that no leaders with an eye on future are willing to challenge him. Corker and Jeff Flake, another senator who tried to take on Trump, have both announced retirement. By pushing out his detractors and by rewarding his supporters, Trump is reshaping the Republican Party in his own image. “He is assuring his legacy of conservatism with the numerous lifetime judicial appointments and his version of nationalism based on America first and anti-immigration policies,” said Richard Mouzakes, a retired social worker from New York.
Even his critics, like my friend from the Midwest, agree that there is a method to Trump’s apparent madness. “He is crazy, but it’s more crazy like a fox, which does not fit a professional definition of mental illness,” he said. “He has cultivated a base of idiots who were looking for their own Hitler and he is playing the role for them. He uses these people as a tool.”
Experts point out that Trump has fine-tuned anger into an electoral strategy. “He appears perennially angry and it keeps his supporters excited. The depth and durability of his support base have not faded, even a year after the elections,” said Joshy M. Paul, who teaches international politics at Christ University, Bengaluru. “So far, Trump did not have any significant legislative achievement to boast. Now, with the new tax code approved by the senate, supported even by detractors within his own party, he has overcome that handicap as well. His base feels that Trump has worked wonders. The Mexico fence plan is still on, the trade pacts are gone, the climate deal is discarded and a lot of noise can be heard about immigration and islamist terrorism. The primal white constituency is happy. Bad policy, perhaps, but good politics. Trump has elevated anger to a legitimate tool to channel votes.”
WITH ABHINAV SINGH & MINI P. THOMAS
