Trump is marking the first 100 days of his second term with a list of his 'achievements' but he hasn't included the most significant ones. He has single-handedly destroyed trust in the American election system and even democracy itself. He has brought ever closer the constitutional crisis that his presidency has always threatened to deliver. He has totally undermined the US Constitution and the rule of law and brought the Republic that the founding fathers created 250 years ago next year to the edge of ruin. Unless the judiciary and the Senate begin to stand up to him, and they are the only ones who can, America will be lost to Western democracy and the foundations of the most powerful nation on earth will be shaken to pieces.
Instead, his listed accomplishments include these:
The American people are being invited to celebrate the ending of federal support for paper drinking straws. Note: This is not a joke.
The economy, which the IMF described at the end of last year as ‘the envy of the world’, is now a basket case. Several economists are forecasting a contraction of between 1.4% (Comerica Bank) and 1.8% (JP Morgan). These are terrible figures, a massive turnaround for an economy that was growing by 2.4% at the end of last year. UPS has laid off 20,000 drivers in the expectation that deliveries will soon see a serious decline.
A clear majority (59%) of Americans blame one man and his strange obsession with tariffs, an idiot who thinks he’s a genius at everything under the Sun.
That’s bad enough but it barely scratches the surface. He’s also arresting judges in what is clearly a move to intimidate the judiciary into giving him carte blanche to do as he pleases. His attorney general Pam Bondi described one judge on live television as a “criminal” in a “criminal court” in what the judge's defence team will certainly argue is a clear case of predetermining the outcome of her trial. This is from America's most senior law officer.
Trump’s administration is still not complying with a Supreme Court order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Filmar Abrego Garcia to the USA from his El Salvadoran jail. Several documents have been filed from both sides in the ongoing case but all are under seal so we don’t know what’s happening.
The president of the USA is engaged in wholesale corruption, as this article in The New York Times highlights. World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency firm that Trump and his sons recently created has been offering "partnerships" with Cayman Island start-ups that involve the firms making secret multimillion-dollar payments to World Liberty. This is just one scheme. He is enriching himself in office in ways that even Putin or Ceausescu would be embarrassed by.
The damage he is doing to America is colossal and the country will take decades to recover from, in some instances, the changes he has brought about will be irreversible. A crunch is coming and soon.
I am not sure any longer if it's too soon to begin talking about fascism, which is defined as:
"A far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It's characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, suppression of opposition, and subordination of individual interests to the perceived good of the nation. Fascism often prioritizes the nation above all else, rejects democratic principles, and can include elements of racism and antisemitism."
Trump's MAGA movement has most of these traits and is moving in the wrong direction.
A long article in The New Yorker by Andrew Marantz asks if the US is following Hungary's slide into autocracy and traces some research carried out in Hungary showing how the descent into authoritarianism comes slowly and is accepted as the norm:
Péter Krekó, a Hungarian social scientist, told Marantz: “The way they do it [in Hungary], and the way they are starting to do it in your country as well, they don’t need to use too much open violence against us,”
“The new way is cheaper, easier, looks nicer on TV,” he says.
“Before it starts, you say to yourself, ‘I will leave this country immediately if they ever do this or that horrible thing,’ And then they do that thing, and you stay. Things that would have seemed impossible ten years ago, five years ago, you may not even notice.”
“It’s embarrassing, almost, how comfortable you can be,” he said. “There are things you could do or say—as a person in academia, or in the media, or an N.G.O.—that would get them to come after you. But if you know where the lines are, and you don’t cross them, you can have a good life.”
This is how fascism in America will take hold and we are as close to it now as we have ever been. The really worrying thing is that Trump isn't even doing things that "look nice on TV," as this story of one family's meeting with ICE (Immigration and Customs) agents in Oklahoma City recently shows:
It is utterly, utterly shocking. The shape of things to come. Another 'achievement' that he omitted from the list.
