Republican Party bigwigs have finally cottoned on that their party’s presidential nominee is a liability. Clinton is surging in polls following Donald Trump’s breaking of a written-in-stone taboo with arsenic-laced attacks on a Gold Star family still mourning the loss of their son in Iraq, not to mention his crude and rude ejection of a crying baby from one of his rallies.
Centrist Republican voters are said to be switching sides in droves. Prominent Republicans politicians are defecting to the Democrats or distancing themselves from the Trump camp. Former foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain and other Republican former presidential candidates said it succinctly: “There is no way to lie down with someone like Trump without getting fleas.”
Barring his forgive-anything blue-collar following and white supremacist groups, it’s hard to predict on whose backs he’ll be carried to the White House when he’s insulted Mexicans, African Americans, American-Muslims, denigrated a disabled journalist, a war hero, the grieving parents of a fallen soldier, made vicious personal remarks about women and stupidly, alienated influential media outlets, including CNN and the Washington Post that’s firing back with as much dirt as they can unearth.
Moreover his rallies have degenerated into pure hate fests with calls for the literal demise of Trump’s opponent he refers to as ‘Crooked Hillary’. A New York Times video shows his rabid supporters “hurling profanities, violent threats along with sexist, racial and ethnic slurs”; a minority has launched violent attacks on hecklers seemingly with the Donald’s approval.
How on earth did the United States of America get itself in such a bind! Voters have been presented with a devilish choice between a woman with unsavoury baggage, who the majority of Americans consider unlikable and untrustworthy, and, an egocentric, uninformed, divisive bully presenting a danger to the US and the world — and, if he wins, that’s no exaggeration.
MCNBC’s pundit Joe Scarborough has alleged “a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them, why can’t we use them?” That’s a question a seven-year-old might ask and answers would probably include words like ‘deterrent’, ‘retaliation’ or even ‘Armageddon’. The very idea of a President Trump armed with the nuclear codes makes many within the US and around the world shudder.
On foreign policy, Trump has no clue, but he has shown an attraction to strongmen like Vladimir Putin and by all accounts the feeling is mutual. Moscow stands accused of hacking Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails triggering the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and two staffers. Trump not only failed to condemn the leak, he asked Russia to find the missing 30,000 emails from Clinton’s private server. He has also backed the Turkish president’s sweeping purge of the military, state institutions, the judiciary, the media as well as schools, colleges and book stores.
One can only imagine the state of US foreign policy relations if the worst happens. Mexico is unlikely to roll out the red carpet for the new guy on Pennsylvania Avenue and won’t be paying for his wall.
Canada’s President, dubbed “the anti-Trump” by the Washington Post, is wisely standing back but he can’t be happy at Trump’s verbal onslaught against NAFTA.
It’s easy to know where France’s President Francois Hollande stands. Trump’s “excesses” make people “want to retch”, he said.
And his visits to Nato would be strained by his refusal to pledge America’s automatic defence of member states from a hypothetical Russian attack which flies in the face of Article 5 of the Treaty mandating an attack on one must be considered as an attack on all.
It would be fascinating to see what welcome he and his delightful First Lady, who’s graced many a magazine cover in her time, would receive from predominately Muslim states. I would anticipate flurries of teeth-gritting and polite smiles.
The entire scenario is becoming nightmarish and some within his party’s high echelons would like nothing better than to be able to dump Trump. But that’s easier said than done because under Republican Party rules he’s the only person with that authority and besides time is running out to come up with a viable replacement.
Trump swears that on the off chance he loses, he’ll disappear. Many would sigh with relief if he were conjured away right now.
Linda S. Heard is an award-winning British political columnist and guest television commentator with a focus on the Middle East.
