Trump is promising economic and social mayhem for the USA, and all those places it influences. Will he deliver?
This is the audio version:
And this is the transcript:
Will Trump deliver what he says he's going to do?
I ask the question because I'm truly frightened about the prospect that he might, and when considering it, I have a sort of feeling of inverted déjà vu.
For those people watching this video in the UK, many will recall that before the July general election this year, we all pondered about what Keir Starmer would do when he became Prime Minister, as he obviously was going to be.
There were those, like me, who said he had no idea what he was about, and he was probably therefore going to do nothing. And, in retrospect, we've been proved right.
There were others who said, “Wait and see, this man's a genius. He's just playing his cards close to his chest.” It was called the Ming vase strategy, holding Labour so close, and so carefully, and so tight that the true policy could not be revealed until Labour was in office, when we would discover the majesty of his vision.
That was nonsense.
And in an inverted sense, we have Trump. The one thing that we know about Trump is that he has promised vast ranges of policy.
He says he's going to deliver trade war.
He's going to impose tariffs.
He's going to attack the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and all the other developing nations who are not in the OECD - who don't want to use the dollar as the reserve currency for the world, and on them he's imposing a threat of a hundred per cent tariffs if they drop the dollar.
He's threatening 11 million or so Americans with deportation.
And he says he'll deploy the army within the USA, which is something that has not happened for a very long time in U.S. history for very good reasons, to make sure that those people are deported.
And he will put them in camps until they are sent out of the country.
All of this, and much more, including his policy on climate change, is truly terrifying. The consequences are almost unimaginable. The disruption will be enormous. The human anguish that he will unleash in all sorts of ways is almost unimaginable.
But he has promised this. And in that sense, he's the complete opposite of Keir Starmer.
The trouble is, Keir Starmer lived up to his promise. He promised nothing, and he's delivered nothing.
Trump is promising everything. My fear is he will try to deliver it.
So, will he? Might he be, and I use the word wisely, mad enough to try to do all of these things, quite possibly simultaneously?
And my answer is yes, I think that is truly what he wants to do. Why do I believe he'll do that? Because he does have people like Elon Musk on his team.
Remember, Musk bought Twitter, and within days he had sacked vast numbers of staff. He had gutted the organisation of the very essence of what it was in some ways, removing all the controls and checks and balances that made Twitter at least an approximately safe place in which to exchange opinion, and making it into something pretty noxious that most of us now want to avoid as a consequence.
He's got plenty of others from the same camp in his cabinet.
This is the richest, most remote from the population of the USA, Cabinet in the history of that country. It is made up very largely of billionaires - by definition, an extraordinarily unusual breed of people, almost out of touch with reality because their wealth makes them so.
And those billionaires believe they can do whatever they like, and they believe that people will jump when they tell them to. And that's because they've run private companies where that type of tyranny can take place.
In a private company, if the boss says jump, then you either have a choice of jumping or leaving. If that's the way in which the USA is going to be managed, people haven't got the choice of leaving. That's their home, the only place where they can be. And yet, they might be told to jump, and they might not want to jump in the way in which the US Cabinet, under Trump, wants them to jump. And that is what is so dangerous about this situation.
A government in a democracy - and one has to question whether the US now has a democracy, but let's presume it has - a government in a democracy has to represent all the people. It must take them with it to win popular support for the rule of law. If it doesn't, then the rule of law breaks down.
If Trump does what he says he plans to do, there is a very real risk that he will not take all the people with him. That there will be mass protest. And there is the risk that that mass protest will be violently suppressed, that there will be deaths, bluntly, as a consequence. After all, Trump in the past has talked about civil war and so have others in his administration, many of whom are also completely indifferent to the idea that a diverse nation is a strong nation and have said so, and yet, the USA. is an intensely diverse nation.
So, the threat that Trump might actually do what he's promised is, in this case, deeply worrying because mayhem would follow. So, whilst I prayed that Keir Starmer might actually have an idea what he was doing last June and might reveal a vision when he came into office, even though he didn't, in the case of Trump, my prayer is the opposite one. Trump has promised a great many things. And I pray he won't try to do them. My fear is, he will.
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Another example of top youtuber commentary on the USA. Hold onto those record 239,000 twitter followers if Elon allows you and keep praying.
I have virtually abandoned Twitter
As have many others…
YouTube and Bluesky are where it is at now
In answer to the headline question – probably.
That said, I have a sense of different agendas. The man-baby obvs wants “revenge” for losing in 2020 and being taken to court. The American oligarchs sense a chance to change power structures such as to favour them even more. That said, the assasination of the CEO of a US health insurance company and public reaction (as far as I can see many US citizens approve of the action) indicates that events can disrupt the mainstream media narrative – and vast numbers of below the line comments indicate that oligarchs and their helpers (the CEO falls into that category) may not have it all their own way. Creating a disaster will result in blowback and an army can only keep the lid on for so long.
I’m with Mike on this – Trump will try this on in my opinion too because he and his supporters still believe that even with the gross inequality in the U.S. and its waning prestige – a prestige based on backing some of the worst people in other people’s countries and dollar bullying – America is the greatest country in the world apparently.
That is what MAGA is all about – returning to some sort of ‘golden age’ for the States. It’s
What many American people fail to realise however, is that domestically at least, that golden age was based on a much fairer system than they have now and and the destruction of which has enabled people like Trump to get to the top in the first place. It was the American corporate system that brought its imperialistic practices home from South America and Africa to eats its own people in search of continuous economic growth – for wealth.
Pity the American people I say. It was never supposed to be like this. And now they are going to be drawn into a game of nostalgia politics without understanding the rules which are set squarely against them.
Either Trump will have to rein in some of his atrocious ambitions or he will create a literal firefight on too many fronts, where violent repression will magnify rebellion. I suspect there may be a whiff of secession from the West coast as well to contend with – one of his key targets would have to be California in particular, as a major economic power in its own right. Civil war – almost certainly if he goes for all his targets.
Shamelessly click baiting by yet another Trump video!
I always find comments like this amusing.
What are you pretending? That Trump is not a real issue? That I should not talk about Trump? Or that I should not be interested in what my viwers seem to want? Maybe it annoys ypu that I seem to be quite good at this? Tell me what it might be that vexes you so much, please?
Betteridge’s Law says that if a headline ends with a question mark then the answer is “no”.
Trump will not deliver…. but many will suffer as he tries.
Then the fear is that this failure to deliver will become “it’s not poor policy, just poor implementation – we must go harder”…. then heaven help us.
The only line I would disagree with is that Starmer has done nothing since he was appointed Prime Minister. What he has done is almost all completely negative. Apart from breaking all his pre-election promises, he has gone further, retaining the two child cap, and making W.F.P means tested to name but two, so in that respect he has done something, but it is all to the detriment of the people of the U.K.
An ironic surname, Mr Beveridge, but your namesake would I suspect be whirling in his grave along with Attlee and Bevan.
Richard, your comments reminds me of the 1975 novel “Ecotopia” by Ernest Callenbach about an ecological utopia where Northern Califonia and Pacific Northwest seceded from the Union.
I always thought it a bit unrealistic, but with Trump in charge who knows what will happen in the USA?
Anything is possible.
Starmer has and is doing more than nothing and it’s all bad