Mick Clifford: Does Donald Trump want to reshape America or get even?
After the shock of Donald Trump’s victory, everybody is now wondering what is he going to do next. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Does Donald Trump want to reshape America or does he just want to get even?
After the shock of Trump’s victory, everybody is now wondering what is he going to do next.
There shouldn’t be any shock after a campaign that always could have gone either way, but in the days leading up to Tuesday, there was a growing sense that the prize was slipping from his grasp.
He was rambling more than usual. His rhetoric turned a deeper shade of dark, referencing women like Liz Cheney and Nancy Polosi in ever more demeaning terms.
He looked like a man who was conceding that he may be en-route to the jailhouse rather than the White House.
Kamala Harris appeared to be finishing strongly, limbering up to take office.
And then the people spoke.
They said they liked the cut of his jib, if not necessarily the filth of his tongue.
They wanted a self-styled strongman like him to take the reins of the economy and they just didn’t know where they stood with Harris.
A glimpse of what won it was on view last Saturday week when the was present at a Trump rally in central Pennsylvania.
He strode on stage, drank in the applause, and stepped up to the microphone.
“I want to start with a question,” he said. “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
The question was this year’s version of what won it for Bill Clinton back in 1992 with the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid”.
On Tuesday, the president elect received a “powerful and unprecedented mandate”, as he put it himself in his victory speech.
He achieved a comeback in politics that is unparalleled.
His status in the history of the United States is most definitely assured.
His victory was nothing less than phenomenal. So now, what will he do with all that largely untrammelled power at his fingertips?
He has promised swinging tariffs to help bring jobs home. That would inevitably kick start a trade war, probably with the EU, almost definitely with China.
In such a conflict Ireland would be particularly exposed.
The dreaded tomorrow on which our precariously balanced economy has prospered could come under severe attack.
We would thus be one of the early victims of Trump’s new world order.
The smart money says he wouldn’t rush headlong into any such a war.
Trump knows that it would impact on the bottom line for his own businesses and those of his billionaire buddies.
His first term has shown that he considers office an opportunity to make money rather than sacrifice anything in the name of public service or the common good.
There is every chance he will grow bored with matters to do with global trade or even jobs.
Those who worked with him before say he has little interest in the mechanics of governing, even if he is in his element exercising the levers of power.
Besides, there isn’t much wrong with the American economy as it stands.
A bitter irony attaches to the reality that Joe Biden is handing over to Trump an economy in pretty good nick, which hasn’t yet fed through to be felt by the man and woman in the street.
There is a danger that Trump’s lack of interest in such matters could see it delegated to one of the sycophantic ideologues who surround him.
People like Steve Bannon would revel in kicking off a trade war and the chaos that would ensue.
The other element to the Trump election platform was immigration.
He has promised that up to 1m illegal immigrants will be deported. Just as he once promised that he would build a wall on the Mexican border.
Any mass deportation would impact on the economy, where immigrants do the kind of jobs that Americans wouldn’t contemplate.
Trump knows this and he will act with his customary cunning in moving in a manner that doesn’t affect the bottom line.
The deportations are likely to go the same way as the unbuilt wall, but there may be an awful lot of pain, suffering, and fear for thousands if not millions before he backs off and focuses elsewhere.
Where he is likely to concentrate much of his energy is taking on “the enemy within” as he styled those who oppose him in politics, in the media, in public service jobs.
This is where Trump is most at home, getting even, settling what he considers personal scores.
This is where he is likely to operate the levers of power with all the relish of the kind of autocrat he aspires to be.
Inevitably, stress and chaos will not be far away in this second coming of President Trump.
One might well posit that now more than ever the United States of America is in bad need of, as they like to reference it, God’s blessing.
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