Irish Examiner view: Would we miss Donald Trump and would a successor be worse?

Having lapsed into uncharacteristic silence after a deadly shooting at a Catholic church, the US president re-appeared on Saturday as he embarked on yet another golf trip

There was much social media speculation about whether Donald Trump was still with us until photos emerged on Saturday of the US president with his grandchildren. Picture: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

One does not expect speculation over whether or not an American president is dead to trend on social media, but such was the weekend that was.

In the wake of another brutal mass school killing — this time in a Catholic church during a school Mass, Donald Trump, 79, was uncharacteristically silent and absent from public view. Indeed, comments from his vice president, JD Vance, about being ready to step in to the presidency if needed, fuelled speculation, if only because Mr Trump has shown signs of decline in recent weeks. 

Mr Trump’s comments about wanting to get into heaven by achieving peace between Russia and Ukraine, because “some people say I’m not doing so good”, had added to the snowball effect.

Even Illinois governor JB Pritzker, an outspoken critic, got in on the act at the weekend by posting a message that Mr Trump would be better off showing proof of life rather than posting text rants on Truth Social (because one can never be certain if the politician or an aide actually hit ‘post’). Ultimately, photos emerged of Mr Trump with his grandchildren as he prepared for yet another golf trip. 

Nonetheless, speculation around his health will continue. This is the world we live in now.

Perhaps we should not be so surprised. After all, Republicans turned Joe Biden’s health in to an ongoing campaign issue, particularly his mental acuity. They remain silent on their own president’s problematic signs, such as seeming to fall asleep in cabinet meetings or trail off on wild tangents during public appearances.

US president Donald Trump on the roof of the White House briefing room last Monday, August 5. He disappeared for several days after a gunman shot several children at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

Mr Trump’s health has sparked voluminous speculation among social media watchers, even before his team announced he had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, whereby the veins in the legs don’t allow blood to pump properly back up the body, resulting in swelling and pooling of blood in the legs. The constant bruising on the back of one of Mr Trump’s hands, explained by his staff as a consequence of shaking hands with so many people, is often speculated to be something more serious.

As things stand, his administration has been a force of nature, a wrecking ball that has crashed through civil liberties as readily as it has immigration and healthcare, with restrictions on covid vaccines the latest assailment, in a country where vaccine scepticism has gone hand in hand with a spike in measles and other diseases. Whether that same level of change would persist under a successor remains to be seen, even if almost everything that’s happened so far was already outlined in the Project 2025 document Mr Trump once claimed not to know about.

As seems to be the case for many of us as we age, our bodies don’t quite work the way they used to. Various conditions and issues don’t necessarily add up to signs of more widespread illness. 

But, given the combative, cult-like support that surrounds Mr Trump — and we saw echoes of it in Australia at the weekend, where some far-right protesters wore Trump paraphernalia — it is reasonable to wonder what, or indeed who, might come after, should he, for whatever reason, be no longer able to maintain his position.

As for the answers to that, they’ll remain as speculative as the  commentary around his wellbeing.

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Reshaping rules-based world order

One of Donald Trump’s legacies, along with a possible crack right through American society, is a reshaping of the rules-based world order to one that not only entrenches opposition to America, but sees new power blocs gaining influence.

Now, one could justifiably argue that the rules-based order has constantly been in a state of breaking down since the defeat of Nazi and Japanese imperial militarism.

India's prime minister Narendra Modi arriving for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, on Saturday. Picture: Hao Yuan/Xinhua/AP

But, at any other time, a meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in China — a grouping that includes Russia and India as well as Pakistan, Iran, and some former Soviet states — would have just been another meeting of nations with some common cause. This year, however, it is influenced not only by US sanctions on Russia, but by India’s new ambitions to build regional economic alliances in the face of mounting American sanctions.

India, having long had a trading relationship with Russia back to the Soviet era, has been slapped with 50% punitive tariffs by the US for buying Russian oil, a sanction that’s part of wider punitive measures against Russia itself for its ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine. That invasion shows no signs of ending, with Russia seeking to formally claim swathes of Ukrainian territory and some officials in the White House now claiming that unnamed European countries are undermining peace efforts.

Given that India-made pharmaceuticals are already subject to tariffs, prime minister Norendra Modi, himself an authoritarian by nature, has begun reaching out to neighbouring countries to find ways of lessening the impact. 

He already makes annual visits to Japan, but is now expanding efforts to Russia, China, and elsewhere. China and Russia have been close allies for a long time, with no sign of that abating. China is one of the few countries Russian president Vladimir Putin can travel to without fear of being arrested for war crimes.

India and China combined represent easily 35% of the global population, along with a substantial, perhaps immeasurable percentage of global manufacturing and services. Parts of America may consider the country great again, but it will be years, if ever, before any substantial manufacturing base returns to the country. Even with economic damage to China and India from tariffs, the US faces being eclipsed, as all empires are eventually.

The 2025 Shanghai conference may yet go down in history as just another regular meeting. 

But there is a sense, however ephemeral, that it could lead to something else.