He has severally called many heritage media outlets ‘fake news,’ calling for the licences of some media like NBC and ABC to be revoked. He has threatened CNN and Washington Post countless times. Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog, claimed in its research findings that Trump verbally attacked media more than 100 times in the two months run-up to the election. He coaxed ABC for a $15 million defamation settlement and threatened to go after Jeff Bezos’ businesses if he didn’t rein in Washington Post’s criticisms.
Bezos, the recent publisher, caved in, annulling the newspaper’s decades-long endorsement of a presidential candidate, which in the last campaign favoured the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. The Post which I visited as part of my fellowship in 2003, and which I hallowed for its heritage and journalistic excellence is now in reputational tatters; currently bearing the weight of a slew of retaliatory resignations including a recent one by a prodigious cartoonist whose illustration was dropped for depicting Bezos and some other tech giants cringing before the all-mighty Trump.
The Pulitzer award winner, Ann Telnaes, who had been at The Washington Post since 2008, said: “In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at, until now. The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.” Besides the resignations, The Post lost an estimated 250,000 subscribers.
Trump had threatened to jail the no-holds-barred TV host Jimmy Kimmel and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook which yanked him off the platform for spreading insurrection during the invasion of the Capitol. His first time in the White House was a rough ride for the media, it’s going to be barbaric from January 20.
Kimmel said Americans had a choice between a prosecutor and a criminal, “they chose a criminal,” and referenced the choice between Jesus and Barnabas. He said of the election day: “Terrible day for women, journalists, the physically challenged, for Healthcare, poor people, also terrible time for those who voted blindly without knowing him.”
He is historically black-hating, thumping up his familiar refrain during the last presidential debate that Black Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs. He was sued in 1973 for refusing to rent apartments to black families. Several Black participants in The Apprentice, a reality TV floated by him expressed gross racial biases. His shithole reference to African countries and stereotyping Blacks as lazy are well documented. It’s no brainer that his Africa foreign policy would be hugely negative.
The in-coming American President needs some knowledge of the American history, just like I, an alumnus of U.S. Department of State had 20 years ago; may be that could water down his rambunctious and myopic posturings: How America became a great nation built on freedom and diversity and democracy, shaped by a history of innovation and migration. And understanding that the White House was so named, not out of white supremacist irredentism, but a simple white coating of the building after the British Army torched it during the War of 1812.
He should also have an historical excursion of the Republican Party founded by one of its progenitors, the legendary Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed a free press; and remind him of how he succeeded destroying the party and muffling all dissenting voices.
I asked Meta AI to describe Donald Trump’s behaviour in a sentence, it returned this: ambitious, dominant, and outgoing, with tendencies to be impulsive, self-serving, and exploitative, often prioritising his own interests and image over traditional norms and institutions. ChatGPT returned this: Donald Trump’s behaviours are often characterised by assertiveness, a confrontational communication style, self-promotion, and a tendency to challenge norms and conventional authority.
When people apply for sensitive positions, organisations do background checks. Simple background checks devoid of politics would have enlightened the ‘uninformed’ American people more about the man they were staking their lives on.
The U.S. judicial system has always been a reference point for other countries. How it failed to send the convict behind bars or extract corresponding fines seems one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I imagine how the Western World would have described the “despicable judicial” act were it to be in a Third World country. I thought the developing/underdeveloped countries were the ones credited with inequitable judicial system skewed only against the poor and the underprivileged.
A jury had earlier convicted Trump in New York of 34 counts of fraud, a Class E felony offense with a penalty of up to four years in prison and hefty fines. But the New York Justice, Juan Merchan at the January 10 sentencing issued an “unconditional discharge,” meaning “the case is over, the conviction stands, and no further conditions attach.” Legal juggernauts are still scrambling to understand the unconditional discharge of an artful fraudster who would lead the most powerful nation on earth.
A leader should inspire hope and trust. But Trump’s second coming is sending waves of anxiety and fears in a world already stressed with wars, hunger, deaths and disasters. After Scotland First Minister John Swinney congratulated Trump and offered a hand of fellowship, the congressmen scolded him, querying how Scotland would benefit from Trump, a misogynist, conspiracy monger, a climate denier, a racist and a fraudster, a convicted felon.
World leaders are in unanimous panic attack right now because of the election of one man. Leaders in EU, North America, NATO, Africa and the Middle East are bracing up for a war-mongering and self-serving, impulsive and ill-mannered president. You are yet to take the levers of power, and you are already touting annexing Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark; Panama Canal owned by the sovereign country of Panama. You serially ridiculed a more respected Prime Minister of Canada, calling him Governor Trudeau and mouthing a self-serving rhetoric of making Canada the 51st state of U.S. He has been on a threat binge against numerous countries including Iran, Mexico.
The privilege of the U.S. as a superpower cannot be underrated. But countries of the world need to be unanimous and make concerted efforts in confronting the Trump threat lest their inaction or passivity breed another Hitler, and another World War.
Africa needs not look unto today’s U.S. as a repository of democratic conduct or judicial impartiality. The Western World have always sermonised against the vote-buying prevalent in Nigeria and other parts of Africa. But how do you explain the pro-Trump pre-election deals by the tech giants led by Elon Musk in anticipation of government contract patronage? African countries need to grow their own systems in consonance with local demands. In Trump’s America, Africa won’t be on the table.
As a Chief Correspondent with The Punch in 2003, I had the opportunity of interviewing the then U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Howard Franklin Jeter, who spoke glowingly about the U.S. enactment of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade programme enabling about 35 sub-Saharan African countries including Nigeria to export certain goods to the U.S. without tariffs. That programme would be the first casualty in the Trump government.
Nigerian governors, national and state legislators as well as other members of the political class have been trained in the U.S. on the Western-style democracy and civil society systems since the outset of the Fourth Republic, with huge financial input. Nigeria and other African countries need to stop all that political pilgrimage and the illogical funneling of tax-payers’ money. It’s time for a paradigm shift.
Concluded.
Onayoade, Journalist and Brand Consultant, is a Freedom House Fellow.
