Trump’s first 5 months - this isn’t normal... Dave O’Farrell on the Mexican border and making Mexico pay for it, comments about Mexican immi- grants being rapists, suggestions of deliber- ately targeting and killing the families of suspected terrorists and attacks on almost every piece of news coverage as ‘fake news’ Trump was treated by much of the media more as an item of entertainment and/or ridicule than a prospective president with deeply troubling policies. The reality of the situation dawned very late for many with CNN President Jeff Zucker admitting that In the week following Donald Trump’s shock election as president of the United If we made any mistake last year, States John Oliver, the comedian and pre- it’s that we probably did put on senter of the satirical HBO program Last too many of his campaign ral- Week Tonight, encouraged Americans to lies in those early months and let keep reminding themselves that ‘this isn’t them run. normal’. In the months since last November the continued controversies that have fol- Adding that one of the reasons they had lowed the new administration, such as claim- done this was that ing that the Obama administration used UK because you never knew what he 1 intelligence at GCHQ to tap his phone(!) , would say, there was an attrac- have relegated incidents that would merit tion to put those on air.2 intense and prolonged coverage in ‘normal times’ to mere footnotes between the seem- With a campaign dominated by bombas- ingly endless Trump administration crises tic statements of intent like those just men- and continual blunders - not to mention tioned and a shocking inconsistency on key Trump’s twitter account. issues such as abortion rights where his pol- Trump’s campaign plumbed the depths icy often differed over days or in some cases of racism, Islamophobia, misogyny and sex- hours it was difficult to predict what Trump ism, emboldened the far right and took as would do once in office. In his first five its stock-in-trade outlandish claims and per- months the administration has been dom- sonal insults. Even from the earliest days of inated by controversial decisions, like re- his campaign, when almost no serious com- peated attempts to implement a travel ban mentator or analyst gave him even an out- on Muslims entering the country, almost un- side chance of the Republican nomination let believable incompetence and scandals. Press alone the presidency Trump has rarely been Secretary Sean Spicer justified Trump’s deci- out of the media. With promises like ban- sion to bomb an airbase in Syria over chemi- ning all Muslim immigrants, building a wall cal weapons attacks by the Assad regime by 1‘Trump stands by unsubstantiated claim that British intelligence spied on him’ The Guardian theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/17/white-house-will-not-be-repeat-claims-gchq-spied- trump- 2‘CNN’s President Says It Was A Mistake To Air So Many Trump Rallies And ‘Let Them Run” BuzzFeed News buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/cnn-president-mistake-to-air-so- many-trump-rallies?utm_term=.ui2yvzW9r#.meNAZ8JzX 55 claiming that Hitler ‘didn’t even sink to us- (college graduate or not) and income. Obvi- ing chemical weapons’ before backtracking ously from a Marxist perspective this ignores and saying that he had sent Jews to ‘Holo- the key component of class - the relation to caust centers’ but that he ‘was not using the the means of production - and as an article gas on his own people in the same way that by Kim Moody in Jacobin noted Assad is doing’. The most serious scandal has been that regarding contacts with Russia There are also millions of Amer- during the election campaign and has lead icans who don’t have a college to the resignation of National Security Ad- degree, who are not working viser Michael Flynn after only 24 days in of- class, and who are actually more fice, with the Attorney General Jeff Sessions likely to vote than the ‘left be- recusing himself from the investigation af- hind’ industrial workers. There ter lying about Russian contacts during his are some 17 million small busi- confirmation hearing. This in turn has led ness owners without that degree. to the firing of FBI director James Comey As a 2016 survey by the Na- and to Trump himself coming under investi- tional Small Business Associa- gation for possible obstruction of the inves- tion tells us, 86% of small busi- tigation into Michael Flynn. ness owners are white, they are Politically Trump’s presidency has been twice as likely to be Republicans a frantic affair with barely a pause between as Democrats, almost two-thirds major decisions or actions. While most are consider themselves conservative in many ways the type of straightforward (78% on economic issues), and conservatism and neoliberal economics ex- 92% say they regularly vote in pected from a Republican president others national elections. have put him at odds with at least signifi- They drew an average salary of cant sections of his own party. Before look- $112,000 in 2016 compared to ing at some of these it is worth examining $48,320 for the average annual briefly at how we got here. wage. Add in the spouses, and this classically petty bourgeois The Economy... and a whole lot group alone could more than ac- of stupid count for all the 29 million of those lacking a college degree Much has been made of racism as a factor in who voted for Trump.3 the election and Trump’s campaign was cer- tainly deeply racist. Yet although he won Analysis of voter income also reveals a majority, 58 percent, of white votes the that those who earned under $50,000 were narrative that Trump won the election due slightly more likely to vote for Clinton while to an appeal to racism in the poor white those earning over $50,000 were more likely working class is oversimplified. Many arti- to vote Trump, although by a similarly small cles have been written debunking this myth margin4. This is exacerbated by the fact and it is worth noting that much of the defi- that those who earn a higher income are nition of a vote’s class used in the US media more likely to vote, about 25 percent of is based primarily on educational attainment US households have an income greater than 3Kim Moody ‘Who put Trump in the White House?’ Jacobinjacobinmag.com/2017/01/trump- election-democrats-gop-clinton-whites-workers-rust-belt/ 4‘Exit polls and election results – what we learned’ The Guardian theguardian.com/us-news/2016/ nov/12/exit-polls-election-results-what-we-learned 5Interview with Lance Selfa ‘Who’s to blame for Trump’s victory?’ SocialistWorker.org socialistworker.org/2016/11/14/whos-to-blame-for-trumps-victory 56 $100,0005 yet 34 percent of voters in the elec- for the benefit of a tiny and wealthy elite his tion had an income greater than $100,000. talk of bringing back US manufacturing jobs That being said the question of how Trump and tearing up the free trade agreements, won the election remains6. like NAFTA, blamed for jobs moving out of The election didn’t happen in a vacuum the US, of economic nationalism and import and has to be taken in a wider international tariffs on foreign goods, and a promise to context. Following the global financial crash ‘make America great again’ resonated with in 2008 ordinary people around the world large numbers. were forced to endure vicious austerity mea- While Trump was able to capture sup- sures in order to bail out many of the insti- port from the right Bernie Sanders was able tutions responsible for the crash in the first to capture it from the left. Running on place. While in many instances the initial a platform emphasising income inequality, resistance was slow to materialise over the promising higher taxes for the wealthy and intervening years it has resulted in a polar- talking about a ‘political revolution’ he was isation in politics across the globe. While able to appeal to the many Americans who what Tariq Ali has called the extreme centre feel left behind in a shockingly and increas- has suffered new forces to the right and left ingly unequal society. Once Hillary Clin- have emerged. On the left we have seen the ton won the Democratic nomination, with rise of Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the support of the leadership of the Demo- Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and in Ireland cratic Party, Sanders radical message which Solidarity-People Before Profit took 6 Dáil had resonated with many, particularly with seats in addition to a number of other In- younger generations, was lost. Bill Clin- dependents from radical left backgrounds. ton’s ‘slogan’ from his 1992 election win over On the right we have seen Golden Dawn in George Bush Snr, ‘the economy, stupid’, Greece, Jobbick in Hungary, Marine Le Pen seems to have been entirely forgotten in the and the Front National in France, UKIP in intervening years. the UK and Gert Wilders’ Freedom Party in In an election where being an outsider the Neatherlands. The US has not been im- was a distinct advantage the Democrats mune to this polarisation and while Trump chose as their candidate the ultimate Wash- represents the populist right the left was ington insider. The advantages of being seen represented by the self described democratic as an outsider are not entirely new and even socialist Bernie Sanders who came close to the lessons of her loss to Barrack Obama for securing the Democratic Party nomination the Democratic nomination in 2008 went un- only to lose to Hillary Clinton.