Donald Trump was inaugurated as president in January 2017. The billionaire had in advance refused to part with his business empire. Otherwise, it is the practice that billionaire and millionaire presidents move their investments to special foundations to avoid conflicts of interest between their duties as president and their financial interests. That denied Trump.
He became chosen on the slogan “Make America Great Again”. A reference to the fact that the global importance of the United States is still declining due to the country’s ever smaller share of global GDP. The idea that this development could be reversed was, of course, an illusion, but it spoke to the nostalgia of many North Americans. But rather than increasing the influence of the superpower, it was the opposite. The president systematically went on to destroy the US alliances and did not understand that the post-World War II US power was based not only on its economic and military power, but also that other countries accepted this power. When Trump found out in January that the United States had pledged to accept 1,000 refugees from Australia, he called the Australian Prime Minister and scolded him. An Australian commentator remarked afterwards, that Trump had created a deep gulf in Australia. “The only country in the world that would probably stand on the United States, regardless of who it might attack.” That same month, the relationship with Mexico cooled down to absolute zero. During the election campaign, Trump had promised his voters to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep Latin American emigrants out, and incidentally let Mexico pay for the wall. After his accession, he reiterated that the wall should be built, prompting a scheduled state visit by the Mexican president to be canceled. In March, he claimed he had been intercepted by the British intelligence agency GCHQ, and a few months later he swindled London’s Muslim mayor to Twitter after a London terror attack. It made him so unpopular in Britain that a planned state visit had to be canceled. In May, he declared that the United States would not comply with NATO’s §5 muskets law, which is to guarantee that the Member States militarily move each other to the rescue in a crisis situation. He then withdrew the United States from the UN climate agreement. The consequence was in June that Europe was increasingly oriented towards China. The United States had simply run itself out on a side track geopolitically. It was clearly highlighted in the final communiqué of the G20 summit in Hamburg in July, when the United States assumed the right to “clean utilization of fossil energy sources”, while the other 19 countries intended to follow the UN Climate Agreement. The United States and especially its president had reached an absolute low globally, with one exception: Israel. Trump had terminated the United States’
Trump was not simply unpopular international. On the home front, he also acquired enemies with rocket speed. During his inauguration in January, several millions had protested against the rape offender worldwide, and the demonstrations had overshadowed the supporters he himself had gathered in Washington. Still, he claimed his deployment was the biggest and most visited throughout history. They were tainted by news agencies that could present photos from Obama’s inauguration and Trump’s. Trump himself and his press people therefore went for an open attack on the press accused of “Fake News” while his own distorted version of reality was presented as “Alternative Facts”. Trump’s war on major news agencies, and especially CNN and the New York Times, escalated this spring to a point, where they were no longer invited to the White House press conferences. In July, he made a video in which he personally knocked a journalist from CNN. The only media that failed to criticize the president were the right-wing media in the country, including the great Murdoch-owned Fox News.
According to necessaryhome, the country’s judiciary, too, Trump made an appearance. Twice he tried to impose entry bans from 7, then 6 Muslim countries: Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Originally, Iraq was also on the list. Whether people from these countries had a residence, study or work permit or simply had a visa, they were denied entry. This ban was repeatedly overturned by federal judges on the grounds that it violated the United States Constitution because it was openly aimed at Muslims. In June, however, the Supreme Court approved a dimmed entry ban. The ban triggered riotous scenes in major airports across the United States in February and March and widespread demonstrations. Many refugees in the United States decided to flee to Canada because of the state’s hate speech against Muslims. Normally, Canada would reject such refugees at the border, but Canadian legislation gave them refugee status if they came over at unguarded border crossings. As a result, refugees crossed the US-Canada border in deep snow, and many died along the way.
