In July, the United States tried to block a resolution to be adopted in the WHO on breastfeeding. The resolution stated that breastfeeding was far preferable for health reasons than breast milk replacements. This is confirmed by a myriad of scientific studies. However, the Trump regime estimated that it would adversely affect North American companies producing infant formula, and therefore launched a campaign to halt the resolution. The campaign included threats of cessation of aid to Ecuador, which had tabled the resolution. Ecuador bowed, withdrew the resolution, but the resolution text was instead tabled by Russia and adopted. Criminal companies that produce infant formulas market it especially in the 3rd world, where lack of access to clean water for mixing in replacement results in illness and death among infants, who at the same time do not get the resistance they would have been given with breast milk. (Breastfeeding: it’s bad for business!, Guardian 10/7 2018)
According to allpubliclibraries, Trump visited Britain in mid-July. This was not a state visit which would have otherwise led to him speaking in the British Parliament. With his stated support for British right-wing radicals, he was simply too unpopular. People’s organizations conducted extensive demonstrations against him in London and other major cities, and during the second part of his visit – in Scotland – no official wanted to meet with him at all. From the UK, the President went on to summit Russia’s President Putin in Helsinki. The meeting contained no criticism of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. In the gossip press, there were speculations that Putin had video footage of Trump’s brothel visit to Moscow in 2012-13, and therefore had a squeeze on Trump. Rather, the explanation for Trump’s submissive relationship with Putin was financial. Trump was a bad businessman, and through the ’00’s and into 2016, therefore, no North American banks wanted to lend him money. It was too risky. Instead, he got loans for his dubious projects from Russian banks and oligarchs.
In late July, Trump stepped up his attacks on the media in the United States, calling them “enemies of the people.” That led to a meeting between the New York Times editor-in-chief and Trump, who, however, did not cool the president but on the contrary increased his hatred of the media. A few days later, the UN warned freedom of speech experts that Trump’s attack on the media could lead to a drastic curtailment of free speech in the country and violent assaults. By the end of June, a man had gone under attack on the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland and had shot and killed 5 journalists. With his increasingly flaming attacks on the media, Trump created a climate that endorsed violent assaults against these. A study found that 91% of strong Trump supporters shared his views on the media as “enemies of the people”.
In the middle of August, media in the United States and the rest of the world went into counter-attack against Trump’s hate rhetoric directed at the media. Nearly 350 dailies published leaders where they went into clinch with Trump’s attack on democracy. However, one study found that Trump’s right-wing stance reverberated among Republican voters. 51% of them stated that they perceived the media as “the enemy of the people”. The poll showed that at national level, 26% supported Trump’s stance. (Almost 350 news outlets to publish editorials denouncing Trump’s ‘dirty war’ on press, Guardian 16/8 2018)
Inspired by Trump’s hate rhetoric, the media was subjected to physical attacks in the form of murders, assaults but also in the form of threats. At the end of August, the FBI arrested a man who had threatened the Boston Globe newspaper after doing so a few weeks before organizing the media counterattack against Trump. (FBI arrest man who threatened to kill Boston Globe staff for criticizing Trump, Guardian 30/8 2018)
In mid-August, Trump attacked the intelligence service when he quite unexpectedly withdrew former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance. Trump’s perfidious attacks on high and low in the United States have rarely led to backlash from the intelligence community, and Brennan was one of those who responded, calling Trump embicil and treacherous. The revenge came in the form of the withdrawal of his security clearance. 12 former intelligence directors and deputy directors responded by criticizing Trump. Trump’s revenge on Brennan was partly a lack of impulse control, and partly an expression of the delegitimization of those layers of the US administrative summit that could, with considerable weight, be critical of the president’s ridicule. (Why is Donald Trump attacking the US intelligence community ?, Guardian 19/8 2018)
Two of Trump’s close associates, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, chose in August to cooperate with authorities in the pending lawsuits against them. In 2018, a total of 5 of Trump’s employees stood before the court for political and economic crimes.
