Donald Trump: Saviour or simply unstable?
Kevin Rafferty says the US presidential nominee’s sweeping promises at the Republican convention may have thrilled his backers, but they stir unease among some of the party faithful, as well as America’s allies and rivals – not least those in Asia
What an extraordinary coronation week it was in Cleveland, Ohio, that saw Donald Trump anointed as Republican Party candidate to be the 45th president of the United States in November’s election. It was raucous, at times bizarre, and at others deeply troubling.
Most troubling of all was when Saviour Trump delivered his acceptance speech promising a new shining America and strutting the stage as the person who would deliver a renewed, strong, proud, safe and great America from January 20, 2017.
He declared himself the law and order candidate who would also restore America economically; reduce taxes; create “millions of new jobs, and trillions in new wealth”; cut big business and elite media to size; repeal Obamacare; rebuild infrastructure; build the “great border wall” with Mexico; end America’s “international humiliation”; reduce immigration; curb globalisation; renegotiate “horrible” trade deals with China and Nafta; scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership; end “China’s outrageous theft of intellectual property, along with their illegal product dumping, and their devastating currency manipulation”; “defeat the barbarians” of Islamic State and “brutal Islamic terrorism”; and free the country “from the petty politics of the past”.
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Behind the triumphal jamboree, however, there were – and are – disturbing questions, particularly about Trump, but also about the direction of US politics. A Catholic priest, Monsignor Kieran Harrington, offered a public prayer that the convention would help “inspire us to build a more noble society.”
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There was little sign of that, as one Trump supporter after another launched tirades of hatred against his opponent, Hillary Clinton. It amounted to a witch-hunt that made Trump’s earlier taunt of “crooked Hillary” sound tame.