My Take | President Trump 2.0 may start a full-on cold war with China
- Democrats and Republicans may be divided on former leader’s stance on Ukraine conflict, but both are impeccably hostile towards Beijing
It’s fascinating to watch Donald Trump’s “town hall” performance on CNN. The man is clearly in possession of his mental faculties, and he can walk and talk at the same time. These are clear advantages over the 80-year-old incumbent Joe Biden.
Guns for all, lower taxes, banning abortion, fielding more conservative judges at all judicial levels, drilling for oil and gas like there is no tomorrow (indeed, there may not be a tomorrow if the climate crisis really is as bad as scientists think) – Trump has offered, regardless of his own beliefs if he has any, everything a diehard Republican would want in a president. That’s why he has, at least up till now, no real rival from the Republican Party.
And if a Washington Post/ABC poll is anything to go by, he would even beat Biden by 44 to 38 per cent if a presidential election were held tomorrow.
The man may be facing dozens of lawsuits, both criminal and civil, but his followers are convinced they are all engineered by the “deep state”. They may not be entirely deluded either.
They have pointed to how the state of New York, which is overwhelmingly against Trump, passed a law that allows for a one-year window for victims of sex crimes to sue even if their cases are way past the statute of limitations.
Some conspiracy theorists have claimed that the law was passed just so someone like the writer E. Jean Carroll could come forward to successfully sue Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, even though the alleged incident took place in the mid-1990s. One way or another, the Democrats are running scared, and they should be.