Observations of an Expat: And So It Begins

At the end of the first week of Trump 2.0 the world is left shell-shocked trying to find a way through an artillery barrage of presidential decrees.

He promised the decrees. He promised action. He didn’t lie. Not enough people believed him.

In less than a week Trump has—among other things—announced that he is going to end the right of citizenship for those born in the United States; closed America’s southern border and dispatched the army to help  guard it.

Because Trump clashed with Anthony Fauci—the man who coordinated America’s response to covid—he has ordered that the websites for the National Institute for Health, Centre for Disease Control and Federal Drug Administration to stop issuing health advisories.

Department of Justice lawyers who worked on his prosecution plus the DoJ’s International Division and Criminal Division, are to be sacked and replaced with MAGA loyalists

Federal employees have been told that they will suffer “adverse consequences” if they refuse to turn in colleagues who “defy orders to purge” their departments of diversity, equity and inclusion measures and personnel.

The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act were signature achievements of the Biden Administration and universally welcomed by the American business community. But they were Biden’s. Trump has scrapped them at the cost of tens of billions of dollars.

Tariffs have yet to be imposed. They are slated to be slapped on Canada and Mexico—at the 25 percent level—from 1 February. On Thursday Trump told the Davos Economic Forum that unless foreign companies moved their businesses to America they would suffer “trillions of dollars in tariffs.”

But perhaps the most disturbing of Trump’s decrees was the 1,500 pardons for the January 6 Capitol Hill riots. Not even his own vice president—JD Vance—thought he would go that far.

The Fraternal Order of Police—America’s largest police union, asked: “What happened to Republican Law and Order? This completely undermines the rule of law and is a stain on Trump’s legacy.”

Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers and one of the more prominent jailed rioters—now freed— disagreed. He said the Capitol Hill police were responsible for the violence and that they should be prosecuted and jailed along the members of the congressional committee that examined the riots; the judges that tried the rioters and the police and the FBI agents who investigated.

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appears to agree. He has announced that he will be appointing all the members of a sub-committee to investigate the findings of the first committee. “It is time the American public learned the truth,” he said.

But perhaps the most inexcusable piece of paper that passed Trump’s desk this week was the pardon for Ross Ulbricht. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for operating a dark web net called Silk Road. He was convicted in 2013 of selling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of illegal drugs, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, money laundering and the sale of fraudulent identity documents. At least six drug overdoses have been directly attributed to Ulbricht’s Silk Road.

American libertarians took up his cause because they support drug legalisation. The Libertarian movement backed Trump. But a more important advocate was the bitcoin industry. Ulbricht helped to establish the bitcoin industry which has now become an enthusiastic backer of Donald Trump. The president pushed up Bitcoin values by ordering the Federal Reserve to invest in the cyber coins. Trump himself launched his own bitcoin which has netted him personally more than $50 billion in a week.

Trump said he pardoned Ulbricht “In honour of… the Libertarian Movement which supported me so strongly.” He added that “the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponisation of government against me.”

 

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".

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16 Comments

  • Craig Levene 25th Jan '25 - 10:15am

    A politician doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and elected accordingly. Some lessons here for politicians in Western Europe.

  • Whether we like it or not, Trump is doing what he promised that he would do. He was elected democratically and therefore he has a democratic mandate to do what he is doing.

    Ultimately the citizens of a country get to decide who lives in that country. If the citizens cannot do this then it is not longer a sovereign country.

  • John Marriott 25th Jan '25 - 12:50pm

    I bet you’re glad you ARE an ‘expat’, Tom! I am still hoping I am going to wake up soon and realise it’s just been one horrible nightmare!

  • Nigel Jones 25th Jan '25 - 3:08pm

    So those who hoped that some of what he said was for show to get elected or an exaggeration are wrong. He is turning out even worse than those of us who believe in fairness and governing for all the people, had thought.
    It was always the case that right-wing Presidents did not care much for those who did not vote for them, but Trump is the worst by far. As was implied by the Bishop of Washington’s remarks in her speech, he is not called by God to serve all the people. So much for democracy that elects people by first past the post system and for one very powerful position with such influence over judiciary appointments. Surely that needs to change and has lessons for us too?

  • “Tariffs….slapped on Canada and Mexico”. Well yes, but that is slightly misleading and encourages the false view held by many Trump supporters that it is Canada and Mexico who will be paying these taxes. In and fact, the tariffs will be paid by the American importer and passed on to the final consumer. It is therefore inflationary, which is bad news for all those in middle America who thought Trump would deal with the cost of living.

  • Daniel Stylianou 25th Jan '25 - 4:05pm

    “Not enough people believed him.”

    I’m not sure that really is the case, Tom. Lots of people hoped he wouldn’t go as far as he said he would, but I think everyone believed he would. That’s the kind of person he is. The kind who takes the democratically-given mandate to the worst extremes and allows his ego to run riot and his depraved morality to dictate law and policy. Unfortunate, but at least in four years we’ll be rid of him. As history has shown,
    presidents can be ignored once out of office.

  • Steve Trevethan 25th Jan '25 - 5:00pm

    Time to discuss distancing from/leaving the declining and increasingly autocratic and predatory, if unstated, American “empire”?

  • Nonconformistradical 25th Jan '25 - 7:02pm

    “the declining and increasingly autocratic and predatory, if unstated, American “empire””

    Was it ever anything else?

    People talk about US involvement in WW2 but before they were attacked by the Japanese did they do anything much to help apart from supplying 50 (old, unwanted?) destroyers? At a time when we had a Prime Minister who was half American? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Randolph_Churchill )

  • Jenny Barnes 26th Jan '25 - 9:36am

    If Trump uses military force to annex Greenland, what happens to NATO?

  • I guess it is done. In theory all the other states would be obliged to use military force to defend Greenland from the USA.

    But that would be a complete and utter suicide mission.

    Ultimately if Trump wants Greenland is prepared to put up with the political fallout then he can just walk in and take it and for all the gnashing of teeth there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it.

    I think the solution will be some sort of deal with Denmark, where Greenland remains Danish but nothing happens on the island without the USA say-so.

  • Daniel Stylianou 26th Jan '25 - 10:26am

    @slamdac I disagree it would be a suicide mission. The reality is, several countries are looking and waiting for an opportunity to strike at the USA i.e., Russia, North Korea and, of late, China. If NATO ended up at war with the USA it’s all but guaranteed those countries would attack a weakened USA in their own theatres, and then you’ve got an overstretched USA. They may have nukes but they aren’t the only ones. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be mutually assured destruction, but it wouldn’t be a scenario where everyone else loses and the USA wins hands down.

    The other truth is that everything Trump says and does goes against his idea that he’s a president of “peace” and is just designed to antagonise and big up his ego.

  • By the way, @Tom, has Trump actually scrapped the The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act? I can’t see any reference to him having done so, and since they are laws passed by Congress, I would have expected it would require Congress to vote to scrap them. (I can well believe Trump would want to scrap them though)

  • @slamdac. The US already has the virtual right to do whatever it wants– at least in security terms. Under a 1917 treaty Denmark sold the Virgin Island to America in return for $25 million and US recognition of Danish sovereignty over Greenland. The US also secured the right to send troops to greenland if Denmark was every attacked or if Greenland was threatened by another power. The latter part of this treaty was used in WWII to justify US troops in Greenland. In 1950 it was extended to allow the US to put as many troops as it wanted in Greenland. The result was 600 shivering US air force troops in Thule. There is no agreement between the two countries are exploiting Greenland’s mineral resources, although there have been talks about talks. Trump wants the rare earth minerals as much as the security, if not more. Unfortunately, he faces steep opposition not only from the Danes but from the indigenous Inuits as well. They don’t want their settled lives of fishing and hunting disturbed by nmajor mining operations and all the infrastructure that goes with it.

  • Joseph Bourke 28th Jan '25 - 9:37pm

    Accordig to former Danish Minister for Greenland Tom Heim, under a 1917 treaty, the UK has the primary right to purchase Greenland in the event of its sale https://uk.news-pravda.com/world/2025/01/26/17199.html

  • Alex Macfie 30th Jan '25 - 8:30am

    “A politician doing exactly what he said he was going to do” doesn’t mean it’s good or will necessarily be popular in the long run. The Poll Tax was an election pledge fulfilled, and look how that turned off it.

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