Trump's back and is already shaking and shocking America, the world

American presidents are usually unusual men, some more unusual than others. Among the most unusual is Donald John Trump, one of two men to recapture the presidency after losing it. The other was Grover Cleveland who lost it in 1888 only to return in 1892. Although Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt tried and failed to regain the presidency in 1912, he remained a source of inspiration.

Trump, like Teddy, displayed admirable campaign toughness, in pain. When he was shot in 1912 while campaigning in Wisconsin, Teddy insisted on finishing his speech and compared himself to a ‘bull moose’, thereby giving rise to the ‘Bull Moose’ party which lost to Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson. When he was shot while campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2024, Trump raised his fist and shouted ‘fight, fight, fight’ and went on to recapture the presidency.

Trump was unique in other ways. The first convict ever to be elected, he symbolised rejection of modern socio-cultural trends and vowed to shake revered institutions. Like Teddy, he has both imperialistic impulses and desires to be peacemaker. He wants to retake Panama, which Teddy had snatched from Colombia in order to build the canal, to grab Greenland from Denmark, and to turn Canada into a state within the United States. Officials in Panama, Denmark, and Canada were not amused but Trump does not care.

He also wants to end the Joe Biden-associated war between Russia and Ukraine and possibly receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Desiring to force both Russia and Ukraine to “cut a deal” on the war, he sent General Keith Kellogg to Kiev and Moscow to handle the peace mission. Essentially, the strategy is to persuade Ukraine’s President Volodymir Zelenskyy to make territorial concessions while making Russia’s Vladimir Putin cooperate by threatening to impose additional tariffs on everything Russian

“Tariff” appears to be a favourite tool for stimulating the American economy and for pressuring other powers to bend to his will. He wants to drill American oil, “drill baby drill,” increase domestic production of everything, and reduce imports. Not worried that other countries might retaliate by imposing their own tariffs on anything American, he seemingly has scared them back to their geopolitical drawing boards.

Trump has made it clear that existing economic and security arrangements will have to change to reflect his perceptions of American interest. Subsequently, Britain and the European Union are not sure of what to do regarding their economies or NATO.

He gave the impression that he is a man of action who ignores laws, norms, and procedures to get what he wants. He issued decrees, cancellations, and policy changes  on his first day in office. He cancelled security protection for his former National Security Advisor John Bolton who had become a critic and withdrew from the World Health Organisation, WHO. He unilaterally decreed that the name Gulf of Mexico be changed to Gulf of America and sent American troops to the Mexican border to stop migrant ‘invasion’ through Mexico.

He also tried to abolish one of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments, the Fourteenth Amendment, which defines anyone born in the country as a citizen of the United States and the state in which one resides. The Amendment also prohibits governments from violating the rights of a citizen without due process of law. Trump’s attempt to violate the Bill of Rights of babies born in the United States was immediately challenged by various states and a federal judge in Seattle, John Coughenour, declared that Trump’s decree violated the US constitution; termed it a “blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Whether unconstitutional or not, Trump shakes the world. He intends to shock the United States and the world into compliance with his wishes. Although he is not the only ‘president’ to ignore laws or see himself as God’s new instrument on earth, he leads a powerful country that makes him powerful. Watch out for Trump imitators and flatters in other countries.