Donald Trump under siege from all quarters

“The most dangerous man in the world” has received reversals which could encourage fearful Republican politicians and officials to distance themselves from him. A man always on the offensive, Donald Trump has had to shift to the defensive after a series of stunning defeats.

On the domestic front, Covid-19 has delivered a painful defeat for his dismissal of the virus, refusal to adopt containment through lockdown, social distancing, and masking and his call on business to reopen. The US has had 2.3 million coronavirus cases and more than 121,400 deaths since the virus appeared in February. More than 20 states report increased infection rates and the US Centre for Disease Control predicts another 130,000 deaths by US independence day on July 4th.

Having bragged that a million tickets had been issued to his first campaign rally in 110 days, one-third of the 19,000 seats in the centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were empty and a plan for him to address a spill-over crowd was scrapped. Although he railed against Covid-19 and called for slowing of testing to reduce the count of infections, six of his own election staff tested positive and were quarantined as cases spiked in Tulsa and the state. Since social distancing and masks were not on the menu hundreds could test positive for Covid-19 over the next two weeks.

Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has been gaining in opinion polls. The latest conducted by pro-Trump Fox news showed Biden with 50 per cent to his 38 per cent.

The swelling mass movement for Justice for Black and Brown minority members has shaken to the core Trump and his racist supporters as it is the most serious challenge mounted to the white-dominated status quo in recent years.  White policemen are being prosecuted for killing Black men, the precarious lives of Black and Brown men, women and children are being revealed, and millions of whites have joined people of colour in protests in small towns and cities as well as in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major mega-cities in the south as well as the north.  

Trump’s most serious politico-legal defeat was delivered by the US Supreme Court which has blocked Trump’s policy of ending legal protection for 700,000 immigrants dubbed “dreamers” who entered the US as children, have grown up there and made lives for themselves, but are still branded as “undocumented” and denied a path to citizenship. Although Trump has appointed two conservative judges to the court, five of the nine ruled that the attempt to end the programme violated federal law and were “arbitrary and capricious.”

The most surprising politico-legal defeat was a second Court ruling that extended protection to gay and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace. This decision shocked Trump because the majority opinion was written by Neil Gorsuch, a conservative appointed by Trump who expected him to exclude such people from protection under existing civil rights legislation.

At the same time the Court rejected a call from gun rights groups to consider expanding rights to buy, own, and carry weapons and Trump’s request to deny California the right to provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants threatened with deportation.

These Court cases are important to Trump’s conservative, white evangelical Christian base which has learnt he cannot deliver their key demands. He responded in a tweet, asking, “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”

Two new tell-alls about Trump books are set to be released in coming days and weeks. The first by former national security adviser John Bolton, “The Room Where It Happened,” reveals that Trump appealed for help in his election campaign not only from Ukraine but also from China which was asked to buy US agricultural produce from states where farmers’ export incomes had fallen.

This would violate US federal law.

Having spent 17 months in the White House conservative Bolton argues that Trump is, “stunningly uninformed,” “erratic” and “unfit for office.”

The administration has attempted to halt the publication of the book, claiming Bolton has been including “classified” information which would harm US national security. It has, however, already been widely distributed, reviewed, and the main contents disseminated. The Washington Post cited expert Theodore J. Boustros Jr. who said the Supreme Court has never prevented publication of a  work “on matters of public importance.”

Trump’s niece, Mary Trump has defied her uncle who boasts of “family unity” by writing an expose entitled, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” Although not due for release until next month, the damning information in the book has, like the contents of the Bolton book, been widely published in the press.

Daring to cross Trump, Manhattan’s chief attorney Geoffrey Berman initially denied he was resigning after US Attorney General William Barr, a Trump acolyte, said he had nominated his replacement. Trump responded by using his power to dismiss Berman who only agreed to go after it was agreed to appoint his deputy who would continue his work. Berman led the prosecution of a number of Trump’s associates for lying to Congress and election campaign fraud. He was also investigating Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s current personal lawyer.     

Since Trump’s anti-media campaign has led to violence against journalists, particularly those covering recent anti-racist events, Germany, Australia and Turkey (which, ironically, has imprisoned hundreds of journalists and shut down media critical of the government) have condemned the lack of US protection for journalists. Reporters Without  Borders spokeswoman Pauline Adès-Mével said the frequency and the intensity of such attacks are “shocking.”  She pointed out that the US is “a democracy… and a symbol (but is) no longer a champion of press freedom, either at home or abroad.”

On the foreign front, Trump’s standing has collapsed. Allies, Britain, Germany and France have refused to back a US unilateral drive to re-impose UN sanctions on Iran, lifted after Tehran signed the 2015 deal for dismantling 90 per cent of its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

As “Black Lives Matter” protests continued in the US, the United Nations Human Rights Council commissioned a report on global discrimination against Black people after adopting a resolution mentioning racism in the US, which has been fanned by Trump.

Finally, 47 global human rights experts have condemned Israel’s planned annexation of illegal West Bank colonies and the Jordan Valley greenlighted in Trump’s peace plan — the “Deal of the Century” — which has been rejected by the Palestinians and Arab and European governments.