If Donald Trump wins reelection as American president, expect amongst the first things that he will do is fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s foremost virus expert. Fauci has been a stick in Trump’s craw ever since the pandemic broke, speaking the truth and contradicting Trump’s never-ending lies, which has made him wildly popular with the American public and therefore impossible to sack until Trump wins his second and final term.
Accounting for underreporting, about 300,000 Americans have died in the pandemic according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. If masks and social distancing had been in place, about half the number would have perished. By the time an effective vaccine and/or therapeutics take control, it could well be the middle of next year.
Trump would continue sneering at masks and social distancing. About a million Americans could die by the middle of next year if he continues with his macho, reckless antics. MAGA is Trump’s slogan, which means Make America Great Again. If Trump wins, it will explicitly become MWAGA, which it has been all along, even if implicitly, during his first term and which stands for Make White America Great Again.
Trump’s Gestapo police (and I don’t use the word lightly) has been killing one innocent African-American every week. Expect that rate to double or even treble in Trump’s second term. Trump’s border guards will separate more and more babies from their parents and shove them into cages, where many will spend all their childhood. Trump has imposed some of the most crippling sanctions on any country in history, those on Iran.
Yet Iran defies and survives. Trump just about attacked Iran in his first term. This time, egged on by Israel and Saudi Arabia, he will go the distance. A pitiless war will ensue in the Middle East. Iran is no Iraq or Afghanistan. Even they have given America a licking. Iran will give America such a hiding that it will never forget. If climate change is as deleterious as many people advocate, expect the world to say goodbye to itself because a second Trump term would prove disastrous for the planet.
Trump has spurned science during the pandemic just as he has mocked at global warming. If he wins, he will feel vindicated by his stance on climate change. The world has stood aghast during his first term as he has continually mocked climate change. Not many world leaders really want to do anything effective against climate change, even though they might pay lip service to it.
They have taken Trump’s inaction against climate change as an excuse for themselves not to do anything either. Trump’s second term and continuing inaction will give them more of an excuse. Trump has coddled dictators like Putin, Kim, and Xi and spurned his democratic western allies. That is because Trump is a dictator himself.
The chasm between Europe and America will continue to grow. Trump will ignore his western allies on Iran and climate change. They will be left wringing their hands in despair as the 800-pound gorilla of the world would keep behaving crazily. America has been falling off a cliff since the Soviet Union collapsed and there was no one left to counter-balance its depredations. The fall accelerated after 9/11. Now the fall will become a tumble. Instead of making America great again, a second Trump term could cause it to self-implode.
As Americans go to the polls, they must consider the ill-effects of putting Trump in the White House again. Are there any positives to come out of Trump’s second term? Yes, the economy will rebound faster under him than under Joe Biden. Biden will be very careful about reopening the economy. Death rates from the pandemic will matter more to him than economic growth rates or stock market surges.
For Trump, it would be the exact opposite. He will force the economy to open up before it is ready to do so. Growth and the stock market will jump, but at the cost of many American lives. But Trump doesn’t care much about American lives as he’s already demonstrated by his handling of the pandemic. Biden seems a good, decent man, even if he seems hobbled by the wokes in his party who will force him to make radical leftist decisions.
America is a centre-right country for the most part, and decisions coming from the left wing may not go down well with the populace. Biden also seems sure to upend whatever Trump has done. Trump has made America come close to its allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, whom Obama had spurned for Iran. Expect Biden to do the same as what Obama did. America might be left with no real friends in the Middle East under Biden. The Middle East always seems a dangerous place at best. Why make it more so?
(The writer is an expert on energy and contributes regularly to publications in India and overseas)