Divided America unravels in the qualm after the storm
The Star’s Daniel Dale, whose coverage and relentless ‘fact-checking’ of Trump’s campaign put him on centre stage of the U.S. election, tracks the turmoil that has unfolded since the stunning result
WASHINGTON— The morning after the election, Sadia Jalali, a therapist, was called in to speak at her children’s Islamic school in Houston. Emergency counselling. She told the kids about the checks and balances confronting an American president, about the difference between politicians’ campaign rhetoric and behaviour in office. They were unconvinced, and they were terrified.
One asked, she said, “Can he make us leave?” Another: “What country would we go to?” And then, afterward, from a wide-eyed little boy: “Can he kill us?”
Fear, hate, retaliation and uncertainty have marked the three chaotic days since the stunning election victory of Donald Trump, with the jubilation of his largerthan-expected, largely white legion of supporters mixed with the horror of many members of racial and religious minority groups.
Trump has not directly addressed a spate of hate incidents. He and his team, though, have already signalled that he is planning to backtrack on several major policy pledges, from scrapping Obamacare to forcing Mexico to pay for a giant wall on its border, adding to the feeling of a country unsettled.
What is obvious: Barack Obama’s policy legacy is in grave danger. What isn’t obvious: which of Trump’s promises he intends to even try to carry out.
“I don’t think anybody, except in his most inner circle, really knows. And even there, probably not,” said Joel Aberbach, political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Obama, Trump and defeated Hillary Clinton have all appealed for peace and unity. While there was no sign of major looming strife, much of the country appeared to be on an emotional edge, wounds raw.
Dozens of racist incidents have been reported in the hours since the Republican demagogue’s upset win. Though not all of them could be definitively tied to the election, many of them appeared to be connected.
Water fountains at a Jacksonville, Fla. high school were labelled with signs reading “Colored” and “Whites Only.” At least five Muslim women around the country said people had attempted to remove their hijabs. A Spanish-speaking New York Times reporter in Arizona was scolded to “speak English.” An Asian lawyer in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., was told by a man in military clothing, “I didn’t go to Vietnam to serve you. It’s a good thing you’ll all be gone soon.”
“I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics,” Democratic Nevada Sen. Harry Reid said in a statement.
At the same time, thousands of people opposed to Trump have taken to the streets of cities around the country to declare Trump “not my president.” Protesters in Los Angeles shut down a freeway. While mostly peaceful, some of the demonstrations have involved vandalism and violence against police officers; at least 28 people were arrested over a Portland protest on Thursday that police said involved some “anarchist types.”
There has been at least one incident of racial violence against a Trump supporter. A white man beaten by a group of black men after a minor car scrape in Chicago was taunted for being a Trump supporter, though they had no way of knowing he was.
Small groups in California and Oregon have talked about attempting to secede from the country, no-chance proposals that nonetheless speak to the level of dismay in liberal quarters.
“Today, we woke up feeling like strangers in a foreign land,” California’s Democratic legislative leaders said in a joint statement.
Trump has ignored demands from Reid and others to decry the bigotry being performed in his name. In responding to the protests, he appeared torn between his conspiratorial instincts and the new need to sound presidential.
“Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!” he wrote on Twitter on Thursday. Nine hours later, he wrote, “Love the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!”
The rapid divergence in tone, typical of his campaign, was matched by a series of immediate apparent flip-flops on policy.
Close Trump adviser Newt Gin- grich said Trump’s major promise to make Mexico pay for a border wall was a mere “campaign device.” Trump himself, after meeting with Obama, told the Wall Street Journal that he was willing to retain important parts of Obamacare.
“Either Obamacare will be amended, or repealed and replaced,” he said, a far cry from his promise of outright repeal.
James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was typical of policy experts this week: he had “absolutely no idea” what Trump is going to do.
“Trump’s statements on nuclear policy during the campaigns were frequently wrong, sometimes contradictory and almost invariably puerile — strongly suggesting he hasn’t thought about the subject much,” Acton said in an email.
Trump’s statements on other kinds of policy suggested the same.
Trump will have immense power when he takes office on Jan. 20. The president has broad discretion over foreign policy. He can eradicate many of Obama’s sweeping executive orders on immigration and the environment with a few strokes of a pen. His party controls both the House and the Senate.
But some of his promises are wildly implausible. Some, like term limits for members of Congress, are dead on arrival with Republican legislators. Most of the others may or may not represent his true preferences.
“It is basically a blank slate that needs to be filled in,” one Trump adviser told New York magazine.
On a single issue, the global economy, Trump has struck a consistent theme for decades. His anti-freetrade rhetoric appears heartfelt: he has long believed the economy is a zero-sum game, in which there are winners and losers, and that the United States is being ripped off.
On almost everything else, he has flip-flopped — sometimes over a long period, sometimes within the past year. When Obama announced the warming of relations with Cuba in 2015, Trump broke with Republican orthodoxy to say it was “fine.” By September of this year, he was talking like a traditional Republican hardliner, vowing to go back to the old way if the Castro regime didn’t accept new demands.
He promised to deny entry to all Muslims, then all foreign Muslims, then most foreign Muslims with some exceptions, then said he’d merely ban immigration from terror-prone regions, while not retracting the Muslim ban.
Al Arabiya reported Thursday that aides had quietly advised Middle Eastern embassies to “ignore Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.”