For Trump and his White House, it never Ukraines but it pours
THE whistle-blower in the exploding Trump drama is the new “Deep Throat” as was the unravelling of the Watergate crisis.
Day by day, the pieces are falling into place, together resembling an image that looks eerily like Watergate.
When the Watergate scandal was revealed, no one would have thought it would be connected to the president of the US.
Republicans did not want to believe that (Richard) Nixon was involved in such a scandalous story.
Watergate generated an attitude of cynicism and mistrust that remains with us today.
Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal is a rerun of events that shook America from 1972-1974.
The re-enactment is ominous and staggering in its similarity in every aspect of events as they are now unfolding in Washington.
In the years since Nixon’s downfall, Watergate has provided the prevailing metaphor for scandal in the US capital.
Trump is lecturing his White House staff: “The press is the enemy”.
Trump is an accomplished strategist, with a deep understanding of today’s politics, but his hatred of the liberal press will eventually consume his presidency.
He is nursing his anger and resentments and is weaponising them with Machiavellian tactics.
The whistleblower’s intelligence script is akin to Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers.
The Ukraine debacle could be the “smoking gun” that spells Trump’s end.
Parallels with Watergate are becoming uncanny and full of foreboding for this unstable and beleaguered president.
Leaks infuriated Nixon just as they enrage Trump.
He resembles a volatile, unpredictable leader, obsessed by his enemies, real and imagined, and callous in his disrespect for the US constitution, which he sees as an impediment to his rightful exercise of untrammelled power.
Trump’s bravado, hubris and battery of lies, will prove to be his undoing.
His errors and outright fabrications are legion.
Like Nixon, Trump is radically escalating his vicious campaign to discredit the multiple institutions that are investigating him.
Trump is willing to lie, commit perjury, prepared to obfuscate and to conceal for the purpose of grimly holding on to power like his Russian friend, (Vladimir) Putin.
He is acutely aware that if he loses or is forced to abdicate, prison awaits him. The litany of serious allegations against him since his election now have the capacity to break through the partisan firewall that has thus far insulated him.
Should he escape or evade impeachment, the US will be treading on perilous ground.
Assuming he wins the elections in 2020, chaos will become the order of the day.
If he loses and refuses to concede defeat and vacate the White House, anarchy will envelop America.
Be afraid, very afraid.
FAROUK ARAIE | Benoni