Midterm loathing for ‘Trumpspeak’

WHEN asked about the tone of his speeches, US president Donald Trump gave a revealingly inconsistent answer.

He admitted that at times his rhetoric might have been extreme, but “I had no choice”.

Obviously, the choice of words in politics is crucial and Trump has been consistently accused for his “incendiary” rhetoric, of which there are multitudinous examples.

In Montana just three days before the vote, he commented bizarrely: “I noticed all that beautiful barbed wire going up today.”

He was alluding to the razor wire, part of the supposedly “necessary preparations” for the approaching “caravan”, hundreds of kilometres to the South of the Rio Grande, the Mexican border. Most Americans prefer picket fences.

The unstated term in Trump’s speech was that for the illegal immigrants who crossed into the US by water, and termed ironically “wetbacks” from as far back as 1961.

Will Trump ignore history and build the American equivalent of the Great Wall of China?

The bigger picture of the midterm elections result is a setback for Trump, with defeat in the House of Representatives, thus a vindication of the “checks and balances” of the American constitution.

Furthermore, there are more women representatives than ever before.