Trump, falling ni love with power

With everything said about the Trump and Putin summit in Helsinki this week, I still feel the need to make a few notes.

Putting the TV on the morning after the 2016 election, watching CNN anchors Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota's smile-less faces announcing the outcome, I felt like looking at the planes crashing into World Trade Center 2001. Yet, I had no idea…

Nor had anyone. The House of Cards / Game of Thrones or whatever you would like to call the 1,5 years passing has been as frightening as it has been fascinating. And the astonished question always coming up is What is he doing and why? What does Donald Trump want? That question is highly relevant this Mid-July week.

I am reading two Swedish analysts and watching one American. More frightening than fascinating.

Frida Stranne, researcher at an university branch in Halmstad, Sweden, focusing at the US, sums the events of the last months up. The fact that Trump is pulling out of international agreements and criticising Nato and the EU is his way of undermining the credibility and future for fundamental institutions he doesn’t believe in. And Stranne means the quarrel with Trump’s G7 colleagues and the support for Brexit are examples of the same stance.

She goes far, suggesting Donald Trump wants to create a different world order. From that perspective it makes sense meeting Putin making him feel big and downplaying Crimea and the meddling in the US election. In the world Trump wants, Stranne says, countries manage by themselves and accepts regional super powers.

Mike Winnerstig, security analyst at FOI, the Swedish defense research institute, agrees that Donald Trump is pursuing a world order where the one who is strong is also right, rather than collaborations between countries and organisations on equal grounds.

As long as the Congress and Senate feel the need to hold on to what we know as the fundaments for governing, we will recognise the political landscape. But, if congressmen/women and senators starts getting exchanged for people aiming Trump’s world order, researcher Frida Stranne’s scenario might be real. 

It has actually already started, as the National Security Adviser HR McMaster was replaced with John Bolton, an open UN critic. And if the Secretary of Defense James Mattis who underscores the avail of alliances would be fired and replaced with an isolationist, that would be a big step towards a Trump world order, according to Mike Winnerstig, FOI.

To me this is worrying information. But what made me really scared was listening to Tony Schwartz interviewed on CNN the other day. Tony Schwartz is a journalist and writer, co-writer of Donald Trump’s book The Art of the Deal. Basically Tony Schwartz knows Donald Trump’s brain in and out. 

Schwartz predicted Donald Trump wouldn't be long at the job as the President. That he was in it for the win but would be bored with the slow pace of democracy. But I was wrong he says. “What I didn’t predict was that he would fall in love with the power”.

And that’s where we are at now. Donald Trump, the boy brought up by a father who used the expression “a killer” for the personality he wanted from his son and who in addition was taught to never admit any kind of wrong doings, is the President of the USA. A man obsessed by week or strong. Who has fallen in love with power. 

No wonder he also falls in love with similar men. Like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. And wants to be chums with them. He understands them. There is no way he can relate to Justin Trudeau and Emanuel Macron. Not to mention women.

So, what we saw in Helsinki was a little boy in a huge man’s body wanting to be one in the gang of killers, creating a new world order. A world were the strong is right. Something to reflect upon on a Sunday in July.

The spider in the room

During the presidential election I spent three days with CNN and it’s anchors. After the shock of the result, the tears and the feeling sick to my stomach, I had to find a balance to how much of my time I would contaminate with this shit. I landed on half an hour a day.

- I am surprised you are, my very engaged and also sick to her stomach Seattle-friend Terry said, If I were you I think I would just stick my head in the sand. I responded I couldn’t do that. Although I am not in the U.S. we are still in this together. Donald Trump is going to be the most powerful person in the world and it will effect all of us.

So, at 7 PM every evening I am watching Wolf Blitz going through the goings on of the day with his experts and panels. It’s nothing but upsetting. Every day the 45th president to be has spoken, twittered or acted in some way that leaves everyone speechless in their articulate way. I have not been familiar with the word unprecedented before. Since the election it’s become a household expression.

At the start I remember being a little bit comforted by the Pentagon reassuring that the every day briefing the president elect would start geting right away would humble him, make him understand the profound gravity of his task to come, and rise to the occasion. The fact that he has chosen to ignore those enlightening and educational briefings is… unprecedented. And terrifying. And the fact that he and his people in so many ways has violated the American tradition of The Peaceful Transition of Power following a democratic election is disrespectful not only to the current government but to the American people and the history of the United States.  

The other week, after the tweets to/about Vladimir Putin, I heard a republican senator refer to president Obama as Mr Obama. Donald Trump and his alike have deposed the president. Unprecedented.

I told my friend Eva about my daily CNN routine. And thinking out loud I was saying I’m not really sure why it feels good. Why I feel the need for it. And she said, don’t you think it’s like the spider in the room? The spider in the room? Yes, you know there is a spider in the room and you feel the need to keep your eye on it to not freak out.

That’s exactly what it is! Donald Trump is a giant black spider crawling all over the room and I need to follow his daily where a bouts to keep as much track of him as I possibly can. It won’t make me feel safe, but at least I am doing what I can to save myself from being startled by his unpredictable moves.

Less than two weeks away from the inauguration I am realizing my spider watch won’t stop there. It has only started. I will have to continue my daily procedure as long as this ego stuffed ignorant baby who was taught by his father to be a killer never being wrong about anything, has the power to destroy this world in every thinkable way in the name of business. Amen.