US political nightmare: Trump returns

By Said Ali Batrouni *

Former president Donald J. Trump has protested the unfair treatment he faced (as the most persecuted person in the history of our country).

The 45th president also has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions 440 times, not to incriminate himself, during a deposition before New York attorney General Letitia James.

Trump read aloud a statement in which he called the probe “the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country“ and accused the democratic attorney general of “openly campaigning on a policy destroying me”, Trump’s attorney Fischetti said. 

According to the Federal investigator, they have removed 20 boxes of classified items from Trump’s Florida residence Mar-a-Lago; four sets of records marked “top secrets”, 3 marked as ”secret” and the rest marked as “confidential“.

But the questions arise; if the former president Trump has kept these top secrets and highly delicate US classified documents illegally for years, why did the FBI’s probe persecution start now?

Trump said that his decision to run in 2024 is already made and he is weighing when to announce his candidacy in an interview with New York magazine, and he asked his audience “you understand what that means?”

Trump’s question to his audiences started to get responds by the US attorney general Merrick Garland who personally approved the decision to seek the warrant to search Trump’s Florida residence and was asking to unseal it for “essential public interest”. The US attorney general also hints at prosecuting Trump over Capitol riot now, which is interesting given the fact that this happened almost two years ago.

But aside from the internal squabble of American politics over Trump candidacy for the 2024 presidency, if it happens, there could be a major shift on the world political stage, more importantly, a new global order could ultimately be in question, contrary to the current western tendency in order to isolate Russia.

President Trump has a major handicap when it comes to Russia. Former president Trump didn’t keep it as a secret that he is ready to reverse the course of American foreign policy views and to forge a new friendship with the Kremlin with a wide range of issues, from the Russian war in Syria to denying the accusation of US intelligence report that Russia paid the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan. In addition, on Ukrainian policy, Trump said Putin did “an amazing job of taking the mantle” when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.  And during 2016 Trump diverge from the common view of US foreign policy, suggesting that it was OK for Russia to keep the Ukrainian territory. But what frightened the GOP leaders most was that if Trump to be re-elected, he would first seek to lift the sanctions against Russia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was ready to lift sanctions on Russia days before his inauguration, when he said “if you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things”. Putin’s diplomacy has tried in vain to persuade European countries and the US to end the damaging sanctions on the Russian economy. Even further frightening for GOP leaders was the fact of Trump’s reluctant signing of the bipartisan bill that lawmakers passed in July 2017, imposing more sanctions against Russia. He reluctantly signed the bill at the end but he claimed that the bill contained an unconstitutional provisions. But what was more puzzling to American foreign policy makers that Trump has even defended the soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 by saying ”Soviet Union was right“ to invade in 1979 because “terrorists were going into Russia”. A warning of the danger to US foreign policy in the event of Trump’s re-election was expressed recently by Francis Fukuyama, one of the most influential US political scientists, in a new interview with Deutsche Welle. Fukuyama warned that Russia would benefit immediately if former president Donald Trump is re-elected. “If Donald Trump makes a comeback in 2024, that solves all of Russia’s problems because he is apparently committed to pulling the US out of NATO. Russia will have achieved its major objectives simply by this change in American politics“, Fukuyama said.

Last but not least, whether by fate or by design the persecution of former president Trump in order to discourage him from running to be re-elected for a second term or fear characterised by the slogan of Trump’s return is potentially a nightmare for the western United front against Russia and for the future of American foreign policy.

* Said Ali Batrouni is a journalist from Lebanon, one of the countries that have been facing the severest economic crisis in the last years. Batrouni has been working for the Los Angeles Times, Al Intishar newspaper among others and is currently Editor in Chief of the website polyprognoz.com.