I must confess from the onset that I have never been a fan of the just elected President of the United States of America, Donald Trump. As a matter of fact, I had never liked him, especially in his first coming (2017-2021) as President of the US. I wouldn’t know exactly why I had such a strong dislikeness to him, but I figure out that his campaign messages and the manner in which he carried out the campaigns contributed to such feeling in me. I’m referring to his anti-islamic and anti-African sentiments, or was it vitriolic attacks.
In deed, the Africanness in me, besides my strong belief in the goodness of Islamic religion, just like Christianity, rose in me to look at him not only with suspicious eye, but pent-up hatred, if I may be excused to use such a strong word.
Remember his famous vow, veiled in some kind of grammar, to send Muslims out of America or to make living in that country a hell for Muslims? Remember his arrogant vow to erect wall around the country to control the influx of Africans into the country, and similar other threats he came to power with, in his first coming? As a matter of fact, no true African would fancy the arrogance with which he smocked himself into power in the first term, the first term that was terminated, ironically, by the same Americans he vowed to protect, or appropriately, to turn to another terrorists in the world (the ones he said he would make to be superior to other species of God’s creations).
To cut the long story short, I am beginning to like Trump for directly the same reasons that I disliked him; because he appears to have reversed himself or his policies that were considered in sane world, as crazy.
He actually courted and romanced Muslims during his campaigns for his return to the Whitehouse. Having returned, with the 80 percent support from the Muslims in that country, it’s left to be seen whether he would maintain the tempo of love and understanding he sought to create between him and them.
One of his opposite policy directions is the issue of war. He had declared this time: “I’m going to stop wars.”
Against the background of his arrogance on the superiority of America and Americans, concerning wars in Islamic countries, especially the Middle East and Ukraine, Trump obviously simmered down this time by saying: “…they said, ‘he will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”
In the run-up to the election, Trump repeatedly said he would bring Israel’s war on Gaza to an immediate end, claiming that he could convince Russia and Ukraine to end their war in one day.
Trump’s latest comment reiterating his commitment to ensuring immediate peace in the Middle East is in line with his anti-war position, expressed in an April interview where he said: “get it over with and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people.”
It must be acknowledged that it was under Trump’s presidency that the Arab-Israeli normalisation process started as part of the Abraham Accords through bilateral agreements that Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020.
In a break with official US policy for decades, the Trump administration also recognised Jerusalem as capital of Israel and shifted the US embassy from Tel Aviv, a move that drew global protest.
On legal’ immigrants, Trump, this time, did not say he would build a wall to stop them, but that they are welcome. His campaign repeatedly demonised migrants, both regular and irregular, in the run-up to the November 5 election. But the victory speech by the president-elect demonstrated a shift from his earlier blanket opposition to immigration.
He said: “we’re going to have to let people come into our country. We want people to come back in, but… they have to come in legally,” even though he has the plan of reintroducing his first-term policy of curbing illegal border crossings.
“We’re going to have to seal up those borders… We’re going to fix our borders,” he said.
According to an estimate by the US Department of Homeland Security, as many as 11 million irregular migrants lived in the US as of January 2022.
The most refreshing part of Trump’s return to power is his open acknowledgment of the fact that his campaign received support from “all corners” of society, including unionised workers, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.
He emphasized: “we had everybody and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment, uniting citizens of all backgrounds around a common core of common sense… we’re the party of common sense.”
Of course, Trump, like any other political giants in the so-called Democratic setting, has his shortcomings, but his policy change in the direction that can be said to be favourable to Africa and Muslims has endeered him to me as a person, and I’m sure, to many others.
