Trump's Imperialism

A month or so ago I remember thinking that, yes, Donald Trump will turn America into Russia with an oligarchic government, a dictator-like leader, and KGB-like raids by ICE, but at least he doesn't have any imperialist ambitions. There wouldn't, I was sure, be any invasion of Canada or Mexico like Putin's war to regain Ukraine as part of the former USSR and make him a national hero.

Then just a few weeks ago, before his inauguration even, Trump started talking about Greenland, Panama and  Canada.

Greenland is fairly safe. NATO would back up Denmark if Trump tried anything there. Denmark should kick the American military base off Greenland or, if the US withdraws from NATO, have NATO take it over.

Canada is safe from a military invasion, at least for now. It will be interesting to see what happens with the threatened tariffs and other undefined economic pressures. But when the American west runs out of water due to mismanagement of ground water aquifers exacerbated by global heating, Canada will be asked to share our water by diverting rivers south. And if we don't comply to their satisfaction I wouldn't rule out tanks rolling across what we used to brag about being the longest undefended border in the world. When Trump was building his Mexican wall during his first term I recall suggesting that Canada should be building a wall on our southern border too.

No, it's Panama that I think is the most vulnerable. Once Trump has all his loyal people in place in authority over the military he could just decide to take over the canal and who would stop him. American ships would be given preference in queues and charged lower fees but if he put Republicans in charge of running it there would be chaos and delays far worse than anything he imagines there is now. 

President William McKinley is Donald's latest hero. He was the 25th president, serving from 1897 until 1901. One reason for Trump's obsession with McKinley was his fondness for tariffs to protect American industry. Another possible reason is that it was during McKinley's presidency that America annexed Hawaii and, as a result of victory in the Spanish-American War, added Guam, the Phillipines and Puerto Rico to American territory. To honor his hero, Trump is renaming Mt. Denali (the highest peak in North America) back to Mt. McKinley, reversing the name change made in 2015 by President Obama (which the State of Alaska had been asking for since 1975).

Donald Trump should take to heart William McKinley's most famous quote: 

We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency.

Donald should also keep in mind why McKinley's presidency ended in 1901 - he died from an assassins bullet.

Sources

"America has an imperialist presidency" - the Economist, 25 January 2025 

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/01/23/america-has-an-imperial-presidency

Pardon Me!

 

There have been a lot of controversial presidential pardons in the last few weeks and days.

It began on December 1, 2024, with President Joe Biden issuing preemptive pardons for his son Hunter. Hunter Biden had been convicted and was awaiting sentencing on three charges - tax evasion, lying on a gun acquisition form and owning a gun while using illicit drugs.

President Biden claimed that Hunter was “singled out” for prosecution only because his last name is Biden. This particular charge is rarely made unless the gun in question has been used in committing a crime such as armed robbery. Hunter owned the gun for about a week in October 2018 before his girlfriend found it and got rid of it, concerned about possible suicide. The gun was never fired and I don’t believe was ever loaded while in Hunter’s possession.

So, should he be treated like every other American and never charged? Or should every American gun owner that ever got drunk on a Saturday night also be charged and face up to 25 years in prison? In that case there would be a lot of unhappy Trump voters.

As for his tax evasion – he has paid up in full including penalties. Why was he charged while a prominent Republican like Roger Stone, who owed more than Hunter, was not?

The main criticism of Joe Biden here is that he had promised that he would not pardon Hunter. And had Harris won the election I’m sure he would have stuck to that, confident that the sentencing would be fair and that would be the end of it. But with Trump in the White House, he had no such confidence, so just to be safe he extended the pardon to cover anything else the Republicans might accuse him of.

Another criticisms of Hunter’s pardon was that it set a precedent for Trump to pardon the January 6 rioters. But Trump had been promising this for some time already and hardly needed an excuse. Only a fool continues to play by the old rules when your opponent no longer does.

Then on his last day of office, President Biden offered broad preemptive pardons to a large number of people who have not been charged with any crimes but who were on, or suspected of being on, a list of Trump’s enemies whom he had sworn to exact revenge. The list included Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley, and members of the January 6 House Committee. It also included members of Biden’s family - his brother James Biden and his wife, his sister Valerie and her husband, and his brother Francis.

This was an extraordinary use of the presidential pardon, issuing blanket pardons for people who have not yet been charged. Biden himself said that "The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offence”. Liz Cheney’s response to the news of the pardon: “We are not being pardoned for breaking the law but for upholding it”.

Were these pardons necessary? One would hope not. But experience has shown that Trump’s assurances, and that of Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Pam Bondi, that the Justice Department under the Trump administration would be “fair, equal and impartial”, cannot be trusted.

I was kind of hoping that Cheney would decline her pardon – I’d love to watch her eviscerate the Republican prosecutors.

This brings us to Trump’s pardons.

President Trump keeps referring to his strong mandate to carry out his agenda. But just how many Americans support the pardon of the people who invaded the Capital Building, battling police and damaging the building? Not a majority of Americans. A recent poll found 73% of American adults, including 55% of Republicans, oppose pardons for those convicted of assaulting Capitol Police officers. At first he was only going to pardon the non-violent rioters but backlash to Vance’s assertion of this changed the tune to nearly all.

Trump’s act of pardoning the January 6 rioters sends several messages:

·         He doesn’t care about the opinion of the American people, only that of his base

·         Trump admits that they were following his wishes (if not orders) in the attack, calling them “patriots” (so much for the story they were planted FBI agents)

·         He insulted the police officers who risked their lives to protect the Capital and the Senators and Congressmen inside it, and relinquishes any notion that MAGA is the party of law and order

·         He gets 1,500 more violent unofficial soldiers to carry out his hinted wishes

·         He assures his followers that if they commit crimes on his behalf that they will not face consequences.

Possibly the most controversial pardon (so far) was the full and unconditional pardon by President Trump to Ross Ulbricht, founder of the criminal drug marketplace called The Silk Road. In a phone call to Ulbricht’s mother Trump told her that this was repayment to “the Libertarian Movement which supported me so strongly”. As long as you vote for Trump and give him enough money, is there any crime that he wouldn’t overlook?

In contrast, the last minute (literally, the inauguration process had already started) commute by Joe Biden of Native American Rights activist Leonard Peltier should not be controversial and is long overdue. Peltier was convicted nearly 50 years ago of murdering two FBI agents with no evidence, lying witnesses, and hidden evidence that would have exonerated him. The prosecutor has since admitted the conviction was a mistake and personally asked Biden for clemency. Peltier, now 80 and in declining health, will serve the rest of his life sentence in home confinement.

This is what presidential pardons are for.

Sources

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/new-poll-republicans-oppose-jan-6-pardons/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/biden-last-minute-pardons-1.7435857

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/21/ross-ulbricht-silk-road-trump-pardon

https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-48-hours-after-the

Quotes from T’s inauguration speech January 20, 2025

 

Man, oh man – where to start.

There were enough egregious lies in his inauguration speech yesterday, and egregious acts in his first half day of office to write about for a month. I’ll pick out two things from the speech and will try to pick up on a few others such as tariffs, Federal disaster aid and the LA fire, inflation, and political corruption later, time and Trump permitting.

First the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

The vicious, violent and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.

Under my leadership, we will restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the Constitution and the rule of law.

This was just a quick mention near the beginning of the speech, and picked up again near the end, but it’s a mantra that the MAGA Trumpians have been expounding for years. He’s trying to imply that the many charges against Trump, including the two impeachments, were “witch hunts” with no basis in law. This completely ignores the fact that no other presidential candidate or sitting president has committed the number or types of crimes that Donald has, and that the DOJ has bent over backwards to accommodate him. The other high-profile Republicans who have been charged, and mostly convicted, were also guilty of serious crimes and deserved everything they got. I will expound on these another time for those aren’t convinced.

The second part of this short sentence is Trump’s promise that such weaponization has ended and that his government would never do such a vile thing as charge an opposition politician with a crime. But that is exactly what he has been promising to his followers “I will be your retribution”. Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, even has a long list of names of Trump’s enemies that he intends to go after, whose only crime is opposition, or insufficient loyalty, to Trump. And it doesn’t matter if an honest judge exonerates them, the harassment and the monetary cost of the charges and court case will be devastating. And if that’s not enough to satisfy Trump he can always sic his informal “army” on them (remember Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss?). And Trump just let another 1,500 of them out of prison. So, will Trump keep his promise not to weaponize the DOJ? I predict that we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Secondly, freedom of speech. Here is what Trump said near the end of his speech.

After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents. Something I know something about. We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again.

Two things here – what Trump means when he complains about government censorship and restriction is that he hasn’t been able to lie with complete impunity. People have been (gasp!) fact-checking and correcting a few of his many lies. That, he says, must stop!

Trump’s version of free speech is to attack anyone in the media who criticizes him. That’s what the FBI and DOJ are for, after all. Refer back to point #1.

One more quick item – inflation.

Next, I will direct all members of my cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices. The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices. 

I was pleased to see that he hasn’t forgotten his election promise to bring down inflation on day one. I expected he would just drop it and hope his followers forgot all about it. Never mind the lies about the cause of inflation or about how bad it is. Trump’s two major promises – tariffs and deportation – if allowed to be carried out to the extent that he has promised – would lead to double digit inflation and possibly recession as well, something that even his most die-hard followers would notice. Anyway, I wish him luck with that.

You can read his entire speech here (if for some strange reason you want to) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-trump-inauguration-speech-2025/    

Introduction

 What qualifications does a 70 year old man in Saskatchewan, Canada, have to write a blog about American politics? Well, maybe a few.

First, I have followed American politics for the last 8 years since before the 2016 presidential election. I have my wife to thank for getting me interested. She comes from a family of Albertans who take their religion and politics seriously. The television in their Alberta farm home plays Fox News 24/7; they are fans of Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump in America, and support whichever party is the farthest Right provincially. My wife binge-watches Fox videos on You-Tube and is a fan of Jordan Peterson, etc. So in self-defense I subscribed to a few newspapers and substacks and watch a few videos:

• The Washington Post - Jennifer Rubin was a favorite writer until her recent retirement from WaPo
• The New York Times
• The Guardian - the best independent news source I have found
• The Economist - for a few years, now unsubscribed
• Heather Cox Richardson - a wonderful historian of American politics
• Thom Hartmann - if you want to know what's happening in America, read his books
• Robert Reich Koffee Klatch - weekly half-hour video
• Mary Trump & Nerd Avengers - twice weekly one-hour video

Second, living in small town rural Saskatchewan, Canada, I have a clearer perspective on things American than I might have if I lived in the USA. An example I like to give is that if Bush Jr really wanted to know if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, he could have asked a Canadian. Almost any of us could have told him that no, Iraq did NOT have any WMD. But Bush needed an excuse for a war so he didn't ask.

The third qualification is that I'm a Christian. So while most Christians of my acquaintance feel they have to support the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party (or equivalent provincially) in Canada, I'm a rare Christian socialist and will bring that viewpoint to the blog. I have two brothers who are at opposite ends of the political spectrum and I manage to get along with both.

I'm hoping this blog will provide an opportunity for me to share some of the knowledge that I've accumulated over the last 8 years. I don't expect it will change anyone's mind but might perhaps introduce them to another viewpoint.

Day 1 of Trump 2

Today is Donald Trump's second inauguration as president of the United States of America.

Will today mark the beginning of a new era of a Christian nation in the USA as many hope, or the end of a nearly 250 year experiment in democracy as many others fear? This is one of a number of questions that I plan to explore over the next few years.

Ironically today is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Here is a quote from King that seems relevant today.

"... I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail; April 16, 1963