with Nduka Nwosu
e-mail: ndukaku.nwoswu@thisdaylive.com
The Donald Trump tsunami that swept the Hillary Clinton/Obama coalition into the garbage bin of history, making many in the Clinton camp wonder what happened is gradually abating. Not even this reporter, the CNN team and many other networks including the conservative leaning Fox News, gave Trump much hope. We all made it look like the election was wrapped in Clinton’s favour, that we had an answer to the magic numbers from the battleground states that turned the night red for Clinton and left the blues weeping and moaning.
Matt Bai, the columnist, like the Saturday Night Live comedians, made a mockery of Trump. Bai in one of his columns before the election had the headline: “The Trump Show is Ending, Sad!,” and was pleasantly surprised just like the lead artist himself, that this little side project, sandwiched between seasons of “The Apprentice” and premised on giving away a bunch of hats, has blown up into “a cultural phenomenon.” Now we know whose cultural phenomenon that popped up the Basket of Deplorables is bound for the White House. What a Comedy of Errors! Well it just so happens that success is a winner takes all.
We were all stunned but now that the rain is over, the odds that robbed Clinton the election could only be justified as the karmic debt from the so called Clinton conspiracy theories.
For millions of people across the globe, the Trump victory was an anti-climax which sounded like the coming of Armageddon. How be it?
This man with so many baggages and insults, the white supremacist and racist? Unfortunately the people have spoken. Both Russia, Juan Assange and his WikiLeaks team must be having their last laugh against this woman, apologies to Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, who should be in Bill Clinton’s kitchen attending to her husband’s needs, but instead was trudging in men’s territory where she could afford to breathe down heavily on strongmen like Putin, just to do the bidding of her boyfriend Barack Obama.
Well it was clear when the FBI boss James Comey, against what the ethics of his job permitted at such an auspicious moment, told a stunned Republican dominated Senate Judiciary Committee that he had finally caught the real culprit-Hillary Clinton! We were all sad and despondent and believed this was the real cliffhanger finale. Deep at the bottom of my soul, I believed there was hope no matter the Republican conspiracy to put down the prediction of pollsters nationwide that gave it to Clinton by over 100 electoral votes four weeks to the election.
The return of Trump was foretold as pollsters told him what to do and where to go and he had so much energy to execute what needed to be done. He wined and dined with the Evangelicals and people like me asked if these evangelicals were real Christians. I was not ready to give it to Trump a fellow Presbyterian. How can Donald Trump claim to be a Presbyterian given all that we knew about him? Well, the mind of God is not that of man. After the elections the social media was awash with the transgressions of Barack Obama, a black man who found himself at the White House and became more white than black. And here was Clinton ready to inherit those transgressions along with her well documented conspiracies.
You probably would want to know why many believed President Obama is a Muslim. Did he really ask military chaplains to stop using the name of Jesus during funerals? Is there anything wrong discriminating against homosexuals by organisations driven by Christian companies? That is simply wrong just as God allowed a Trump presidency there should be everything wrong discriminating against gay people. In matters of sexual indiscretion, Christians who have what it takes to intimidate their less fortunate mortals may like homosexuals, have been included in God’s black book of sinners. Who knows if Trump is one such Christian for, considering his ‘indiscretions,’ a camel may walk through the eye of a needle into heaven.
Like the late Ojo Maduekwe argued with this reporter late 2014 in DC, what do you make of a Senate President who is marrying his grand-daughter with uncountable mistresses on the tow while spearheading the law on how to deal with sinful acts? As Pope Francis said, it is wrong to judge. Instead accommodate and pray for the forgiveness of the sinful. You never can say who will pass the needle test of going to heaven beyond the Christian grace.
Having said this, Obama’s bullying of Africans to accept gay people was as if that was the high point of his Presidency. Why the unusual fraternisation? Was there more to it than that? Even Christians back home could not understand why Obama’s denunciation of Boko Haram was not backed with the American firepower whereas in Israel killing Palestinians with American arms was very normal. Then he deployed his boy Axelrod to employ the type of propaganda that turned Goodluck Jonathan into a sissy during his last days in office, a frightened duck unwilling to use state machinery or Obasanjo’s do or die tactics to return himself to power, the first time this was happening to a Nigerian leader!
Was Obama quietly ensuring a fellow Muslim should take over the reins of power? Did he order that instead of expressing Happy Christmas, it should be Happy Holidays because the name Christ in Christmas offends people of other faith plus the very familiar use of ISIL rather than ISIS, avoiding the qualification of terrorism with the word Islamic? Internet propaganda?
Barack Hussein Obama may have been a Muslim at a point in his life and probably experienced some conversion that turned him into a Christian or for whatever reason but the point must be made that as far as Nigeria goes, the name Barack Obama may not ring a bell after he leaves office and many would be disappointed he did little for the black race.
Beyond this however, the message, not the social media conspiracy, won Trump the election. I Donald J Trump would dig deep to find out what the hell is going on regarding terrorism in America. I will send home 11 million immigrants mostly black and colored people who have stolen our menial and white collar jobs and return the jobs to the owners.
Trump aligned himself with the police and vilified the blacks who were nothing but criminally minded. To China and Mexico, the honeymoon was over. TPP and trade deals that allowed China to have an edge over the US were going to be reviewed. The American strongman in the mold of Ronald Reagan was in town. Those that Clinton described as “the Basket of Deplorables” flooded the Trump soapbox to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, the return of ‘Paradise Lost,’ whereas Clinton’s campaign was scarcely populated. The last show in Pennsylvania was the height of a musical fiesta and expectedly it was a jam session. Trump mocked the show. He did not need showmanship, the type Beyonce and Jay-Z produced with their vulgar language, which made Trump’s assault on women a farcical display of comparisons, he told his roaring audience.
Ironically, Clinton’s popular votes have exceeded Trump’s by over two million though Jill Stein’s recount of Wisconsin votes may not offer any ray of hope for an upturned Clinton victory at the Electoral College
Finally, Alan Lichtman who hinted with a double down prediction that the election was Trump’s to lose, has come up with another prediction – that Trump would be impeached ultimately. How? He may not have offered any details and his 13 keys may not be useful this time.
Except Lichtman is clairvoyant, one possible lead maybe in Trump’s desire to finish his tenure richer than he was. A typical Nigerian given one trillion dollars to spend on revamping public infrastructure will factor 10 percent of that sum into his pockets and the way Trump ran his election looked very much like he learnt the ropes from Nigerian politicians.
Ultimately, ‘The Basket of Deplorables’ may soon discover the so called ‘Paradise Regained,’ is an illusion of John Milton’s world.
When this realization dawns on them like Nigerians who asked for change and got something rougher than the prison yard, Trump may be down by the forlorn hopes of those he rode on their backs to become even more prosperous in his business deals at the White House.
