I gave my friends hats which said ‘Make America Hate Again'. That's what Trump is trying to do

Irish Times

11-06-2025

Back in my youth we were taught in Latin class about the problems faced by Rome because of neighbouring wetlands known as the Pontine Marshes. Although Romans did not fully understand how malaria infected humans, they connected the marshes with illness and death. Their combined engineering skills failed to drain the marshes and it was only in the 1920s that Mussolini made reclamation of the marshes his successful national prestige project.
I thought of the Pontine Marshes when
Donald Trump
promised American voters that he was going to 'drain the swamp' in Washington, DC. It was hard to see how he intended to effect a political revolution that could amount to draining the Washington swamp. The influence of powerful lobbyists and financial interests seemed to prosper between 2016 and 2020, when the
Republican Party
held the reins of power.
The image of draining a swamp was powerful. But what have we now in its place?
Trump
's second term has turned the Oval Office in the White House into a veritable political pigsty.
The Musk-Trump spat (which saw Musk asserting that Trump's name was to be found on the Epstein files and Trump countering with the claim that Musk had 'lost his mind') was remarkable. Trump is not now interested in an immediate reconciliation – presumably for fear of weakening his authority or appearing to reward those who inflict political damage on him.
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Meetings in the Oval Office political pigsty are obviously distasteful to his visitors. Apart from the ambush of
Volodymyr Zelenskiy
and the
absurd encounter with South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa
(in which Trump made grossly untrue allegations about persecution of Boer farmers and attempted to prove his lies with fake photographs), other world leaders have simply sat for 45 minutes hoping that no diplomatic damage would be done.
Russia's president
Vladimir Putin
and China's president
Xi Jinping
have not participated in the ludicrous charades to which others have agreed.
Trump's promise to end the
Ukraine war
within 24 hours now appears as some form of sick joke. But apart from childish antics (including threats to abandon any role in the dispute) the question remains as to what, if any, is America's preferred outcome of the Ukraine war. Trump has vaguely spoken about sanctions. To what end? Does he think that Ukraine will buckle under a combination of aerial and missile attacks and meatgrinder attritional warfare along its eastern frontline? What has happened to his '
deal
' to Americanise half of Ukraine's mineral and energy resources? Is there any rational strategy in play, or is Trump simply both incapable of stopping Putin's invasion and unwilling to admit his abject weakness?
The evidence suggests that Trump's sole political yardstick is the state of US stock markets. Markets don't like war. For a president who has majored on controlling immigration, it is surprising to hear Trump advocate the introduction of golden visas for rich people, presumably including Russians, who wish to reside in the US in exchange for million-dollar investments. We had
similar schemes
in Ireland which turned out to be political failures. Why would America bare its security throat to an influx of dubious investor migrants from overseas states? Is that strategy a necessary part of making America great again?
While it is obvious that Trump's vision of American greatness is to be measured in the wealth of its plutocrat class, I find it hard to understand how public opinion in America is not revolted by events such as the $200 million 'gift' of a jumbo jet from Qatar
destined to become Trump's private property
, or the launch by Trump of a cryptocurrency fund designed for his personal enrichment.
Trump's promise to deport one million illegal migrants was easily made. Rounding them up and expelling them is a very different matter. They will turn out to be parents and spouses and sole economic providers of American citizens. They will turn out to be the fruit pickers, labourers, cleaners and counter staff of countless small enterprises. They may even include the maids and pool boys of Trump's billionaire coterie.
In Trump's first term, I gave a number of my friends Maga hats embroidered instead with the message 'Make America Hate Again'.
Sending marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles
and other cities that have tolerated illegal migrants for many many years is a cowardly, premeditated Trump stratagem to provoke communal hatred. Democrats need to be a lot more politically agile than they have been in the last four years to stop Trump's political rampage.