Action, it is said, speaks louder than words. Turn to Washington, and it is in a state of hyper-action, amid lots of cheer and strong protests too. President Donald Trump is taking out the aces up his sleeve one by one, raising temperatures within the US and the wider world.
He is proving he meant what he said and promised during his high-stakes presidential election campaign. Not for him the vacillations typical of the previous Obama administration; and not for him the wait and watch that eats up time and effort.
Trump is on a roll from Day-One, and he is implementing his election promises one after another in such a jiffy that the rest of the world is watching his show with a shudder of disbelief.
All this is not to say Trump as President is doing all the right things. Time alone will tell how effective he turns out to be as the 45th American President and how he changes the US and the world.
There are misgivings about the way he went about conducting things, but in a week’s time the businessman-turned-president has proven himself to be an action hero in the world of politics. It took no time for him to sign the file pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal, a pact that was strongly backed by the Obama administration.
Trump has seemingly moved ahead with plans to build a wall along the Mexican border and asked his neighbour to share the costs. When rebuffed, he didn’t waver, and instead put the wall back in Mexico’s court. He warned Mexico of imposing hefty taxes on whatever products are brought into the US from its neighbour — of which there are one too many.
It took no time for him to also block federal funding for organisations that back abortion. Capping it all, he has acted swiftly on immigration — the main thrust of his election promises — by suspending refugee admission programmes for four months, and even barring travellers from seven Muslim nations.
There would now be extreme vetting of visa applications from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as well. He also reversed a planned rate cut for federal housing, set in motion by the outgoing Obama administration. There’s going to be controls on immigration from countries like India too, by way of restrictions on job visas for the IT sector; and one can only grin and bear with it.
A President who returned to the theme of America First can go any length. Trump has already made it clear in an interview to ABC television that he would not rule out torture in tackling terror.
It also means that the Guantanamo Bay interrogation camps that housed terror suspects, which Obama had shut, are in for a revival. Fire, he said, had to be fought with fire, and “those who have no concern for human dignity or safety need not expect a fair deal” from his administration.
Clearly, the past administration played by the rule book, and didn’t get far enough in matters of addressing the scourge of terror. It now is safe to assume that the global fight against terror will be better coordinated by the US and Russia, given the perceived closeness between Trump and Vladimir Putin. All the same, fingers are crossed on how things would pan out. Tackling terrorism in this manner would bring up problems at multiple levels.
It is refreshing for many to see a President who is not dithering. Someone new to politics is taking the establishment head on. He is hell bent on keeping the promises he made to his electorate.
Voters are used to governments coming to power and throwing election promises to the winds. Vacillation is an art by itself for rulers in many democracies. Trump comes with an unquestionable mandate — the deficit in his electoral college votes apart. In the minimum, he cannot be accused of backing out on promises. The speed with which he goes about, though, is what surprises and worries.