Monday 19 February 2018

Trump in 2020

What will the world view of Donald Trump be in 2020, after he has completed his first (and last?) four-year term of office? But first of all, is it fair to judge the president on his first year in office and make an asssumption that this is what we're going to get in the next three years? The answer, in my view, is yes and yes. Trump is never going to change because that's the way he is. He dislikes compromise, he dismisses anyone who has opposite views to his and he believes that he is always right. So the next three years will be the same as the first year. In other words, confrontation, anger, division and the occasional success. So by 2020 I think the American people and the world will be exhausted. By then Trump will have produced a million tweets, each one getting slightly more angry or vexacious or downright rude. By 2020 the Robert Mueller Russia collusion investigation will have been completed and the consequences will have impacted on the whole administration. Trump will survive but the trials of Mike Flynn et al and the incredible amount of dirt that Mueller will have dredged up about Trump's business deals in Russia will have cast such a shadow over his presidency that the Republican Party will plot to bring forward a replacement candidate for the 2020 election. Step forward Mitt Romney, reelected to the Senate. Trump will go down screaming. Well, this is one scenario. The other scenario is that a Big Event in the next three years will be the decisive factor in whether Trump goes on to win a second term. It could be North Korea or Russia or Iran. One of those three. I don't think China is yet ready to put the screws on the US or confront the US Navy in a battle in the South China Sea. That time will come but China has a lot of building and expanding and developing to do before it risks taking on the US. If forced to choose I would say North Korea is the key to Trump's second term if he is to make it for another four years. What the Big Event will be precisely I hardly dare predict but it will unquestionably involve a Trump decision to go on the offensive against Kim Jong-un's nuclear arsenal - not a military strike as such but a major covert operation to bring down Kim and his regime. If Trump succeeds in removing from this world the nuclear threat from North Korea, he will walk away with a second term, and Mitt Romney will be gone for good as a potential presidential candidate. We will see.

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