Ruto faces diplomatic shifts with Trump back in US presidency

Supporters of former US president Donald Trump celebrate his victory near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 6, 2024. [AFP]

Although Donald Trump, a Republican, becomes the second man to recapture the US presidency after losing a re-election bid, he is the first convict to win a presidential election. The first was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, who lost in 1888 only to recapture the seat in 1892. Trump recapturing the presidency was even more dramatic than that of Cleveland because he is the opposite of what the drafters of the US Constitution in 1787 had in mind when creating an anti-democratic Electoral College whose purpose was to keep out riff-ruffs. The campaign itself probably made James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wince in their graves seeing a woman of Indian and Jamaican lineage, Kamala Harris, compete with a man of questionable morals and a criminal convict. Despite their negation of the original intent from, Harris and Trump represented changes in the American socio-political environment and Trump won fair.

Trump's victory is part of the "New Right" wave that flexed its political muscles in Europe, riding on nativism and hostility to immigrants that are not white. Their intent is to keep the West 'pure' in the belief, developed by Robert Kagan and Josep Borrell, that the West is a pristine "Garden" to be protected from Jungle people. Protecting America from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asian and African immigrants was Trump's trump campaign card and it resonated with many white nativists. In the campaign, Trump even claimed that immigrants from Haiti and the Caribbean ate and depleted the dog population in American towns. The popular 'MAGA' slogan implicitly meant making America and the White House white again.