Donald Trump’s bruising return to the White House has sent many longtime foreign allies scrambling to get their distance, and according to a new piece from The Atlantic, that distance will last long after Trump is gone.
Trump’s second term as president has been marked by notable and widespread disrespect toward nations once seen as close U.S. allies. Between his attempts to level massive tariffs against nearly every nation in the world and his frequent breaches of diplomatic norms, Trump has created a hostile global environment in which allies no longer feel safe trusting in the stability of the U.S.
In a new piece for The Atlantic on Tuesday, staff writer Vivian Salama argued that this new dynamic, in which the nations of the world are working to establish a safe distance from the U.S., is bound to become the new normal for years to come, even after Trump leaves office and is potentially replaced by a more traditional, dependable administration.
Yes they are objectively and inarguably working. Even with several members of the Supreme Court compromised it has still been a regular obstacle to his plans. The panic the administration has for and the effort put into the upcoming elections are further proof that they’re working. The fact that the upcoming midterms happen only half way through his presidency is not an accident either. The American system was designed to minimize the amount of damage a president or any other branch of government can do.
Nobody promised the system of checks and balances we have could prevent the president from doing any harm. It only provides the people with the power to put a stop to it.
These “barely hanging together” checks and balances are the reason I favour the parliamentary system. Obviously I only speak for myself.
When you have a lower house designed around real and regular debate with the leaders and real opposition who are expected to form their own “govt in waiting”, there are more opportunities to hold the govt to account and challenge them before it gets to the judiciary.
The spiderman standoff between three institutions supposedly watching each other but vulnerable to being manipulated by the same malevolent forces and vested interests seems weak these days.
You can elect someone who is extremely hard to eject if they’re bad for the country. A US president is in for 4 years precisely, and the supreme Court has made them legally immune to acts taken as president. We are seeing the impacts of this guarantee and they won’t stop at least until the term is over.
Etc.
That these even exist are proof that the checks and balances are NOT working. This is why the world is turning away. Trump is the symptom of a bigger underlying cause.
None of those are proof that the checks and balances have failed.
This is why the Supreme Court is a panel. This check has succeeded.
The balance of the judicial branch has successfully thwarted several illegal attempts at rigging the election.
The emoluments clause is unclear in how it should be interpreted today. Trump hasn’t directly violated it in any way. There is ongoing debate about whether or not some indirect forms of compensation violate it or not, and something may yet come of this.
There is too much legal precedent supporting this being considered a campaign promise and not a bribe. Because it’s offered to all citizens as a benefit of the outcome of an election, it’s functionally no difference from saying “Elect me and I’ll lower taxes”
Technically speaking, a full ceasefire agreed to by both sides resets this clock. No rules have technically been broken. Congress retains the ability to shut the war down, the republicans in power just don’t want to. The upcoming mid term elections are the remedy for that.
But we agree members of the Supreme Court compromised. Their existence is a failure.
But not all. For example, machine-stamped postmarks now reflect the date an item is first sorted at a regional processing. Checks are failing. In November we will see how many.
Bullshit. How can you not see this as a failure?
Bullshit. Crypto tokens, golden bars, planes, even the admitted $122,050 in gifted tickets to ten major sporting events.
Bullshit. The check has failed. Trump should have been impeached the moment he lowered tariffs on Swiss imports from 39% to 15% immediately after receiving $130k.
Bullshit. It is a failed check. If there is precedent then those are also failures.
Bullshit. It’s the same war.
None of these checks have failed. Asserting your personal definitions of these things and then judging them as failures by your own made up definitions doesn’t really change that. “Nuh uh” isn’t really a valid argument for any of these things.
Some of the checks have failed. Not all of the checks have failed … yet.
None of them have failed. Some have been revealed to have less teeth than they should, and that’s a real problem. Particularly the fact that the executive branch has been afforded too much power in certain areas due to the faulty assumption that Presidents will always maintain a status quo. But these are all things that can be rectified. It’s a different world today than the one 250 years ago and things need to change sometimes.
I do not see any ambitions to do so. For the DNC it was business as usual after Trump’s first term.
We may have differing opinions on how broken the system is, but we can agree that the reason the rest of the world is abandoning the US is more than just Trump.
Abandoning is a melodramatic way of putting it. Diversifying is a more accurate term. And it’s something that the rest of the world shouldn’t have waited until this point to do. Other countries will always have to rely on the U.S. to some degree, but the fact that they let America be the world police in the first place is their own doing.
America was never promised to be a perfect utopia that could never do wrong. On the contrary, the founding fathers were well aware of the potential for things to go wrong, and they built the country to be resistant to a complete fall into tyranny, and so far it has been. You’re free to speculate on the future, but as of right now we haven’t yet reached the low points some of our now allies did just in this past century.