Trump’s presidency has ended after 4 years. He has been a very polarising President. I never was a Trump supporter. That is not saying much, as I generally tend to not like the people who get to the top of a government. I am therefore also no fan of Biden or, god forbid, Hilary Clinton. They are all criminals in my view. I cannot join into the partisanship about these people. Instead, I allow myself a more independent opinion.

Having said that, Trump’s presidency was not just the usual 4 years of more of the same. He did do some things differently and is more hated and loved for that reason. Sometimes I am with Trump and more often I think he was terrible. But even though I cannot support much of what Trump did, I tend to disagree even more with most of his critics. So I will need to distance myself from both.

Let’s get into the details. Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. Or did he? There seems to be very good evidence of a substantial amount of voter fraud. Whether it was enough to change the election result would need to be investigated. But such an investigation never took place. From what I have seen, I think it is likely that Trump did get cheated out of his second term. It is not just clear video footage and thousands of affidavits that point to this conclusion. There are also lots of statistical anomalies that make it difficult to think that this election was conducted fairly.

But even if we leave the vote rigging aside, the unfairness already started long before that. All of the media and social networks went on a collective misinformation campaign against him. It latest from the day after he was elected till today, and it is probably going to continue. It is going to continue because the Democrates have become an anti-Trump party. Without Trump they have a problem.

The finale of this campaign was the wide spread reporting that Trump ordered his followers to storm the Capitol on January 6th, and continued to inside violence afterwards. The reporting also claimed that Trump continued to refuse a peaceful transition of power.

Every singe claim in this reporting was an outright lie. Yes, it is true that Trump questioned the election results, but in his speech and Twitter messages on January 6th Trump explicitly conceded that Biden would be the next President. He told his supporters to be peaceful and cooperate with law enforcement. This could have been easily versified by everyone, if it was not for all major social media platforms blocking the distribution of the information. One really had to do some research to find them.

The democrats then tried successfully to impeach him on charges of insurrection. Again, all he did was to call his supporters to peacefully protest. The actual coup was that they wanted to get rid of him on totally made up charges. The fact that they impeached Trump in the last week in office is a bit strange. It shows how freaked out the establishment is about him. They want to make sure that no one, who is not 100% on board with their agenda, will ever get into power again.

This misinformation campaign started early. Remember the report that Trump colluded with Russia, something that even ended up in an impeachment vote against him? This whole story, as is now clearly proven beyond any doubt, was completely fabricated from the start. There was never a shred of evidence for it. Any interested observer could see that. But this campaign continued throughout his whole time in office, even after the point when it was shown to be bogus. The real conspiracy, however, that parts of the US state and the democratic party invented the Russia collusion to damage an elected President, was barely mentioned.

On the other side, any negative arguments against Biden were essentially blocked. Often literally. When it came out that Biden and his son Hunter had clearly been involved in illegally colluding with China, this information was blocked by Twitter. No one was able to tweet it. A powerful interference of the social network into the election. It was mentioned in other media to be fair, but not much.

These are just some examples of biased reporting on Trump. I am no fan of Trump, never was, and I get to that in a second, but I have to say the amount of lies and propaganda against him is sickening. Instead of criticising Trump for the things he really got wrong, we see one bogus plotting after another.

The goal of all of this is not better politics, but the slandering of opposition to the establishment. No one interested to live in a society with a rule of law can be in favour of it. I cannot write a Trump criticism before first clearly distancing myself from the disgusting mob who is involved in this hypocritical Trump bashing. The best thing about Trump is probably that he is hated by the right people.

It was a bit baffling to find that some Trump supporters put a lot of hope on the election result to be reversed. If it is true that the system is corrupt to the bone, corrupt enough to rig the election, then why would there be any hope to reverse the decision in that very same system? If there was any doubt about that, the supreme court decision on the election fraud should settle it.

Of course, most of the media, who had no interest to report on hard evidence of vote rigging, reported the court decision as proof that nothing strange happened. But that is simply not what the decision said. The supreme court ruled that Texas had no standing to complain about how Pennsylvania conducts its elections. In other words, the supreme court said that if Pennsylvania wants to rig the election then that is none of Texas business. Bizarre, given that it was a national election that clearly effected Texas. The court did not even bother to look into any evidence. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz commented that this decision was a signal to the courts to not get involved. And they sure did not, for various strange reasons.

The US political and legal system is as corrupt as that of a banana republic. This has been clear for some time. The best thing coming out of all of this is that many people now have woken up to that fact. From that however, one should not conclude that Trump is some kind of great political figure. Some even hail him as the saviour of western civilisation. The fact that his enemies are so evil, seems to blind some people to how bad Trump was.

Sure the election was rigged. But then that was possible because he was playing his cards badly against this joke of a candidate. He should have really won in such a landslide that all the rigging would not have mattered. And I am sorry, but while rigged, this election was close. Who knows, maybe Biden didn’t even need vote rigging to win. That is saying a lot, given that Biden is clearly senile and was not much seen in public during his campaign.

In addition to that, he was supported by a violent mob that was literally burning down cities in the US. Those, unlike the Capitol riots, were widely reported as “mostly peaceful” and legitimate protests, despite the fact that a number of people were murdered in them. They also found widespread acceptance by many politicians, including Kamala Harris.

Even with all the help, Biden was a very weak candidate. The fact that the establishment was against Trump could have actually been a positive for Trump. This narrative almost certainly won him the first term. But he made a lot of mistakes and did not understand, nor care, about politics.

Particularly his vile and narcissistic character alienated some of his voters. He was not playing his cards right. He could have, for example, easily done something about the dominance of the big social media companies. Many close to him asked him to join alternative networks like Parler. Trump on his own could have easily weakened Twitter by taking his followers to a competitor. Yet he stuck to Twitter.

Now that he is out, doing something will be more difficult. He clearly thought that he was immune to censorship and did not see the bigger picture of the issue. Not surprising, since everything Trump does appears to be mainly about himself. As long as he is fine, he does not care. A good example of how little he thinks strategically, and just one of many mistakes.

In the end, he did not even pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. He clearly did not have the balls, nor cared about this very much. A huge mistake. These two people have done more than Trump ever did to truely fight the enemies of a great America. But as we will see, Trump did not understand why America is not great anymore.

I was very critical of him at the beginning. I did not think that he would make a good President. Of course, Presidents never do much good, so why would he be any different? In particular, I also could not see him advocating a libertarian like ideology, or any coherent ideology for that matter. Everything he does seems to be mainly about himself. He was clearly under the impression that running a country is like running a company, which it is not. He did, however, better then I expected. Nevertheless, he was terrible.

Let’s start with the few positive things he did. My biggest fear was that his impulsive personality would start WW3. That, I am glad to say, has not happened. In fact, he has not started any new wars, which, for a US President is unfortunately quite remarkable. We have not seen that in a long time, certainly not my lifetime. So I do give him some credit for that. Although that credit comes with huge qualifications as I will explain later.

He also openly opposed the anti-scientific climate change hysteria. Again, that is indeed a big plus. I have been on record saying that climate change is the most dangerous ideology in the western world (that was before Covid). It is essentially an attempt to introduce communism through the back door. And unfortunately, this ideology has become a dominant factor in the politics of every western state. Therefore, hearing some opposition to it, from the top of a big government, is certainly a huge plus.

And then there is a third positive of Trump. He is roughly on the right side of the culture wars. This is probably the major reason for his popularity. Many of his followers see this as the most important topic of our time.

I never saw myself as either left or right. These categories are actually not very helpful as they are empty. Their meaning changes all the time, which is the reason why they are popular. But for most of my adult life, if you had put a gun to my head, I would have said I am leaning left. The left appeared to be more creative and open minded.

Those days are gone. I am in total agreement now that the self proclaimed left has lost its mind and is often advocating complete nonsense. The worst aspect of the current left is that it has declared an all out war on freedom of speech. This is probably in order to hide that they have become hardcore racist and sexist. Everything is about which sex and which skin colour you have. If you have the wrong genetics you get less rights. Very worrying.

All this has been quite successful to destroy our ability to have open debates and identify mistakes. That is because large parts of the left do not seem to believe any more that there is such a thing as hard facts. Everything is just ideology. Dangerous nonsense that threatens to throw us back into the dark ages.

When people complain about a divided society, that is not due to Trump. Trump is just the symptom. The left holds the major responsibility for that. It was them who stopped the dialogue and de-platformated anyone who did not agree with them. Often they did this quite aggressively. They cannot complain now that we have an aggressive split in society. That is the result when you stop talking to people. So yes, this topic is important, but I am still not fully comfortable to place myself on any side in the culture wars.

One aspect of this war is that the right is very anti-immigration and against globalisation. That is a position I cannot fully share. I am against global governments, for sure, but I am very much in favour global markets. That gets me right into the many negatives of the Trump Presidency.

One of the worst aspects of Trump is the use of nativism as a tool to gain popularity. He was trying to resurrect the nation as a source for community. But the state must never be a community, otherwise very bad things will happen. It is institutions like churches and football clubs that are in the business of providing community. And that is where it should stay.

In this context, Trump has a tendency to blame foreigners for America’s problems. The US, according to Trump, is in trouble because there are too many illegal Mexicans, and China is taking advantage of the good will of the country.

This is why he ultimately failed to make America great again. The reason why America is not great is because of domestic problems. But he did not focus on those. Instead he decided to blame everything on others. Of course that is always more popular than asking really tough questions. If he had spend his time focusing inwards, reforming the US, he would have been much more successful, and would probably still be President.

Blaming immigrants for economic trouble is almost always bogus. The only way this makes sense is to blame immigrants for receiving too much welfare. But if welfare is the problem, who gave it to them? They did not vote this in for themselves. It was the locals who voted for the welfare state, so they are really to blame.

The only problem that I can see with immigration is that some immigrants might hold very illiberal ideologies. But the solution to that is an open debate and not state control. If we lived in a society that supported liberalism, free speech and free association, we would not need to be scared of illiberal ideologies. What makes those ideologies so dangerous is political correctness, which prohibits people from speaking out against those bad ideas. Political correctness, however, is not imported. It is home grown. Blaming immigrants is a distraction from the real problem. We need to address the causes and not blame the symptoms. But to be fair, Trump did at least attack political correctness. That was one of his strength.

Another wrong theory of Trump was to blame China for economically exploiting the US. Yes China is a horrible authoritarian state. Every day she is turning more into an ugly dystopia. She has murdered many of its own citizens and it looks like she is going to murder millions more. I am certainly no fan of the Beijing regime. It is a good example of how dangerous government can be. I also very much share some concerns of China trying to infiltrate and influence our societies.

Having said all that, the Chinese state is mainly a problem for its own citizens. There is little China can do to us in the West, if we decide to not follow her. If we do follow China, as we did in this fake pandemic, it is because our own leaders are terrible and our elites are corrupt.

Economically, China does not do any harm to the US. In reality, China has been shipping lots of cheap consumer goods to America. In return for these goods, all she wanted was Dollars. That is a great deal for America, since Washington is able to simply print those at no cost. The US gets real tangible goods and China gets a promise that sometime in the future, the US will ship a similar amount of goods back. That is a promise that America is certainly going to break. Who is taking advantage of whom here? It is a great deal for Americans. Ending that deal will result in a significant drop in their standard of living. So not only did Trump not focus his attention on the real domestic problems, but he did everything to make Americans worse off.

Trump, however, does not understand that. He is operating on a pre Adam Smith model of economics. In a similar fashion, he does not seem to understand that the government has to somehow take every Dollar that it spends away from someone. There is no state spending without taxation. That taxation may come in the form of direct taxes, more debt to be paid through future direct taxes or inflation, which is a tax on savers. But one way or the other, government spending has to be financed by taxation.

In that respect, it is confusing to hear reports that Trump has cut taxes. To the contrary, he might have cut some tax rates, but overall he has increased spending like literally no other US government before him. He is the king of raising taxes. He has even bullied the FED to increase money printing and lower interest rates, a policy that goes entirely against his voter base, and benefits his opponents.

The worst thing about Trump however is his inexperience and outright disinterest in politics. This has made him vulnerable to the influence of bad actors within the state who played him like a fiddle. In the current Covid19 crises, his first instinct was correct. We cannot just shut down society over a danger from a virus. Central planning can never solve complex problems. But then his lack of interest to detail made him listen the Anthony Fauci.

He could have easily avoided the mistake that probably more than anything else costed him his second term. He could have looked for better advisers, who would have gone on television recommending better policies. He could have shown some leadership and not give in, keeping the economy and society open. But he never did. He did not seem to care enough. And this lack of interest is a constant in his Presidency.

What on earth, for example, was Trump thinking hiring John Bolton, a complete psychopath who has never seen a war he did not like. Bolton to this day thinks the Iraq war was a good idea. But Trump in his ignorance ended up surprised that Bolton was a huge hawk. He clearly was not paying attention.

Trump did not understand much of what he was doing in foreign politics. He unilaterally cancelled the Iran deal. That is a mistake on many levels. First of all, it hugely undermines the ability of the US to make deals in the future. Why would anyone make a deal with someone, who has proven that they cannot be trusted to stick to it?

The Iran deal was probably the only good thing Obama ever did. It was a very solid deal that prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Without it, there is nothing stopping Iran short of an outright war. That is why the hawks wanted to get rid of the deal. It was in the way of a war. Whether Trump understood that is questionable.

But maybe he did, because he spend a lot of time in the middle east forming a big military alliance against Iran. There were a number of fake peace deals between Sunni run Arab states and Israel for that purpose. He also ended the idea that Palestinians will ever be able to have their own state, by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and giving his permission to essentially annex the West Bank.

That brings us to the absolute worst policy of Trump’s time in office. He was a huge supporter of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is probably the second or third worst country in the world next to North Korea and China. It is an absolute Monarchy right out of the dark ages, run by a ruthless, psychopathic family. Worse, this family has teamed up with the most radical movements in Islam and exporting extremism and terrorism all over the world. Almost any ally would be better than Saudi Arabia. The Monarchy, however, is seen as one of the best US allies in the world.

When journalist Jamal Kashoggi was brutally butchered in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey, on orders of Saudi Crown Prince MBS, it was Trump who came to the rescue of his dear ally. But what happened to Kashoggi was just symbolism compared to the other horrors of the Monarchy. Most importantly, the Saudi government has engaged in a genocidal war against the people of Yemen.

And it really is a genocide. The war is designed to deliberately starve the civilian population in Yemen as punishment for the support of an unwanted government. It is an unbelievable human disaster and one of the biggest war crimes of this century. The US is actively supporting the Saudis in this war.

Here is Trump’s worst sin. When congress voted to end the US involvement in that war, because even those politicians were a bit too appalled by the horrors of it, Trump vetoed the decision. That is right, it was Trump himself who actively intervened to continue the genocide. Whatever the pros and cons of his presidency, for this act alone Trump deserves to rod the rest of his life in a prison cell.

Will Kamala Harris, sorry Biden, be any better? If my analysis is correct then a lot of Trump’s mistakes came from him getting bad advise and not seeing that the real enemies of the US are domestic. Those domestic enemies are part of the so called deep state. These are professional interested groups and state agencies who live from the state and know how it operates. With Biden, these interested groups have now lost the middle man and are fully in power. It is a deep state administration. What can possibly go wrong? We are already seeing that this administration will try to end freedom in the US.

I have said it before and I say it again, I think there is a good chance of more violence, or even an outright civil war in the US. It is likely that the US will not get through this decade in one piece. The split in the country is too great.

The egomaniac Trump has shown to have little talent for strategic political thinking. His die hard followers thought to the end that he is some kind of genius who, in the last minute, would pull another ace up his sleeve. Some of them even went so far to think he would declare martial law. As if he could do that. At least two times, in Afghanistan and Syria, the military laughed in his face when he was trying to give them orders. The military industrial complex is long past the point where they let a politician boss them around.

But more importantly, had he done that, he would have been immediately arrested for insurrection and thrown into jail for the rest of his life. They are still trying to do that, even without having much against him. The storming of the Capitol is a true Reichstag fire moment in the US.

It should be clear now for everyone that Trump is not the genius that his supporters think he is. He has blindly walked into many political traps and does not seem to learn much from it. The final stupidity of holding a big angry rally in front of the Senate on January 6th, without seeing the danger that this could be instrumentalised to create some nasty pictures against him, is a nice sum up of his 4 years in office. And yes, you won’t convince me that these protesters just walked into the building without the police being able to stop them. It was an ambush, and he walked right into it. His enemies played him like a fiddle, and they are now trying to finish him off once and for all now.

The real talent of a shallow egomaniac like Trump is marketing and showbiz. That is where he is rooted and that is were he should stay. Who knows, maybe he will be using the next few years to build up an alternative independent media in the US. That is, if his enemies do not manage to lock him away, which I doubt. If he does, that could be interesting. But we will see.

For now what remains is a deeply split country and a lot of people who finally see politics for what it is – a totally corrupt system governed not by the common good, but exploitative special interests. That, at least, is a good legacy of the Trump Presidency.

There are many millions of Americans who trust Trump more than any other institution in the US today. Given that Trump is who he is, one really has to ask why that is. And the answer has less to do with Trump, but the appalling state that the institution in the US are in. Trump, however, sure failed to make them great again. Nevertheless, Trump did give his followers hope that they could be represented within the political system. The aggressive war on Trump with all means has shown that the establishment in the US has no interest in letting that happen. This could turn out to be a fatal mistake. The coming years will be interesting.