Politics Notebook | A mini civil war if Trump loses on November 5?

THE MAN who declared this week, foaming at his mouth, that some of his compatriots – his political opponents – pose a greater threat to the U.S. than Russia or China, and that the military should be unleashed on them, still has a 50/50 chance of becoming president, 18 days before the election.

Polls vary slightly, but all still indicate a tie between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. This is also true for the so-called battleground states: She is narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada, but he is more comfortably ahead in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.

This is the same Trump who, despite every piece of evidence, maintains that he won the election against Joe Biden and incited a violent attack on the national legislature to overturn the certification of the election results. Many of those perpetrators are in prison, but Trump says he will release them immediately if he were elected.

The rest of the world must now wonder: What will Trump and his supporters do if he lost to Harris, a black woman, on November 5? Will it spark a mini-civil war?

Should the UN perhaps send a peacekeeping force? Should Roelf Meyer and Cyril Ramaphosa fly to Washington to help make peace between the two factions, as they have done elsewhere in the world?

I still find it very strange how many South Africans swallow all the MAGA propaganda and repeat the myths and disinformation that Tucker Carlson, Fox News and others spread daily.

These folks are likely to tell me that I’m doing the same with CNN, MSNBC and the “MSM”, the much maligned mainstream media. My response to them is that I don’t need to follow CNN or the major American newspapers – I can just listen to Trump’s speeches and occasionally check in on Fox News and Carlson.

One criticism of his of Harris is that she is dumb and incompetent, even though Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, generously contributed to her campaign when Harris was elected attorney-general of California in 2011. The Trump camp claims she is so incompetent that she refuses to give interviews or hold press conferences.

And then Harris went straight into the lion’s den on Wednesday and did a half-hour interview with one of Fox News' (and Trump’s) bulldogs, Bret Baier. She didn’t flinch for a second and showed that her performance during last month’s TV debate with Trump – which she won – was not a fluke. Judge for yourself.

Trump a bigger crook than Nixon

The new book by arguably the most respected journalist in America, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, who has reported on every president since Richard Nixon, landed in the U.S. this week. The title is simply: War.

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history,” Woodward writes. He says Trump is “not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is also unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president.”

About the Biden administration, Woodward writes: “Based on the evidence available now, I believe President Biden and his team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.”

Well, from the southern tip of Africa, I can point out that Biden wasn’t exactly “steady and purposeful” with Israel’s war in Gaza last year. Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly wiped his feet on Biden, ignored every request and warning, and Biden continued to send him billions of dollars and military hardware to sow destruction in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran.

I do think Biden will, at least in terms of foreign policy, be judged positively in history for his strong leadership during the war in Ukraine. Woodward writes that in 2014, Biden criticised then pres. Barack Obama’s weak response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea: “That’s why we are here. We fucked it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.”

All of us who believe in an orderly system of international law must be deeply concerned about how Donald Trump will handle Russia’s war in Ukraine if he becomes president. He is likely to allow Putin to get away with keeping even larger parts of Ukraine.

Soap for that mouth

It’s clear from Woodward’s book that Biden, in private, speaks more like “Joe from Scranton” than the president of the U.S. Fond of the f-bomb, our Uncle Joe. Woodward quotes Biden calling Netanyahu “one of the biggest fucking assholes in the world”, “a bad fucking guy” and a “fucking liar”. When Israel killed the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Biden shouted over the phone at Netanyahu: “Bibi, what the fuck?”

Apparently, Kamala Harris isn’t exactly a sweet angel herself. Woodward writes that she said Biden liked her company because “he knows that I’m the only person around who knows how to properly pronounce the word motherfucker”.

I wonder if our president Cyril also sometimes swears? I hope so.

Jozi, oh Jozi

I am not a supporter of the concept of “citizen journalists” on social media. Unlike us professional journalists, they are not bound by ethical codes or institutionally accountable. But every now and then, one of these guys does something that we in the mainstream media could not have done better.

We all know the ANC has turned Johannesburg, that “world-class African city”, into a chaotic mess. But then Jozi vs Jozi appeared on Twitter/X and posted a series of before-and-after photos that illustrate this dramatically – better than any article or TV report I’ve seen.

Here are a few:

♦ VWB ♦

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