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Trump, can ‘America be Great Again’? What say you...

“Donadaliheligv (congratulations in Cherokee language) to Donald Trump”. That was my congratulatory message when you won the election in November last year.

Today, three months later, I wish to touch on your journey including some from the distant past.

Last year, you were the 324th wealthiest person in the world and 113th in America as per Forbes (net worth US$4.5 billion). You also broke a few records. At 70, you are the oldest and wealthiest president and the first without military or governmental service. Further, you are the fifth elected with less than a plurality of the national popular vote.

By any measure, they are great achievements.

It could be partly due to your paternal German ancestry. Your resourcefulness and creativity could be from your maternal Scottish ancestry. Your grandfather, Friedrich Trumpf from Kallstadt, Germany, who had immigrated to New York City in 1885, would have been very proud of you.

You do not smoke and had stopped drinking alcohol because your brother’s death was due to alcoholism.

In 2000, you sought the Reform Party’s presidential nomination but withdrew even before voting began. In 2004, you thought about it again. From 2001 to 2008 you were identified as a Democrat. In 2009, you became a Republican. At first, you considered running as a Republican candidate for the 2012 election, you decided against it. Finally, in June 2015, you announced your candidacy for the 2016 election.

Despite not doing governmental service, you have come full circle among political parties.

Your manifesto include renegotiating US-China relations and free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Area (Nafta) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, enforcing immigration laws and building a new wall along the Mexico border.

Other plans include pursuing energy independence, opposing climate change regulations, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing Common Core education standards, investing in infrastructure, reducing taxes and imposing tariffs on imports by companies offshoring jobs.

For foreign policy, you advocated a non-interventionist approach while increasing military spending. In 2012, you said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese, but later said that you were joking.

Your campaign slogan was, ‘Make America Great Again’.

One month before the Republican National Convention, there was an assassination attempt on you by a 20-year-old British man illegally residing in the US during one of the rallies in Las Vegas.

You may have your reasons to decline to publicly release any of your full tax returns and you told the news media that it was “none of your business”.

In the first week as president, you signed six executive orders.

Even after fact-checking organisations have denounced you for making a record number of false statements, for a person who cares about the well-being of his country, I understand your decisions to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and to build the Mexican border wall. As an entrepreneur, I do believe you would have considered the pros and cons of both.

‘As popular as the Great Wall of China’

I guess 2000 years from now, the wall will be as popular as the Great Wall of China, provided Mexico paid for it and it is still standing.

On Jan 27, you issued an order suspending admission of refugees for 120 days and denied entry to citizens of seven countries (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) for 90 days. The justification was security concerns about terrorism.

Some condemned the order as religion-based or ‘Muslim ban’. Interestingly, in an exclusive interview with The Brody File, you said persecuted Christians will be given priority when it comes to applying for refugee status in the United States.

There were domestic and international backlash. There were chaos at airports and you had to fire the acting attorney-general (AG) for refusing to enforce a legal order. Your actions are nothing new. Last year in Malaysia, we banned recruitment of foreign workers and the year before our attorney-general got removed.

I appreciate your worry about terrorism especially after an attempt on your life by the Briton. By the way, you may want to include Great Britain and extend the list to eight countries.

Your orders have attracted lawsuits and had set off a widening political and legal crisis. It is also not clear how airport officials were complying with the court rulings that partly blocked your order.

Outsiders see America in chaos now.

Then again, these could be teething problems and for Americans to get used to you. For so long, the belief that America is great is now telling.

Last year I saw a video where Dr Michio Kaku spoke on why immigrants are America’s secret weapon. They compensate America’s mediocre STEM education and keep prosperity going. “The United States has the worst educational system known to science,” he said. In purely descriptive terms, the best American graduates just simply cannot compete with many of their foreign-born colleagues.

Meantime, I am not sure whether your other Republicans really know where or how to go forward.

Some people have described you as non-interventionist and nationalist. You support increasing US military defence spending but favours decreasing US spending on Nato and in the Pacific region. You want to re-orient resources toward domestic needs. This is an excellent idea because America had been too busy spending money overeas and there seems to be no positive outcome and peace is also not in sight. This may well prove Dr Kaku’s observations.

You have said that the US has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems and cannot afford to be world's police. I beg to differ here. It is more like US being too nosy with other people’s life and wanted to impose on the world the American beliefs.

While you are drafting and thinking of other executive orders, I would like to share a few things with you that could make America great.

To be mindful of the first three words in the US Constitution - ‘We the People’ and also your inaugural oath.

Your new AG should be made aware of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution where a state shall not violate a citizen's privileges or immunities and must guarantee all persons equal protection of the laws.

You should quickly lift sanctions on Russia and outsource the fight against IS militants to them.

To dismantle the international nuclear agreement with Iran and reduce financial aid to the insecure Israel state.

To prove that you are a non-interventionist, please leave the Middle East negotiations to the United Nations. We know you are a big fan of Israel and even your daughter is Jewish. And stop issuing vetos.

Since the LGBT community is a strong supporter, you should get some advise and give them space in your administration.

It is advisable to build a memorial for president Grover Cleveland (1885-1889) for if he had issued the same executive order, your grandfather would not have been allowed entry and America would lose someone to make it great.

Intensify psyching the whole world that China is really a big threat. It used to be East Germany, Russia and Osama bin Ladin.

Some even said that you display signs of malignant narcissism and narcissistic leadership. I guess it is what precisely America needs now to be great. Do carry on to be yourself and this may be the way in the 21st century.

Donnie, when you have completed your assignment and made America great, do let us know. The whole world may want to replicate and be great, too.

What say you...

By the way, any plans to change your hairdo?

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