*US President Donald Trump.
The United States has built a reputation for being a country where concerted efforts are being made always towards achieving “a more perfect union.” Many across the world have therefore come to believe that America is a stable democracy which has in-built governance infrastructure to resist any attempt to upset the apple cart by any adventurous leader. It is also believed that America provides the moral compass to other nations. But, every now and then, this reputation is challenged by internal developments.
One of such developments came in the African-style disputation of the results of the US presidential election which held on 7 November, 2000 between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. The controversy did not abate until the Supreme Court ruled in favour of George W. Bush. Moreover, waterboarding was used as an interrogation technique after the 11 September, 2001 Al-Qaeda bombings in America. According to a google definition accessed on 18 September, 2026, waterboarding is “a form of torture, typically used as an interrogation technique, in which a person is strapped head-down on a sloping board with the mouth and nose covered while water is poured over their face, causing them to experience a sensation similar to that of drowning.”
Meanwhile, Britannica AI accessed on 18 September, 2026 noted: “As a form of torture, waterboarding became illegal under the law of war with the adoption of the third Geneva Convention of 1929, which required that prisoners of war be treated humanely, and the third and fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which explicitly prohibited the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, respectively.”
Then came the horrific murder in broad day light of the African-American George Floyd through an American police officer’s placing of a knee on his neck on 25 May, 2020. A popular African American Reverend Al Sharpton, at George Floyd’s funeral on 4 June, 2020, remarked that Floyd’s last words were “I can’t breathe.” Reverend Al Sharpton also noted that, pathetically, as he was dying George Floyd called out to his mother who had passed away eight years before his brutal attack. The barbarism of the Floyd murder rightly generated worldwide outrage.
The Floyd murder was committed by an agent of the Donald Trump presidency. But the president’s direct personal actions seem to be even more spectacularly divergent from the endearing qualities associated with the United States. Right from his campaigns for the 2016 presidential elections, Trump had been unabashedly perpetrating xenophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia and insensitivity to people living with disability. He had also been associated with morally unedifying conduct. The world was therefore astounded to see him win that year’s election, raising new questions about America’s image as a model for ethical public leadership.
Most dramatically, when he lost the 3 November, 2020 presidential election between him and Democratic Joe Biden, President Trump incited his supporters to storm the US Congress on 6 January, 2021 to stop Congress from counting electoral college votes in order to formally declare Biden as the legitimate winner of the election. Members of Congress had to scamper for safety, and from the violence unleashed on the hallowed chambers on that day, property was destroyed, injuries were sustained and lives were lost. Some regarded the violence unleashed on the Capitol as a coup or attempted coup. Perpetrators of the violence were charged to court, found guilty, and served various jail terms. Trump himself was widely reported to have been “indicted for efforts to overturn the 2020 election and block transfer of power.” It was therefore strange that he won again in the 2024 US presidential election.
One of the major actions of the second Trump administration taken along with Israel was to launch a war on Iran in the midst of multilateral talks that were reportedly progressing well. Some refer to it as the “Trump war,” because he did not seek congressional approval for it, as required by the US constitution, and he did not carry key international stakeholders along. That war has been detrimental to the world economy reflected for instance in very high rise in fuel costs and consumer prices. It is believed that the economic burden of that war has been manifesting in the defeat of Republican candidates in various elections across America and the expectation that the party would do very badly in the November 2026 mid-term elections.
The Trump war has also undermined the global image of the United States as the world’s unchallengeable superpower. The war has wrought extensive physical damage on Iran, but has also invited epochal Iranian retaliation in the massive destruction of US military bases in the Gulf region, and has therefore seemed to turn the presence of American military bases into a magnet of attack rather than a guarantor of security. This development seems to have increased Iran’s military and diplomatic standing in the region.
A very critical reflection of the rising international profile of Iran, arising from the Trump war, was that on 8 July, 2026, President Trump boarded a US Air Force One plane in full view of the cameras and reporters but secretly deplaned shortly after and was carried in a food truck to another plane in response to what was believed to have been a credible Israeli intelligence report that Iran was planning to bomb the US presidential jet. Some American public analysts doubt the report, and believed it was part of an Israeli psychological manipulation scheme designed to keep President Trump and US policy on the war under Israeli control.
That said, President Trump’s statements have lent credence to the development of an ‘Iranophobia’. He had said that he was No. 1 on the list of leaders Iran was planning to kill. He then declared in his Truth Social Post on 11 July, 2026: “1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME! Orders have already been given, and the U.S. Military is ready, willing, and able, for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran.”
Another of President Trump’s actions which are making the US increasingly unrecognisable is the following 10 September, 2026 invitation to his followers to take the following pledge at the 2026 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas: “Please raise your right hand. I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they [Democrats] do, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. I am gonna go out and I’m going to get my friends and family and we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that!” The New Republic newspaper of 11 September, 2026 reported that the whole crowd repeated after him.
In addition, on 10 September, 2026, the digital newspaper, The London Economic, provocatively headlined a widely reported story as follows: “Trump resorts to openly bribing US voters with $5,000 dollar promise ahead of midterms.” The kernel of the story, in Trump’s own words, is: “I can make this promise to you. And here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate… because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.” Commenting on this pledge which Trump made on 9 September, 2026 at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, an X user, Aaron Rupar@atrupar, said: “Trump is now literally trying to buy votes.”
Moreover, in a move that challenged the image of the US as a beacon of free speech and press freedom, President Trump announced on Truth Social on 18 September, 2026: “I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW … and Politico … from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS! Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
On 25 August, 2026, Yahoo!News reported that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted about the set of perilous tariffs which Trump had imposed on Canadian imports: “It’s not a surprise for us that the U.S. would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariff, which was on top of other unjustified tariffs. … An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States, the Canadian industry is going to be disadvantaged relative to American industry, that we’re going to set up terms so that over time, Canadian industry is going to face constant headwinds. That’s not something we’re going to accept.”
Moreover, on 22 August, 2026, in an address to Canadians, Carney said: “[We] were not prepared to compromise on our sovereignty, the protection of the French language, and our culture. … We are masters of our destiny…. We’re stronger now than when the United States started this trade war. More unified, more determined. more ambitious. With the strongest fiscal position in the G7 and a resilient economy, Canada has all the resources we need to pivot and prosper. … Last spring, I warned that America is trying to break us so they can own us. And I promised that that will never, ever happen. We are keeping that promise.” Interestingly, the Canadian rhetoric sounds very much like an Iranian one.
Earlier in the speech, he declared: “We can’t control the storm that blows in from Washington. We can, however, chart a new course by building Canada strong at home and diversifying our trading relationships abroad. We are masters of our own house and the ideal partner abroad.” Probably in fulfilment of this declaration, on 16 September, 2026, Carney attended a European Union (EU) event at which the President of the Union invited Canada to be its first ever “Associate Member.” President Trump described the move as “laughable,” and has promised to slam new punitive tariffs on the EU.
By and large, the world is confronted with a new America, and it looks so unrecognisable. As Timothy Snyder of the US think-thank, Council on Foreign Relations, puts it, this new America seems to be “in the moment of superpower suicide.”