Just to be clear: when I say ‘rid of’, I do not mean terminally. Let’s leave head-of-state decapitations to the murderous Israelis.
I’m talking about good, old-fashioned democratic riddance, with US voters finally understanding the inconceivable damage their President is doing to them, to the country, to the world.
And by ‘destroyer of hope’, I’m thinking particularly of all young campaigners today who understand the climate crisis for what it really is, and look on in dismay as politicians (led by Trump) pull back from their already utterly inadequate responses to that crisis.
I’m not going to talk about Trump’s obscene corruption, his racism, his misogyny, his depraved sexual proclivities, his constant coarsening of politics, his compulsive lying — none of these give grounds for impeachment. But these might:
- AN ILLEGAL WAR
The war against Iran is clearly illegal, with the USA offering no legal justification for its armed attack — Iran posed ‘no imminent threat’, either to the USA or to Israel, and claiming ‘self-defence’ is palpably absurd.
The damage this war will do to the global economy is incalculable – even if it ends sooner rather than later. Oil and gas prices will remain high for at least six months as facilities are repaired, supply chains restored, and national reserves (especially gas) replenished.
This will have a particularly devastating impact on poorer nations, already crushed by cuts in USA and international aid, and by ever-higher levels of indebtedness.
Wars of this kind simultaneously turbocharged the climate crisis. It’s estimated that the first 14 days of the war led to 5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – the equivalent of the combined footprint of the world’s 84 poorest countries. The report over the weekend from the Climate and Community Institute provides the breakdown, with 50% of the impact coming from destroyed buildings in Iran. https://climateandcommunity.org
2. ONE WAR AFTER ANOTHER
In 18 months, Donald Trump has launched more attacks on other countries than any other US President. Arms companies around the world are ramping up production of countless, increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The USA’s defence and security budget now exceeds $1 trillion; combined arms expenditure in 2025 exceeded $2.5 trillion.
With a few inspiring exceptions (especially Spain, under the increasingly significant leadership of Prime Minister Sanchez) every OECD country has hurled itself onto this militaristic escalator – often at the direct behest of President Trump. Some of that is directly related to countering the threat of Putin’s dreams of restoring a Greater Russia; but a much larger share exists primarily to protect the profitability of fossil fuel companies.
Trump may not be very smart, but he knows that reducing our dependency on fossil fuels poses an existential threat to some of the most violent and exploitative regimes in the world. Unless we can ‘de-fuel fossil fuel dictators and their war machines’, our chances of transitioning to a more or less survivable future are, quite literally, zero.
3. CLIMATE DENIER-IN-CHIEF
I’ve heard colleagues of mine make light of Trump’s impact on the climate crisis: “suck it up for another couple of years, and the USA will be back in the game”. Such complacency is utterly staggering.
For one thing, it won’t: China will have gained near-total global dominance in that ‘game’ before Trump is finally gone. But before then, the damage he continues to do will have a massive impact. His Administration has already destroyed prospects for a long-overdue carbon levy on global shipping; has sided with Saudi Arabia in killing off the Global Plastics Treaty; has cowed the leadership of the International Energy Agency and various UN bodies into servile complicity; and has provided cover for those billionaire-owned media interests which now peddle lies and climate denialism as enthusiastically as Trump himself.
All that before we take account of his impact on the climate agenda in the USA itself, where his sole purpose is to serve the interests of the fossil fuel companies which funded his presidential campaign. His hatred of renewables may be ‘pathologically irrational’, but please don’t imagine that this hasn’t had an astonishingly chilling effect on investment in the USA. Just last week he was bragging about his latest “triumph” in persuading TotalEnergies to cancel 2 huge offshore wind farms — by the simple but effective device of buying back their licences with $1 billion of taxpayers’ money.
4. ISRAEL’S PUPPET
Even staunch supporters of Netanyahu’s Zionist regime are beginning to question the degree to which the USA’s ‘foreign policy’ has been completely corrupted by Trump’s unquestioning submission to his ‘evil twin’.
Not only did Netanyahu very adroitly ‘bounce’ Trump into the war with Iran (by carrying out that ‘pre-emptive strike’ on Iran’s leadership), but he’s won Trump’s support for every single aspect of Israel’s uniquely horrendous role in the Middle East: for the genocide in Gaza, still ongoing, with Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ looking on approvingly; for the accelerated (and increasingly violent) annexing of the whole of the West Bank, and more and more of East Jerusalem; for the displacing of millions of people in Lebanon, with a view to ‘permanent occupation’; for ongoing land grabs in Syria.
Netanyahu’s Israel has become an unfettered force of evil in the world today, riding roughshod over every ‘ legal guardrail’, let alone any sense of moral obligation. And Trump, single-handedly, has made all that possible.
5. THE SUICIDAL POLITICS OF DISTRACTION
Six months out from the primaries, it’s clear that Trump will do literally anything to divert voters’ attention from revelations in the Epstein files (can anybody now believe that he is anything other than a sick paedophile?), from the total failure of his near-insane tariffs policy, and from worsening cost of living concerns in the USA, made even more extreme by his utter idiocy in supposing that Iran hadn’t wargamed every eventuality relating to the Strait of Hormuz. As to the decline in his mental health, let’s not go there right now.
So, come November, are there going to be enough decent, moral, rational US citizens for whom this staggering chargesheet ensures victory for the Democrats in both Houses ? Frankly, it’s not much to hang onto, but who else will rid us of this psychopathic destroyer of hope?
