US President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order on AI, in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington on January 23, 2025.
Last year, I warned folks everywhere – including Kenyans – about the mortal danger Donald J. Trump would pose to America and the world if he was re-elected as President. That unspeakable reality came to pass and Mr Trump now superintendents the world like a colossus from the Oval Office.
As the leader of the world’s mightiest military and most dominant economy, Mr Trump wields the largest mallet among all leaders. When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Since he was sworn-in as President on January 20, Mr Trump has been sneezing a lot. This is bad news for those who voted for him, and those who supported him around the globe. The chickens have come home to roost.
Mr Trump has taken a wrecking ball to virtually everything Americans and foreigners had come to take for granted. In just three weeks, he has turned long-standing norms on their heads. He’s upending the rule of law in America. He’s nominated to some of the powerful positions the weirdest crazies the world has ever seen. Some of his cabinet are science-deniers, conspiracy theorists, proven drunkards, women-batterers and rapists, and a slew of the most extreme personalities in America. It’s not a stretch to say that some of his top officials are even anti-American. In my more than 40 years in America, I’ve never seen anything like it. Some of the executive actions Mr. Trump has taken can only be described as apocalyptic.
Bombshell
Now think about this – we are less than a month into his presidency but he’s delivered one bombshell after another sending to the graveyard many hard fought rights and programmes. Imagine what he will do in four years. We may never recognize America from the wreckage he’s likely to leave behind in his wake after four years. I want to highlight a few of the “gifts” that Mr Trump has given his voters and supporters in a short three weeks. But let me underscore the fact that many of his far-reaching actions are not a result of the legislative process, but executive fiats from Mr Trump’s desk. In that sense, the actions are emblematic of a dictator’s penchant for machismo.
One of the most draconian Executive Orders is on immigration and his pledge to deport millions of both documented and undocumented immigrants. Mr Trump has ordered law enforcement agents, especially those from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, to round up immigrants with criminal records or those who are undocumented, including Kenyans, and deport them summarily without any due process. Many have been bundled into military or commercial planes manacled in leg-chains and deported in the middle of the night without as much as a backpack for minor toiletries. People who have lived in America for decades are being torn from their American spouses and children and forcibly expelled with only the shirt on their backs.
Some countries in Latin America have decried such inhumane treatment, but to no avail. I predict that these cruel scenes will be repeated times without number in the next four years. Families will be broken and disintegrated. While I agree that such removals are necessary in some cases – all American presidents, including Barack Obama, deported many immigrations without legal papers – the process doesn’t have to be gratuitously violent and dehumanising. Let’s remember that Elon Musk, originally from South Africa and now the world’s wealthiest person who now works for Mr Trump, was himself once an undocumented immigrant. Imagine if he had been manacled and deported summarily. Mr Trump himself is of immigrant stock and two of his wives were immigrants.
Anti-retroviral drugs
Mr Trump has taken an axe to both American social programmes and funding for life-saving interventions in health. For example, he’s frozen funding under USAID, the American agency that’s been vital to so many people around the world. Its programmes in Kenya have now been shuttered. The other programme that has ended provided treatment and anti-retroviral drugs to those afflicted with HIV/AIDs in African countries, including Kenya.
Many of these folks will die without medication. In America, Mr Trump has targeted diversity programmes whose purpose has been to create a more just and inclusive society. This includes not only underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities but people with disabilities, women of all races and ethnicities, and children from impoverished backgrounds. You are doomed if you are poor and not white and male.
Last week, former President Uhuru Kenyatta made interesting comments. He chastised Kenyans for “crying” about Mr Trump’s aid cutbacks. He challenged Africans to ask what they can do for themselves without relying on America.
He wryly said that since Kenyans don’t pay taxes in America, Mr Trump owed them nothing. Mr Kenyatta is right, but callous. He can talk like that because he’s a wealthy man who doesn’t need American charity. Besides, America exploits the world and so owes it more equity. That said, let those who supported Mr Trump eat humble pie.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. On X: @makaumutua
