The last vacant seat in the US Senate has finally been spoken for. In the midterm election runoff in the southern state of Georgia, the democratic nominee defeated the Republican challenger, ensuring that the US Senate had a majority of 51 Democrats to 49 Republican seats.
Three months before the elections and not only in Georgia but across many of the southern states, a red wave was expected. Former US president, Donald Trump was personally involved in canvassing for many of the candidates including the Republican nominee in Georgia and others as far as Arizona, and yet they failed to muster the necessary votes to win.
Some in the US are calling this rejection of Republican nominees a turning of the tide against Trump, and along with recent events concerning the former president, more and more politicians who previously would not muster enough vocabulary to speak out and now blurting what they see as the obvious — that Trump has become irrelevant to the Republican party, and its time to move on.
They cite his recent dinner with rap singer Kanye West along with a white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
Trump came under fire from former US diplomat David Friedman, who served as US Ambassador to Israel from 2017-2021.
Posting on Twitter, Friedman wrote, “To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this. Even a social visit from an anti-Semite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I condemned Barack Obama association with Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright, and this is no different. anti-Semites deserve no quarter among American leaders, right or left.”
In his defence, Trump stated that Kanye West was “asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with his business. We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for President, and that ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.’
Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, and I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”
A defiant Trump
That didn’t go far enough to placate the most influential members of his party. The former President was also accused of advocating the abolishment of the US Constitution.
Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social. Trump shot back: “The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES.”
Events such as these are followed astutely in this part of the world by many and especially in Saudi Arabia where Trump made his first official overseas visit as US President a few months after taking office.
Many Saudis have taken kindly to Trump and his years at the White House and are looking hopefully to his return.
Ibrahim, a college professor who follows global news religiously says that Trump is good for America. “Look around. Who else do the Republicans have? Don’t tell me Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who through his stubborn Covid stance contributed to the doubling of Covid-related child deaths in the state.
Or senator Ted Cruz of Texas along with his family was naive enough to escape to tropical Cancun while Texas suffered from a power and water crisis in the face of a snowstorm that left many homes in dire straits. You want these people to be at the helm in America?”
Yes indeed, what happens in America doesn’t just stay in America, and the people here have an opinion.
Tariq A. Al Maeena is a Saudi sociopolitical commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Twitter: @talmaeena
