The Tribune

UNITED Nations week in New York City is always a big deal. It’s the ultimate annual gathering of most of the world’s leaders, not just those at the head of the largest global economies. UN week is always a challenge for law enforcement, too, rarely more so than in the current highly-charged atmosphere of fractious relationships in several key places in Eurasia and also in North America. The New York Police Department gets the help and support it needs for its massive security obligations, but there’s still a nervy quality to the proceedings.

The grim prospect of a targeted political bombing or carefully-crafted assassination attempt always looms just off stage as this week continues.

Inside the UN building, US President Donald Trump made headlines this week, with his off-handed remark that he now faces a choice of either “making a deal with Iran or annihilating it,” as he so bluntly described his current options as he sees them. While many of the dignitaries at UN week veered away from offering opinions on the US war with Iran and its profound global economic implications, the effects of the American president’s actions in the Middle East came into clearer focus.

The prime ministers of both Canada and Britain tried to illuminate a path forward that both recognizes the need for the West to increasingly move independently from the US, but also to acknowledge the reality that America remains the leading economic and military force in the world. In their remarks, both Canada’s Mark Carney and Britain’s Andy Burnham contemplated a future reality in which their respective nations would play roles much less subordinated to the US and achieve greater prominence on the world stage.

The world as we have known it for 80 years is really starting to look different.

Domestically, Trump continues to behave as if he doesn’t care if the Republicans maintain their current slim majorities in the US Senate and House of Representatives. He is clearly focused to an inappropriate degree on building projects of significance, mostly to some residents of the greater Washington DC area.

Facing real resistance to his grandiose idea to construct a giant Arc de Triomphe in Virginia just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial and within a couple hundred yards of the Arlington National Cemetery honoring American servicemen and women, Trump has begun justifying the project by linking it to ‘national security’ interests, which he has been unable to itemize and which seem to anyone paying attention to be flimsy at best.

Nearby along the riverbank in Washington, Trump’s assault on the venerable John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has now resulted in erection of sturdy fencing all around the building site and the iconic venue being essentially closed for two years or until further notice for ‘repairs.’

It’s no secret that the Kennedy family epitomizes for Trump everything he loathes, envies, and resents about American society: The Kennedys have leveraged great wealth achieved in somewhat dubious fashion into a kind of almost reverent respectability that over the span of just a couple of generations enabled them to populate American political leadership with a president and two senators from the same family.

This is the sort of grandeur to which Trump clearly aspires, but has heretofore been unable to emulate. In one of his first moves after being elected president for the second time, he dismissed as many as he could from the Kennedy Center board of directors and replaced them with reliable Trump loyalists. He affixed his own name next to JFK’s on the front of the building. He took over the process of identifying the recipients of the annual Kennedy Center honors.

As Trump no doubt expected, the ‘woke American establishment’ was aghast, and pushed back hard, both in the press and social media as well as in court rooms. The result has been somewhat of a standoff. The Kennedy Center’s cultural light has certainly dimmed over the past 18 months, as many long-time resident institutions such as the National Symphony Orchestra took their business and performances elsewhere.

But at the same time, it cannot be said that Trump has been thoroughly frustrated or even defeated in this process. He has made a powerful political and cultural statement against the massed forces of liberalism and ‘wokeness.’ He may well have permanently reduced the Kennedy Center’s place in American culture.

As the president’s attention has been focused on these ‘local’ Washington DC-area issues, it is becoming more difficult to dismiss the impression that like Rome’s infamous emperor Nero, Trump is ‘fiddling while Rome burns.’

He hasn’t really made much progress toward the kind of peace settlement with Iran that would help to stabilize the world’s economy by regularizing oil prices again. He continues to bait and provoke many of America’s most loyal and traditional allies, while remaining standoffish and even hostile toward Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who might be the closest thing we have to a worldwide political hero today.

Trump has not backed off his affection for and seeming affiliation with Russian president Vladimir Putin, while not looking hard enough to find real areas of common interest and even alliance with an ascendant China that looks more each day like the great rival and counterweight to the US in the decades to come.

The American political punditry class is hyperventilating over the notion that every day brings, to those who expect it, ever more evidence that the Democrats will win a workable majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps a most unlikely majority of at least 51 seats in the Senate.

Less attention is being paid to what the Dems might do with those majorities. But party operatives are talking quietly to the Washington Post and other media outlets, and have revealed advanced planning in several areas.

Prospectively restored to the power with working majorities in both houses of Congress, the Democrats are reportedly planning to launch far-reaching investigations into Trump and his family, leading potentially to a third impeachment in the House, though conviction in the Senate would seem almost unattainable. Here are some of the key areas identified:

Trump family enrichment. The Dems have already shouted that Trump and his family have enriched themselves since the beginning of his second term in office by approximately 2.25 billion dollars. Family-controlled cryptocurrency and venture capital firms with close ties to Trump’s family would be the likely targets.

Also on the table would be Trump’s ‘settlement’ with the Internal Revenue Service that would shield his family and businesses it owns from any future audits or investigations by the American tax agency.

Trump family grift. Trump’s liberal use of his pardon power has attracted attention from almost the beginning of his first term in 2017. A case cited by the Post involved a nursing home executive convicted of defrauding the US government of over $38 million. The executive was pardoned by Trump after a vigorous personal lobbying effort.

Under Trump, the US government has sanctioned or approved mining and energy deals that have enriched some of the president’s largest financial supporters. One Democratic congressman has accused Trump of setting up slush funds to reward supporters.

DC construction projects. Several of Trump’s pet local projects have reportedly been awarded to supporters without the required inconvenience of a competitive bidding process.

Immigration enforcement tactics. This path offers many avenues of investigation, including misconduct allegations against immigration officials; the illegal detention of lawful US residents or citizens; the rising death toll in immigration detention centers; deployment of National Guard troops in Democratic-led cities; and gross mishandling of large contracts by the Department of Homeland Security.

Petty prosecution of Trump’s political opponents like former FBI director James Comey and New York state attorney general Letitia James.

Cancelling parts of the US government without prior approval of Congress. Trump has hollowed out both the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Education. Extensive staff cuts, some through the newly-created US Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), have already been challenged in court.

The list goes on, including the handling of the Epstein files and extensive political chicanery and manipulation to forestall the very same electoral defeat in November that is now widely forecast by so many polls.

So, the cynical cycle of retribution would continue.