Columnists

In his January 13 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson made an extraordinary comment concerning China’s activities in the South China Sea. The U.S., he said, must “send a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops,” adding that Beijing’s “access to the those islands is not going to be allowed.”

President Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated the threat on January 24.

Sometimes it is hard to sift the real from the magical in the Trump administration, and bombast appears to be the default strategy of the day. But people should be clear about what would happen if the U.S. actually tries to blockade China from supplying its forces constructing airfields and radar facilities on the Spratley and Paracel islands.

It would be an act of war. -more-

To get an idea of what to expect from Donald Trump for the next four years, we only have to examine his first week in office.

January 20: Trump was sworn in and delivered a dark inaugural address; a shorter versions of his "Make America Great Again" stump speech that featured two themes. One was Trump populism: "We are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people." The other was Trump's assessment of the "carnage" outside Washington, DC: "Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential."

Initially Trump claimed to have written this speech by himself but it was later revealed that it had been penned by his aides Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.

Trump finished the day by removing all reference to global-climate-change from the White House website and signing a (symbolic) executive order "giving federal agencies broad powers to unwind regulations created under the Affordable Care Act." -more-

When European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg this past September, he told them the organization was facing an “existential crisis” and “national governments so weakened by the forces of populism and paralyzed by the risk of defeat in the next election.”

Indeed it has been a bad year for the huge trading group: -more-

More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in U.S. history. Clinton outpaced Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. -more-

I observed on television Donald Trump dancing at one of the inaugural balls, and I watched him as a clip was shown of him signing an executive order pertaining to rolling back Obamacare. While these are horrifying things to witness, I did not see any signs of stress from our new President. He seems quite confident and in control. -more-