Being a creature of shameless self-promotion, I have to admire this quality in The Donald. He used his inauguration speech to remind us that when the assassin’s bullet ripped through his ear, his life was saved for a reason: “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
This was greeted with applause, which would make any alpha dog immediately jealous. Because God saved him, he said he would meet every crisis with dignity, power and strength and restore integrity, competency and loyalty to America’s government.
This includes pulling out of the Paris climate agreement again, declaring a state of energy emergency so “we can drill, baby, drill”, leaving the World Trade Organization and planting the American flag on Mars.
He promised to bring peace to the world, reoccupy the Panama Canal and expand America’s territory.
The night before the ceremony, he told his supporters he was bracing to “act with historic speed and strength and fix every single crisis facing our country”.
And he said “by the time the sun sets tomorrow evening, the invasion of our borders will have come to a halt”.
What warmed my already bursting heart was his promise that “my proudest legacy will be that of peacemaker and unifier”. He is starting out by slapping tariffs of 25 per cent on Mexico and Canada on February 1 — and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for good measure.
He ended his inauguration speech by saying “our golden age has just begun”.
There’s a bit of truth in that, too. Last weekend he launched an official crypto coin, known as a meme coin, called $Trump. He urged his supporters to “Join my very own special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW.”
And they did. By Sunday morning his cryptocurrency had surged 600 per cent to trade at US$32 ($51 in our money), but by Monday the price had jumped to US$70, giving it a market capitalisation of US$70 billion.
The Boss says the Trump Organisation owns 80 per cent of the new Trump token, and The Financial Review says that, on paper, The Donald added US$56 billion to his wealth over the weekend.
No wonder Melania decided to get into the act, launching her own crypto coin on Monday — which quickly surged to a market capitalisation of US$5 billion. This is hard for an innumerate dog to get his head around, particularly when The Donald had previously described crypto coins as “based on thin air”.
Whereas previous presidents have placed their assets into a blind trust to avoid possible conflicts of interest, The Donald considers this an unnecessary constraint, in the same way that I view a dog leash. He’s making his own rules — and look, he might get away with it. Woof!
