Donald Trump’s ‘government by tweet’ is putting the world in danger

Kevin Rafferty says that, from the investigation into Russian collusion to trade and Syria, the US president’s obvious lack of any game plan on the key issues affecting global security is frightening, and discredits American democracy in the eyes of the world

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The US flag is shown on a signboard outside a supermarket selling imported groceries in Qingdao, Shandong province. America’s Tweeter-in-Chief Donald Trump is increasingly becoming a danger to himself, and making US democracy a laughing stock around the world. Photo: AP

Published: 12:53pm, 20 Apr 2018Updated: 7:42pm, 20 Apr 2018

US President Donald Trump is wildly thrashing about and tweeting furiously like a wounded wild elephant, so that I am surprised that he has not been renamed President Trumpeting.

But it is no longer a mere laughing matter: the trumpeting Trump is increasingly becoming a danger to himself, to the United States, to the Western world, to democracy and to the safety and security of the world as we know it.

We are still some way from a full-blown trade war or from the outbreak of conflicts that might trigger the third world war, but there is a real and present danger. Government by tweet is an unstable and unsustainable model of governance.

In the past few days, the US president’s tweetstorm has become wilder and angrier, including strident claims that influential people are pursuing a “WITCH HUNT” (which he habitually writes in capital letters) against him.

Trump has James Comey in his sights. The president controversially fired Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May last year, and Comey is now hitting back through a tell-all book, A Higher Loyalty. Comey offers a colourful stream of salacious events, allegations and observations that will keep the tabloid media happy for days, but they should not detract from his central message that the US president today is “morally unfit” for the job.