Opinion | One year on, Asia has conquered Donald Trump, not vice versa
President Xi Jinping caught on early that lavishing the US president with pomp and praise could easily tame the harsh, anti-Asia rhetoric he put on display before his election
US President Donald Trump’s first year in office has proven to be the chaotic, rambling Twitter-fuelled reality show that his many critics feared when the braggadocious billionaire and one-time television star became the first US president elected without any government or military experience.
There has been the head-spinning reshuffle of top White House personnel and a mountain of near-daily misstatements from the press office (“the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period”).
There was the messy, unplanned roll-out of the problematic “travel ban”. There’s been the stench of crony capitalism and nepotism with the hiring of his daughter and son-in-law into influential West Wing positions, and the greater stench of racial insensitivity (lauding parading neo-Nazis as “fine people”).
And all of this was against the backdrop of an ongoing special counsel investigation into whether Russia interfered in the US election to help boost the Trump campaign; there have already been indictments and guilty pleas with more expected.
