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Financial Times
CommentaryFariborz S. Fatemi January 21, 2017Former Professional Staff MemberHouse Foreign Affairs CommitteeSenate Foreign Relations Committee
There he goes again. Mr. Trump spewing ignorant falsehoodsat his inauguration, like a deranged dragon bellowing fire because of a badstomach. One would have thought that he would have learned something during thetransition. With the former presidents sitting behind him, he could have spokenof an America that is already great and with a steady hand, he will make sureit continues to be great. Instead, he spoke of an America and a world thatexists only in his head. Some examples. He ranted about the “depletion of ourmilitary.” The fact is, our militaryspending is much higher now than before 9/11 and we are spending more than thenext seven nations combined, including Russia and China. He said again that hewould eradicate “Islamic terrorism,” yet due to his ignorance, he didn’t knowthat the people he did business with and praised from the Gulf States and SaudiArabia are the very source of funding for these radical groups. The roots ofradical Islam are Wahhabism and Salafism, bastardized versions of Islam thathave been promoted and spread by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. More falsehoods.He promised to “get our people off welfare and back to work.” He didn’t know that in the last 20 years,families receiving federal help fell by more than 70 per cent. He spoke aboutlack of jobs, again he didn’t know that at the end of the last Republicanadministration, unemployment was at 10 per cent and now it is at 5 per centwith 18 million new private sector jobs in the last seven years. The America hedescribed, “American carnage” (crime) does not exist. Crime statistics showthat crime now is far lower than a decade ago, even with the prevalence of thegun culture that he supports. He is now the head ignoramus and he has nominateda cabinet full of people who know nothing about the jobs they are supposed todo. Welcome to the Trump era, where ignorance, conflict of interest leading tocorruption, incompetence, and chaos will reign supreme. What a catastrophe for America. How very sad.
A version of this appeared in the Boston Globe.