Here are key quotes from U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration address on Friday.
Power to the people
“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 American People.”
“January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”
‘American Carnage’
“For too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: 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 knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
No more enriching others
“For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidised the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.”
New vision: America first
“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be only America First. America First. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”
“We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.”
Eradicate Islamic terrorism
“We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones — and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.”
Redical Islam isn’t an object or a specific target , it’s a movement that is dynamic and constantly changing with seasons .
To combat radicalism you need also to be on dynamic motion with its changing movements.Im curious to know how he is going to do that without violating religious rights . Very curious
when you engage an opponent that does not play by the rules, what do you do? throw away the rule book to be on equal footing or else you will be defeated. You can’t respect the so called “religious rights” of an opponent that does not respect yours. He will use your own values against you. Its like applying tae kwo ndo against an opponent with an automatic machine gun. It will be inevitable that Trump will have to be pragmatic
I understand your school of arguments but I want to know how he will steer the ship. He has 2 yrs to prove he is worth the chair .laa sivyo he will be a lame duck .
Trump’s cabinet consists of billionnaires. The first thing they’re giving anybody is a tax break to themselves.
As for America first, it could actually be a boon for world peace and economic stability. But talk is easy, he will have to figure out how to execute the goals of military non-interference with the promise to wipe all terror off the face of the earth. Will he join Assad, Putin and Erdogan, or leave the arena altogether, and how?
I have always been clear-headed and balanced in reading politics. You need to take off your JaKuonist googles and join the progressive, productive side of Kenya. If you don’t, you will lose again and be whining about ‘stolen elections’ for another 4 years.
the US has been supporting africa, particularly kenya in several fronts. withdrawal of this support will see lots of kenyans suffer. epesialy HIV patients
if it does, then China is waiting on the wings to exploit the changes.The world is Changing and it is inevitable that the decline of the U.S. is upon us. Empires rise and fall. The UK and U.S. may decide to hold each other’s hands and reminisce upon their past glory days. But the rest of the world will not always wait for them. The international community will find a way to work and the rules of the future are being formulated now. If left to China to draft them then so be it. American and Europe brought us a neoliberal economic model, maybe we may soon have a Chinese version of the same
i doubt if china can easly fill into the gaps left by the US and let me tell you why. the two countries have been operating differently. chinesses wiĺl always give us loans to which we have to pay laiter, they build our roads on terms we will pay laiter but US on the other side it give free medicine, free food relief, 90% of NGOs in kenya are from Us, jobs will be lost if US pulls away, imagine kenya without USAID,not sure if you really know what that will mean to kenya health society. all am saying is china doesnt give for free we already have a ballooning external debt and this is the time we really need free things
what I mean is the change will be gradual not immediate. The future global engagements do not have to follow the same model that was used by the U.S. and Europe. The so called “Free aid” policy has not been very effective hasn’t it? And our ballooning external debt is not China’s problem to worry about but us. China will pursue a model that suits its own interests. Its up to us to agree to be shafted or not. Trump is also rethinking the whole concept of giving aid to Africa and its effectiveness this was reflected in a list of questionnaires he sent to the state department during his transitional period. Have a look at this article.
Long Post Copy pasted
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s views of Africa have, until now, been a mystery. But a series of questions from the Trump transition team to the State Department indicate an overall skepticism about the value of foreign aid, and even about American security interests, on the world’s second-largest continent.
A four-page list of Africa-related questions from the transition staff has been making the rounds at the State Department and Pentagon, alarming longtime Africa specialists who say the framing and the tone of the questions suggest an American retreat from development and humanitarian goals, while at the same time trying to push forward business opportunities across the continent.
“How does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa? Are we losing out to the Chinese?” asks one of the first questions in the unclassified document provided to The New York Times.
That is quickly followed with queries about humanitarian assistance money. “With so much corruption in Africa, how much of our funding is stolen? Why should we spend these funds on Africa when we are suffering here in the U.S.?”
Some of the questions are those that should be asked by a new administration seeking to come to grips with the hows and whys behind longstanding American national security and foreign assistance policies. But it is difficult to know whether the probing, critical tone of other questions indicates that significant policy changes should be expected.
On terrorism, the document asks why the United States is even bothering to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, why all of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the group have not been rescued and whether Qaeda operatives from Africa are living in the United States. And it questions the effectiveness of one of the more significant counterterrorism efforts on the continent.
“We’ve been fighting al-Shabaab for a decade, why haven’t we won?” poses one question, referring to the terrorist group based in Somalia that was behind the Westgate mall attacks in Kenya in 2013.
Although the document represents a first look at how the new administration might approach policy toward Africa, a subject that was rarely touched on during the campaign, officials with the Trump transition team did not respond to queries about the list.
“Many of the questions that they are asking are the right questions that any incoming administration should ask,” said Monde Muyangwa, the director of the Africa program at the Woodrow Wilson Institute.
But she also noted that “the framing of some of their questions suggests a narrower definition of U.S. interests in Africa, and a more transactional and short-term approach to policy and engagement with African countries.”
Ms. Muyangwa said the queries could signal “a dramatic turn in how the United States will engage with the continent.”
J. Peter Pham, who has been mentioned for the job of assistant secretary of state for African affairs in a Trump administration, said he does not expect Mr. Trump to do a complete U-turn in relations with Africa.
Mr. Pham, director of the Africa program at the Atlantic Council, said he expects Mr. Trump will emphasize fighting extremism on the continent, while also looking to enhance opportunities for American businesses.
In other questions, the Trump transition team challenges the benefits of a trade pact known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act. “Most of AGOA imports are petroleum products, with the benefits going to national oil companies, why do we support that massive benefit to corrupt regimes?” the questionnaire asks.
Yet Mr. Pham said he expected a Trump administration would support the pact. “AGOA has created more than 120,000 jobs in the United States,” Mr. Pham said in an interview.
A big unknown, though, is how a Trump administration will handle foreign assistance to the continent and its 54 nations.
President George W. Bush quadrupled foreign assistance levels to African countries, and President Obama largely maintained that, even as his administration was making cuts elsewhere.
Even so, the amount of American aid in 2015 to other critical allies — Afghanistan ($5.5 billion), Israel ($3.1 billion), Iraq ($1.8 billion) and Egypt ($1.4 billion) — far exceeded the approximately $8 billion for all of sub-Saharan Africa.
The questions seem to reflect the inaccurate view shared by many Americans about how much the United States spends on foreign aid and global health programs. Polls show that Americans believe the country spends 25 percent of its budget on foreign aid — but the truth is that foreign aid is just 1 percent of the federal budget.
“We’ve been hunting Kony for years, is it worth the effort?” poses another series of questions related to Joseph Kony, the warlord head of Uganda’s violent guerrilla group the Lord’s Resistance Army, who has eluded the authorities for three decades. “The LRA has never attacked U.S. interests, why do we care? Is it worth the huge cash outlays? I hear that even the Ugandans are looking to stop searching for him, since they no longer view him as a threat, so why do we?”
The hunt for Mr. Kony and his fighters has generated a huge amount of publicity around the world, in large part because of a video on his elusiveness and brutality, “Kony 2012,” that has been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube.
But other questions, foreign policy experts say, return to a theme of a continent that has squandered American money and effort. The questions challenge, for instance, a hallmark of Mr. Bush’s Africa policy — the Pepfar program, which has provided billions to fight AIDS and tuberculosis in Africa.
Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, complimented the program, calling Pepfar “one of the most extraordinarily successful programs in Africa” during his Senate nomination hearing.
But, in contrast, the Trump transition questionnaire asks, “Is PEPFAR worth the massive investment when there are so many security concerns in Africa? Is PEPFAR becoming a massive, international entitlement program?”
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the questions showed an “overwhelmingly negative and disparaging outlook” on the continent.
“A strange attitude runs through this,” he said. “There’s a sort of recurrent skepticism that Africa matters to U.S. interests at all. It’s entirely negative in orientation.”
But the questions do appear to accurately reflect what Mr. Trump has said publicly about Africa in the few times that he has mentioned the continent.
For instance, during the Ebola crisis in 2014, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to argue that Americans infected with Ebola should not be allowed back into the United States. As two American health workers became critically ill and were airlifted to Atlanta for treatment, Mr. Trump had this to say via Twitter: “Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S. Treat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS!”
The Ebola epidemic, which killed almost 10,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia (but no Americans), comes up once in the document.
“How,” the questionnaire asks, “do we prevent the next Ebola outbreak from hitting the U.S.?”
They are serious supporters of African and American off dependency on each other. Which I agree- with massive corruption going on its good Africa evaluates themselves, but what’s disheartening is the people who depend on HIV medications what will happen to them?
Trump and Netanyahu will work closely. Bye bye “Palestine state.” I think this is the only country outside of the US that Trump will consider in his new administration.
@IsraeliPM [COLOR=rgb(20, 20, 20)]Congrats to my friend President Trump. Look fwd to working closely with you to make the alliance between Israel&USA stronger than ever. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/72x72/1f1ee-1f1f1.pnghttps://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/72x72/1f1fa-1f1f8.png