Sunday, November 5, 2017

A Turning Point for Greece - Bloomberg

A Turning Point for Greece
By Marcus Ashworth
Marcus Ashworth is a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering European markets. He spent three decades in the banking industry, most recently as chief markets strategist at Haitong Securities in London.
Nov 6, 2017
Greece is taking a step closer to get the respect it deserves from Europe.Yields on the country's government bonds, which have already taken great strides lower this year, hit a new low last week on news the government is preparing a major debt swap. The exercise, first reported by Bloomberg News, should allow Greece to sell bonds in future -- and help end its dependence on the largess of its main creditors.
New Greek Five-Year
Yields have dropped sharply on expectations that a liquid yield curve will be constructed
It comes after Europe's peripheral debt markets all made impressive gains in recent months. Spreads on Spanish, Italian and Portuguese bonds have all tightening against their German equivalents.
Peripheral Catch-up
Greece and Portugal have gained substantial ground on their larger Eurozone peers
The European Central Bank's gentle tapering its quantitative easing program has reassured investors that the buyer-of-last-resort won't disappear soon. That's helped Portuguese yields to drop by about half in the past six months to trade less than 30 basis points above Italy.Greece has performed even better -- despite the fact its bonds still don't figure in the ECB's Public Sector Purchasing Program. While they are technically eligible, the ECB's governing council still has to decide that it's confident that Greece's debt load is sustainable. Letting Greece into the program would put the country back in the euro zone fold.Success in the next round of talks with creditors, early in 2018, should finally provide the necessary conditions. The IMF is no longer the barrier to progress it was: It stepped out of the way to allow Greece to increase its debt-load in July. It also softened its requirements on stress tests and bank asset reviews. Domestic politics are also less of an issue. Elections aren't due for two years, and the ruling Syriza party's ratings in the polls are lifting as the economy improves.
Mind the Gap
Yields on Greek government bonds have dropped across the curve this year
In the meantime, it makes sense for Greece to establish a simpler yield curve, with larger and more liquid benchmarks. That ought to attract more investors back to what is at present a backwater. That will be of importance not only to the ECB, but most importantly, when it comes to raising new money, something Greece surely needs to do.Greece hopes to raise at least 6 billion euros to establish a capital buffer for when it falls out of the formal protection of its bailout next year. If the bond swap is a success, expect it to be followed by another fundraising, creditors permitting.2017 has been a watershed for the euro zone's peripheral countries. Greece will be hoping 2018 will see a permanent transformation from being a semi-detached basket case into an integral member of the European project.

China’s military ordered to be ‘absolutely loyal, honest and reliable’ to Xi Jinping - Hong Kong Free Press

China’s military ordered to be ‘absolutely loyal, honest and reliable’ to Xi Jinping
6 November 2017 14:30 AFP2 min read
China’s military has been ordered to pledge absolute loyalty to President Xi Jinping while a paramilitary police force now literally sings his praises, further cementing his place as the country’s most powerful leader in decades.
The world’s largest armed forces should be “absolutely loyal, honest and reliable to Xi”, said a new guideline issued by the Central Military Commission and reported by state news agency Xinhua late Sunday.
China’s military personnel of around two million is technically the armed force of the ruling Communist Party rather than the state.
The commission’s calls for fidelity to Xi shows the extent to which he has consolidated power since having his eponymous philosophy written into the party constitution last month.
Xi’s political philosophy — Xi Jinping Thought — should also guide the strengthening of the military, Xinhua said of the new guideline.
“The army should follow Xi’s command, answer to his order, and never worry him,” Xinhua quoted the guideline as saying.
For decades China has been governed in an ostensibly collective fashion by the party’s elite Politburo Standing Committee.
But Xi has increasingly centralised power and looks to be following in the footsteps of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
On Sunday, a song titled “Be a good soldier for Chairman Xi” was released by the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force under the Military Commission.
Nearly a half-century ago, the army sang “Be a good soldier for Chairman Mao”.
Xi became chairman of the military commission when he came to power in 2012 and last year acquired the new title of commander-in-chief of the joint forces battle command centre.
He has also presided over a corruption crackdown that felled some of the country’s highest-ranking military officers

Trump in Asia: A beginner's guide to trade, threats and tweets - BBC News

Trump in Asia: A beginner's guide to trade, threats and tweets
4 November 2017
US President Donald Trump is on his first official trip to Asia, passing through Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
From trade to etiquette, each stop will have its own challenges. So here is a (non-exhaustive) beginner's guide to the issues at stake.
The journey begins in the shadow of North Korea
Mr Trump starts off by visiting Washington's closest Asian friends: Japan and South Korea. But it's North Korea they will be talking about. Pyongyang has already sent two long range missiles over Japan and conducted its sixth and biggest nuclear test. Despite harsher sanctions, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has shown no sign of slowing down the pace of weapons development. Skittish observers wonder if the visit will prompt Pyongyang to do something rash. But if talks with almost every leader are about how to deal with North Korea, there is unlikely to be any real consensus. Here are some key questions from this leg of the trip:
How much reassurance can Trump provide? With Japanese citizens rehearsing drills in case of a nuclear attack, Tokyo will want to know the US will provide military co-operation. Seoul, literally in the firing line of its northern neighbour with artillery positioned over the border, will want the same.
Will Trump tweet while so close to the North? After an unprecedented personal warning to Mr Trump from Kim Jong-un, Seoul will want him to tone down his rhetoric and keep options for dialogue open. Any threats exchanged when he is literally over the border won't go down well.
How will he like the viral Pen Pineapple song? In Tokyo he is also set to meet Piko Taro, singer of the Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen earworm that swept the globe.
What about that awkward handshake? Mr Trump and Japan's PM Shinzo Abe are thought to have a strong relationship, but people will watch closely after the patting and twitching of their last 19-second handshake.
'I have a pen... I have an apple...'
Next stop: Beijing
China is North Korea's chief economic supporter and Mr Trump is likely to seek continued support for sanctions. But Chinese leader Xi Jinping has just emerged from a Communist Party Congress that saw his power reach unprecedented levels, so he may not feel the need to compromise. Few observers expect radical shifts in the US-China relationship, but they will be watching for any clues to shifts in the global balance of power. China set out its stall earlier this year with a push to its 2013 Belt and Road project, a vast global trade network with China at its heart. Here are other things to look out for:
Will he assert US military dominance? The South China Sea dispute may have been quiet over the last few months as North Korea rumbled, but nonetheless China is going ahead with development in the disputed sea.
Will he talk tough on trade? Mr Trump is known for lambasting China over allegedly unfair trade policies, currency manipulation and stealing US jobs. He has just called the US trade deficit with China "embarrassing" but what can he achieve in practice?
Will Chinese social media meme the meet? Chinese social media is known for its creative memes (remember the Winnie the Pooh and Tigger memes when Mr Xi met President Obama?) Will they move faster than the censors this time?
Will the internet rise to the challenge and come up with a new version of this?
Into the heart of South East Asia
By the time Mr Trump gets to Vietnam and the Philippines we should know more about how the US is positioning itself in Asia. Trade is likely to be key. Mr Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal, frustrating many, including Vietnam, his host at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Economic Leaders' meeting.
Even Japan and Korea are nervous the US will back off from bilateral trade agreements. His "America First!" slogan is aimed at a domestic audience but does not go down well with trade partners abroad. And there are other questions from this leg:
Will he speak out on human rights? Both Vietnam, which puts dissenting bloggers in jail, and the Philippines, with its controversial drug war, have a patchy rights record - but will Mr Trump speak out?
What happens when Trump and Duterte meet? They are the two most outspoken leaders in the world, so expect colourful talk. But Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has shown he is just as willing to woo China as the US, the Philippines' traditional ally.

Securing North Korean Nuclear Sites Would Require A Ground Invasion, Pentagon Says - Washington Post


Securing North Korean Nuclear Sites Would Require A Ground Invasion, Pentagon Says
A Navy admiral sent a blunt assessment of the dangers of military action to lawmakers.
World | © 2017 The Washington Post | Dan Lamothe, Carol Morello, The Washington Post | Updated: November 05, 2017
Securing North Korean Nuclear Sites Would Require A Ground Invasion, Pentagon Says
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was taunted as "Rocket Man" by Donald Trump. (File)
The only way to locate and secure all of North Korea's nuclear weapons sites "with complete certainty" is through an invasion of U.S. ground forces, and in the event of conflict, Pyongyang could use biological and chemical weapons, the Pentagon told lawmakers in a new, blunt assessment of what war on the Korean Peninsula might look like.
The Pentagon, in a letter to lawmakers, said that a full discussion of U.S. capabilities to "counter North Korea's ability to respond with a nuclear weapon and to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons located in deeply buried, underground facilities" is best suited for a classified briefing.
The letter also said that Pentagon leaders "assess that North Korea may consider the use of biological weapons" and that the country "has a long-standing chemical weapons program with the capability to produce nerve, blister, blood and choking agents."
The Pentagon repeated that a detailed discussion of how the United States would respond to the threat could not be discussed in public.
The letter was written by Rear Adm. Michael Dumont, the vice director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff, in response to a request for information from two House members about "expected casualty assessments in a conflict with North Korea," including for civilians and U.S. and allied forces in South Korea, Japan and Guam.
"A decision to attack or invade another country will have ramifications for our troops and taxpayers, as well as the region, for decades," Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., wrote to the Pentagon. "We have not heard detailed analysis of expected U.S. or allied force casualties, expected civilian casualties, what plans exist for the aftermath of a strike - including continuity of the South Korean Government."
The Pentagon said that calculating "best- or worst-case casualty scenarios" was challenging and would depend on the "nature, intensity and duration" of a North Korean attack; how much warning civilians would have to get to the thousands of shelters in South Korea; and the ability of U.S. and South Korean forces to respond to North Korean artillery, rockets and ballistic missiles with their own retaliatory barrage and airstrikes.
The letter noted that Seoul, the South Korean capital, is a densely populated area with 25 million residents.
Any operation to pursue North Korean nuclear weapons would likely be spearheaded by U.S. Special Operations troops. Last year, President Barack Obama and then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter gave U.S. Special Operations Command a new, leading role coordinating the Pentagon's effort to counter weapons of mass destruction. SOCOM did not receive any new legal authorities for the mission but gained influence in how the military responds to such threats.
Elite U.S. forces have long trained to respond in the case of a so-called "loose nuke" in the hands of terrorists. But senior officials said SOCOM is increasingly focused on North Korea.
Dumont said the military backs the current U.S. strategy on North Korea, which is led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and focuses on ratcheting up economic and diplomatic pressure as the primary effort to get North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to stop developing nuclear weapons. Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., have emphasized that during trips to Seoul this year.
In contrast, President Donald Trump, who goes unmentioned in the Pentagon letter, has taunted Kim as "Rocket Man" and expressed frustration with diplomatic efforts, hinting that he is considering preemptive military force.
"I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man," Trump tweeted on Oct. 1, adding, "Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"
On Oct. 7, Trump added in additional tweets that North Korea had "made fools" of U.S. negotiators. "Sorry, but only one thing will work!" he said.
Mattis and other Pentagon leaders have often cited the grave threat faced by Seoul, but the military much less frequently draws attention to its plans for an underground hunt for nuclear weapons.
Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said that Dumont and other Pentagon officials had no additional comment about the letter.
A senior U.S. military official in South Korea, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations, said that while the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea maintain a high degree of readiness, he "has to believe" that North Korea does not want a war, given all of the nations aligned against it.
"If you open the history books, this is not the first time that we've been in a heavy provocation cycle," the official said. On the side of South Korea and the United States, he said, "there is no action taken without extreme consideration of not putting this in a position where a fight is going to happen."
Dumont's letter also notes that "we have not seen any change in the offensive posture of North Korea's forces."
A statement by 16 lawmakers, released simultaneously with the Pentagon letter, urged Trump to stop making "provocative statements" that impede diplomatic efforts and risk the lives of U.S. troops.
The Pentagon's "assessment underscores what we've known all along: There are no good military options for North Korea," said the statement, organized by Lieu and Gallego and signed by 14 other members of Congress who are veterans, all but one of them Democrats.
In a telephone interview, Lieu said that the intent of asking the Pentagon for information was to spell out the cataclysmic consequences of war with North Korea and the aftermath.
"It's important for people to understand what a war with a nuclear power would look like," said Lieu, citing estimates of 300,000 dead in the first few days alone. More than 100,000 Americans are potentially at risk.
Lieu, who spent part of his time in the Air Force on Guam preparing for military action against North Korea, called the letter a confirmation that a conflict would result in a "bloody, protracted ground war." The Joint Chiefs, he believes, are "trying to send a message to the American public," he said.
"This is grim," Lieu said. "We need to understand what war means. And it hasn't been articulated very well. I think they're trying to articulate some of that."
Gallego said that he wanted information because of what he sees as a cavalier attitude in the White House about military action in North Korea. The idea that a ground invasion would be needed to secure nuclear weapons is eye-opening, he said, and raises the possibility of the U.S. military losing thousands of troops.
"I think that you're dealing with career professionals at the Pentagon who realize that the drumbeats of war could actually end up leading us to war," he said. "They want to make sure that there is full transparency and information out there about what can occur if our civilian leaders make wrong calculations."
The Pentagon letter also notes the possibility of "opposition from China or Russia."
"The Department of Defense maintains a set of up-to-date contingency plans to secure our vital national security interests," Dumont wrote. "These plans account for a wide range of possibilities, including third-party intervention, and address how best to 'contain escalation.' "
The letter says that both "Russia or China may prefer to avoid conflict with the United States, or possibly cooperate with us."

A year ago Trump spoke of binding the nation's wounds – so what happened next? - Guardian

A year ago Trump spoke of binding the nation's wounds – so what happened next?
A bruising campaign and a shocking result was followed by … a presidency championing a border wall to a travel ban and sympathy for neo-Nazis
by David Smith in Washington
It was one small step for a man, one giant leap into the political unknown. Just before 3am, Donald Trump moved to the microphone at the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan as an astounded, euphoric crowd chanted: “USA! USA! USA!” The president-elect gave a thumbs up, spoke graciously about opponent Hillary Clinton and made a promise: “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division.”
As the first anniversary of that wild night approaches, Trump’s victory over Clinton in the US presidential election has lost none of its power to shock supporters and opponents alike. The jubiliation in the hotel ballroom with its red, white and blue lighting, Air Force One theme music and red sea of “Make America great again” baseball caps was matched by grief – and genuine fear – at Clinton’s funereal election watch party and in millions of homes.
The billionaire businessman’s acceptance speech, with its nod to Abraham Lincoln (who once pledged to “bind up the nation’s wounds”), was an uncharacteristically conventional attempt to unify following the most brutal of campaigns. It raised hopes that Trump the president would differ from Trump the candidate. Today, however, many of those hopes have been dashed. Critics say he has divided America more deeply than ever, driving wedges between black and white, female and male, rural and urban – perhaps as a deliberate political strategy.
“Looking back to that moment, they were just words on paper because there has not been healing, no binding of the wounds from the campaign, no return to American tradition in that sense,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “He has weaponised some of the tools in politics. He’s fascinating to watch because he’s able to manipulates messages, people, situations. It astonishes me that people are still dumbfounded by it all.”
As a candidate, Trump had broken every taboo, from a launch event where he described Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers to his attack on the parents of a fallen Muslim soldier to the revelation of an old videotape in which he bragged about groping women. Despite huge, raucously enthusiastic crowds, it was assumed he could not win an election in the America of Barack Obama. Indeed, he did lose the popular vote by 3 million yet took the electoral college to become the oldest US president to enter the White House in history and the first with no prior political or military experience. Whether his campaign knowingly colluded with Russia along the way is the subject of ongoing investigations.
Two weeks before election day, a New York Times front page headline read: “Victory in sight, Clinton presses beyond Trump.”
Trump supporter Benjamin Marchi, a healthcare service franchise owner and Republican platform committee member in Maryland, had, though, begun 8 November 2016 with cautious optimism.
Then at around lunchtime he spoke to a friend who had seen exit polls: the outlook was bleak. “As hopeful as I was, there was no explaining away the margins in those polls,” he said. “I thought that’s that.”
Marchi then got a call from the Trump campaign inviting him to the official watch party at the Hilton in New York. “My wife said, ‘Does he have a chance? I said no, not really.” Even so, they drove up from St Michaels in Maryland and found an event that, by Trump’s standards of showmanship, was relatively low key. “It was obvious when we arrived at around 8 or 9pm there was not the level of excitement or expectation,” Marchi recalled.
The Women’s March on Washington on 21 January 2017 in Washington DC was one of the biggest protests in US history.
The Women’s March on Washington on 21 January 2017 in Washington DC was one of the biggest protests in US history. Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage
But as the night wore on and Fox News beamed results into the room, the mood shifted and the crowd swelled, like sports fans going from resignation to curiosity to giddy laughter. “A lot of people made a big deal about North Carolina and holding close in Virginia but what did it for me was Wisconsin. When he won Wisconsin, he wasn’t going to lose Pennsylvania and I knew there was no stopping him.”
A year later, Marchi, 39, can still hardly believe it. “I haven’t stopped thinking about that night since it happened because it was awesome.”
He believes Trump has lived up to his promises during his first nine months in office, despite constant criticism. “He delivers tough medicine and, when people don’t want to take their medicine, they’re going to squeal. He has pursued exactly what he said he would pursue and it shouldn’t be a shock or surprise to anyone.”
Division is a business model for much of the conservative media and it is central to the political strategy [of Trump]
Broadcaster Charlie Sykes
The celebrations at Trump HQ contrasted spectacularly with the tears across town at the Javits Center, where Clinton’s speech was abruptly cancelled, and among Democrats and progressives across the country. Many conservatives were shaken too. Charlie Sykes, a broadcaster and author, said: “I think I was numbed by the enormity of it.”
Sykes was unimpressed by Trump’s election night pitch. “He can read a speech written by others that may have some grace notes but his presidency has thrived on division, stoking acrimony and inflaming the culture wars. No one who paid attention during the campaign should be surprised but it’s still shocking to see a US president behave like that. Division is a business model for much of the conservative media and it is central to the political strategy of the president.”
Thousands gathered at Terminal Four at JFK Airport to protest against the detention of several travellers under Trump’s first travel ban on 28 January.
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Thousands gathered at Terminal Four at JFK Airport to protest against the detention of several travellers under Trump’s first travel ban on 28 January. Photograph: Press vi/Rex/Shutterstock
After a concert short on stars at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Trump took office on 20 January. It was his inaugural address, not his election night speech, that revealed his true colours: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation … the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives … This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, said drily: “I don’t recall his inaugural address being similar to Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address in which, on the eve of civil war, he appealed to ‘the better angels of our nature’. With Trump we got ‘American carnage’.”
Just a week later the president issued an executive order banning entry for 90 days by citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The order also indefinitely halted admission of refugees from Syria. It triggered immediate confusion at airports as well as widespread protests. The ban was knocked back by judges and Trump has been wrangling with the courts ever since.
It was a sign of the divisiveness to come along the fault lines of class, culture, gender, gun ownership, race and religion. Blumenthal, a biographer of Lincoln, added: “Trump pursues polarisation whenever he can. It’s his life raft. He cannot survive without dividing. All he has is his base, such as it is, and it can only be held together through constant alarms, emergencies and appeals to its instincts. Instead of the better angels of our nature, he appeals to the demon instincts of his base.”
A protester is surrounded by members of the group Bikers For Trump during a ‘Make America Great Again Rally’ in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 29 April.
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A protester is surrounded by members of the group Bikers For Trump during a ‘Make America Great Again Rally’ in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 29 April. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Trump pursued the construction of a wall on the Mexican border and terminated the Obama-era programme that protects the so-called Dreamers from deportation. He pardoned Joe Arpaio, a sheriff in Arizona who defied a court order to stop racially profiling Latino people. He set up a voter fraud commission, which many saw as an attempt to disenfranchise black voters. He championed a law and order crackdown and casually suggested to police that they should handle suspects more roughly. He condemned professional football players who “take the knee” during the national anthem in protest over racial injustice.
His response to the hurricanes in Puerto Rico appeared slower than in Florida or Texas, he sparred with the mayor of San Juan and earned scorn for lobbing paper towels at citizens there. He effectively accused an African American war widow of lying. And perhaps most infamously of all he drew moral equivalence between white supremacists and anti-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, suggesting that “both sides” were to blame for deadly violence.
Julissa Arce, a former undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was at a party in Los Angeles on election night. “It was the first time I’d voted in a presidential election and I was super-excited that I got to vote for what I thought would be the first female president of the United States, so I walked into the party with a smile.”
But after seeing Clinton defeated in Pennsylvania and Ohio, she left and watched the rest in her apartment. “I was stunned. I just couldn’t believe how disappointed I was in the United States for electing someone like him, who ran on such divisive rhetoric and who was not qualified.”
Members of the Ku Klux Klan arrive for a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in the death of a counter-protester.
Arce, a board member at the National Immigration Law Center added: “He continues to be incredibly divisive and, with every tweet, he divides the country more and more. The problem with it is that he gives permission to other people to be divisive as well. I see it in my Twitter feed: people are constantly saying, ‘go back to where you came from’ or ‘we need to build a wall and you should be on the other side of it’. Trump did not create anti-immigrant sentiment but he made a ripe environment to say things that were unacceptable to say in public before.”
Arce, a former vice-president at Goldman Sachs and now a naturalised US citizen, is convinced that Trump is a white supremacist. “I think he’s become that more and more. He wasn’t always but as he’s embodied this persona to get election he can no longer tell the difference.”
Trump got elected partly by bolting together a powerful coalition of conservative pressure groups such as Christian evangelicals, anti-abortion campaigners, Tea Party anti-tax advocates and, above all, the National Rifle Association (NRA). In Atlanta in April he became the first sitting president to address the annual NRA convention since Ronald Reagan and that “bind the wounds of division” speech in New York felt like a different universe as the crowd booed and jeered images of Clinton, Obama and Hollywood actors.
Trump has also continued to fire up his core support with an average of one rally per month, seeking to delegitimise institutions through “us against them” rhetoric and claiming to back the common man against the elites. In Huntington, West Virginia, he told supporters that the Russia investigation was an attack on them; in Phoenix, Arizona, he spoke of “damned dishonest” journalists who “don’t like our country”. The crowd chanted: “USA! USA! USA! … CNN sucks! CNN sucks! CNN sucks! … Build that wall! Build that wall! Build that wall!”
Neil Sroka, communications director of Democracy for America, a liberal advocacy group, watched the election results with colleagues in Seattle. He had pre-written one press statement for a Clinton victory and another for a Trump surprise. “We figured Secretary Clinton would win and were trying to work out how the left could keep up the pressure,” he recalled.
There was not a moment of hesitation for us in the room: we knew he was lying.
Neil Sroka of Democracy for America
But as it dawned on them that Clinton would lose, they threw out the “Trump wins” statement and started a new one. “I sat in a corner and rewrote it entirely in 20 minutes because the mood had changed instantly. There was a need to change our entire position and outlook: we got very early that resistance would become central to this presidency and we haven’t let up.”
Indeed, Trump’s election night plea for unity cut little ice with Sroka and colleagues. “There was not a moment of hesitation for us in the room: we knew he was lying,” he said. “This is a man who has spent his life saying what he needs to say to get ahead. In a moment of shock for him, somebody handed it to him and he read it.”
The scale of the catastrophe came home to Sroka the next day when a Muslim co-worker called him to express anxiety over his future in America. “That was when the emotion hit me directly. As hard as we’d worked, there was the realisation that we hadn’t done enough. There was a deep, profound fear of what Donald Trump’s administration might do in office, some of which has been realised and some of which hasn’t because of his ineptitude. He has proved to be one of the worst managers we’ve ever seen in the Oval Office.”
A year on, polls suggest that only about a third of the country supports Trump. But he continues to energise the anti-anti-Trump base in a common disdain for liberal America and could yet retrace a narrow path to victory in 2020. “There has never been a president more focused, more dedicated and more committed to dividing the country against itself over and over again,” Sroka added. “The only way he wins again is by dividing us further. It’s our job to unify the country specifically against his divisive kind of politics.”