I am desperately trying not to write about Donald Trump, but I am failing miserably. His latest enormity just cannot be ignored. The word "unprecedented" is grossly overused in general, but it continues to be the apposite word here.
First, Mr. Trump instructed his ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, to take a note of "who voted against us" in the upcoming vote on a resolution opposing the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the latest bee in Trump's bonnet. Ms. Haley chose to share that instruction with the UN (as well as on Trump's official news agency, Twitter: "The US will be taking names"), and left it hanging as an implicit threat. But then Trump himself made the intimidation explicit by threatening to withdraw American financial aid from countries that vote against the US over the issue: "They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars from us, and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care."
This is taking crassness, and an arrant disregard for the processes of democracy, to a whole new level. Surely it contravenes some UN rules of international respect and behaviour. Can we not just ban the guy?
The UN emergency vote comes on the heels of a UN Security Council vote on the matter which saw the USA defeated by 14 to 1, requiring it to use its power of veto to save it from complete embarrassment. The general vote seems likely to go along the same lines, although it will be interesting to see which countries take Trump's threats seriously.
UPDATE
Threats or no threats, the UN voted 128-9 (with 35 abstentions, one of them, embarrassingly, Canada) against the controversial US plan to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel.
Several countries, including Palestine, stood up to declare that they will not bow to threats like Trump's. For the record, the eight counties that voted with the USA on the resolution were: Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo.
It remains to be seen whether Trump actually acts on his threats.
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