Trump’s
team fears climate change differences with Prince Charles could flare
up in state visit
Ben Riley-Smith,
assistant political editor
28 JANUARY 2017 •
10:00PM
Donald Trump’s
aides have raised concerns that a likely meeting with Prince Charles
during his state visit could backfire because of the pair’s
differences on climate change.
The US President’s
team is understood to have worries that the American press could jump
on any difference in comments on the environment.
There are also
concerns that copycat protests based on those in Washington DC on the
day of his inauguration could be seen when he comes to Britain later
this year.
Mrs May presented an
invitation from the Queen for a state visit during her trip to the
White House, which Mr Trump accepted - though dates are yet to be
announced.
While the schedule
for the visit is still being arranged, it is expected Mr Trump will
meet with Prince Charles as well as other members of the Royal
Family.
Prince Charles this
week called for action on climate change to avoid “potentially
devastating consequences” while Mr Trump is a known sceptic.
Sources close Mr
Trump and UK Government figures told this newspaper there were
concerns that any joint appearance could see the pair questioned
about climate change.
An ally of Mr Trump
told this newspaper: “They have different views [on climate
change]. Prince Charles would probably rather meet Al Gore.”
A senior Whitehall
source said that Mr Trump’s team had expressed fears that “a
dispute will be played up massively” by the press and overshadow
the trip.
However they played
down the significance of the concerns, saying the pair may just meet
for a “handshake” and private talks.
Security services
are understood to be already scoping out how Mr Trump could visit the
Churchill War Rooms and Balmoral as the schedule begins to take
shape.
There are worries in
Trump’s camp that large scale protests could blight the visit,
given public concern in Britain about his more controversial
policies.
"There are
concerns that protests could get out of control like in Washington
DC, when there were pockets of violence and damaging of property,"
a friend of Mr Trump said.
"There would
have to be some controls [in Britain]. But that is not unusual. World
leaders visit Britain every couple of months."
Trump’s America, where even park employees have become enemies of the state
Sarah Kendzior
Brutal
policies accompanied by suppression of the facts are sure signs of an
autocracy
Sunday 29 January
2017 00.05 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/29/trump-america-parks-employees-enemies-of-state
Last Tuesday, for a
few hours, Badlands National Park defied presidential orders. “Today,
the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any
time in the last 650,000 years #climate,” it tweeted. The account
went on to discuss ocean acidity, carbon dioxide and the founding
mission of the century-old National Parks Service, which included an
obligation to “leave [the parks] unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations”.
In Trump’s
America, where national parks are forbidden from communicating
through Twitter, this constitutes an act of radical subversion. This
is not the America I was living in a week ago.
Following a pitiful
inaugural turnout, Trump, the most unpopular president ever to take
office, issued an unprecedented order, stating that US institutions
including the National Parks Service, the Department of Agriculture,
and the Environmental Protection Agency were forbidden to
independently communicate to the public.
The diktat was in
part a reaction to tweeted photographs showing the discrepancy
between the massive crowds that attended President Obama’s 2009
inauguration and Trump’s, one of which was retweeted by the
National Parks Service’s primary account. The NPS was forced to
apologise to Trump and delete the tweet. The Badlands followed suit.
“Rogue” national parks accounts soon appeared, offering
scientific facts in anonymity.
Trump’s rise to
power was enabled by elite denial and blind faith in eroding
institutions. He would not win the primary, pundits said; he could
not win the general, they proclaimed; and once he was in, politicians
assured us, checks and balances could keep his authoritarian
proclivities at bay.
What Americans have
learned is that our system of checks and balances is so weak that
even parks employees can become enemies of the state. They are
learning their rights as they lose them, grieving for what they once
took for granted. Fear is matched by incredulity that hundreds of
years of imperfect democracy could cede into autocracy with such
ease. Trump’s win was followed by debate over what it means to live
in a “post-facts” world. This was a fatuous debate: if facts did
not matter, then Trump and his team, whose threats of punishment and
litigation long preceded his official lock on power, would not work
so hard to suppress them. The idea of a fact always mattered – it
simply had to be the Trump administration’s facts that counted.
Trump’s adviser, Kellyanne Conway, made this blatant last weekend
when she stated that the administration would proffer “alternative
facts” that justified its political aims.
For Trump,
“alternative facts” are a balm to his fragile ego. He has claimed
record turnout at his inauguration and insisted his talk at the CIA
brought more applause than Peyton Manning winning the Super Bowl.
This is alarming as it shows a president either not in full control
of his faculties or so narcissistic that creating an alternate
reality to serve his ego overrides his desire to serve the public.
But the president’s ceaseless need for adoration is nothing
compared to the brutality of his policies, which require suppression
and manipulation of facts in order for them to be carried out.
It is hard to create
a convincing alternative reality in the social media era, when it can
be deconstructed by the public as it is built. But the Trump
administration’s actions are less about the power of narrative than
a narrative of power. This is something dissidents in authoritarian
regimes have always known, as their documentation of daily life is
first rebutted with state fabrications and then suppressed by threat
and force, as employees of the EPA and the NPS learned last week.
America has become a
country of involuntary dissidents, where those who seek to stay
employed respond to illusions with allusions. (“If you’re part of
a group that’s paid to applaud, you’re a ‘claqueur’,”
Merriam-Webster dictionary slyly tweeted after Trump’s CIA visit,
which allegedly included an entourage who clapped on command.) The
media are “the opposition” and should “keep its mouth shut”,
according to Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon. But in a
digital age, where it is increasingly hard to classify who counts as
“the media”, anyone who seeks to inform the public is potentially
under attack.
In one week, the
Trump administration has proposed policy changes that threaten to
cause suffering to masses of Americans and destroy the post-Second
World War international order. These include gutting funding to
federal agencies that protect everything from civil rights to the
arts to economic development; stripping millions of citizens of
health insurance; threatening to withdraw the US from the UN and Nato
and end sanctions on Russia despite Russia’s continued
authoritarian imperialism; reinstating torture and black sites;
banning refugees from several Muslim majority countries and
constructing a wall against Mexico that will initially be paid for
with taxpayer money.
These moves feel
shocking and predictable: shocking, because they are being accepted
so blithely by those with power to stop them – both Democrats and
Republicans are approving some cabinet members who they concur are
corrupt or grossly unqualified – but predictable, because they were
part of the platform of Trump’s campaign, and both the kleptocratic
payout and apathy about the suffering these moves will cause are in
keeping with behaviour Trump has displayed his entire life.
As scholars of
authoritarianism have long advised, believe the autocrat when he
speaks. The problem is that too few Americans believed in the concept
of an American autocrat. Pundits ignored the threat of Trump enacting
these policies through executive power. Enjoy hindsight while you
can, Americans, the administration of “alternative facts” may
rewrite your regrets as applause.
While the firehose
of dramatic policy changes is intended to blast Americans into
submission, there is one issue where the administration may find
bipartisan challenge and that is the issue of the environment, in
particular, the national parks. Though Trump first targeted NPS
because it controls the public area where his small inauguration
crowd gathered, he did so after Congress proposed to give away park
land, which contributes an estimated $646bn each year in economic
stimulus from recreation, 6.1m jobs, but most importantly, a core
part of America’s identity and pride.
Few things bring
Americans of differing political views together like love for the
national parks. It is hard to find an everyday American whose dream
includes having our purple mountain majesties and fruited plains sold
off to the highest bidder. Both Democratic and Republican presidents
have protected the national parks; even Reagan, the notorious
opponent of big government, passed laws that protected the parks,
along with environment regulations. That Trump’s first orders
include suppression of information about the environment and
prohibiting scientists and parks employees to speak suggests he sees
America as little more than territory to strip down for parts.
In order to profit
from national lands, he must discredit and silence those most likely
to protect them: environmentalists, scientists and parks employees.
That is why such a benign and beloved institution as the national
parks became an object of administrative wrath.
Losing the parks
would be a tragedy and it is a sign of the administration’s malice
that it seems relatively minor only because other threats are so
dire: destabilisation in the international order that may lead to
world war; severe rupture in the national economy due to the
elimination of federal positions and the Affordable Care Act; and the
potential use of nuclear weapons. (Trump is the first US president to
express enthusiasm for using nuclear weapons; as a result of this,
nationalist extremism and Trump’s objection to research on climate
change, the Doomsday Clock, a scientific measure of how close Earth
is to annihilation, was moved to reflect we are closer to destruction
than ever.)
The fact that Trump
targeted the parks is significant in that it displays total disregard
for public opinion. His administration is not even making a pretence
of assuaging the public that it is acting in their interest, as even
authoritarian states often do. Instead, it is acting quickly and
brutally, leaving fundamental questions about citizens’ health,
safety and national security unanswered.
America was a
superpower; we were always big and loud and brazen. As an autocracy,
it seems, we shall be so as well.
Sarah Kendzior is an
author and journalist• Comments will be opened later
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