IMAGINE a former US president having his fingerprints and mugshot taken! A New York grand jury just indicted Trump, making him the first American president to face criminal charges. The exact nature of the charges remains unclear Friday because the indictment remained under seal, but they stem from payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign by Trump’s lawyer to silence claims of hush money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.
Trump has decried the investigation as “the greatest witch hunt in history.” He is the front-runner for the 2024 election, and the Democrats are resorting to every means to derail his candidacy as the approval ratings of Biden and Kamala are hovering at 40 percent going into the election year. Ongoing challenges of domestic violence, inflation, bank runs, de-dollarization of the world and the Ukraine imbroglio continue to hound the Biden White House.
The last time a US president was embroiled in a sex scandal, then US President Bill Clinton allowed NATO to drop 15 tons of bombs on Serbia, which killed over 2,000 people (Western estimates) to 5,000 people (Yugoslavia’s estimate) with tens of thousands injured. The US called the 78 days bombings as “an air war justified as humanitarian intervention,” and NATO called the civilian deaths as “collateral damages.” The destruction led to over a hundred billion dollars in damages and plunged the poor country deeper into poverty.
Last week Serbian President Vucic said, “Serbia to forget NATO’s aggression only when Serbs are extinct” in response to US Ambassador to Belgrade Christopher Hill’s expressed hope that the Serbs “will set aside their grievances” caused by NATO’s aggression. The indiscriminate NATO bombings also struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which killed three Chinese.
Inflation continues to be a “long and bumpy fight,” according to Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, with the US releasing an additional $300 billion to backstop deposits to avert another financial crisis after SVB bank run. There’s now a heated debate between the Fed and Congress on whether aggressive interest hikes to lower inflation are worth cutting an estimated 2 million jobs. The US could also face default on its obligations as early as June if its debt ceiling isn’t lifted, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had warned Congress that her agency was resorting to “extraordinary measures.” This is not counting the costs of worldwide inflation, recession, hunger, and other humanitarian sufferings caused by the US printing even more money for war, and producing less, while bidding up commodities and devaluing other world currencies.
Source: Manila Times
