There is only one story in the news right now, and that is the “travel ban”. President Trump has done that extraordinary thing: he has united the newspapers and broadcasters of the world against him. Quite an achievement! Will he be bothered? I very much doubt it. In fact the more the protests continue, the more the people who voted for President Trump in the first place will feel vindicated.
President Trump, a very rich man from New York, got to where he is today by posing as the champion of the underdog, in particularly the white working class in America’s Rust Belt. It was those states, let us remember, that won him the presidency, thanks to the way the electoral college works. The scale of the protests on behalf of those who are now banned from entering the United States will not impress the people of Pennsylvania, Michigan or Ohio. When their jobs were disappearing, when their factories were closing, who protested then? These protests will merely serve to underline the appeal of ‘America First’: people will protest on behalf of the rights of non-Americans, but will they lift a finger for their fellow citizens in the flyover states? Not they!
