Viskupic: Trump Will Have to Balance on Knife's Edge
(TA3, V politike, November 13)
New US president-elect Republican Donald Trump will have to balance on a knife’s edge if he doesn’t want to split the country into two irreconcilable camps, said OLaNO-NOVA MP Jozef Viskupic on TA3’s discussion show ‘V politike’ (In Politics) on Sunday.
“He [Trump] is a non-standard politician. We will face an interesting period due to him investing faith in the people who want change. However, he’s already making cuts on his pre-election promises; the Clintons are supposed to become a part of his broader team. These are things that couldn’t have been said during the campaign. Now comes the sobering up,” noted Viskupic, adding that Trump’s victory wasn’t that much of a surprise to him. “We’re witnessing an era defined by the failure of elites. There’s an overwhelming persuasion that the elites have detached themselves from reality,” he said.
Jaroslav Paska (the Slovak National Party), however, considers the result to be surprising, as public opinion polls were showing something entirely different. “It appears that some of Trump’s statements have already disappeared from his website; he has probably started correcting his views. However, certain groups in the US, such as Hollywood and some businesses, won’t be helping him to fulfil his programme. He’ll be under severe criticism. He won’t succeed in being the president of all citizens; the opposition is resolved. His attempt at making peace is a nice gesture but it probably won’t generate any response from the other side,” thinks Paska.
Martin Klus (Freedom and Solidarity) warned that the majority of the American public has chosen Hillary Clinton to be their president, but due to the US electoral system Trump has prevailed. “He has already reassessed his position on health care after his first meeting with incumbent US President Barack Obama; and I think there will be more of such concessions. Many of Trump’s promises can’t be fulfilled and even if he tried, he could scare off some of his voters,” said Klus, adding that Trump will become a conventional politician and thus will engender feelings in many voters that they have been hoodwinked. They will search for an even more radical candidate then.
According to Martin Fedor (Most-Hid), the most important thing isn’t who has won the election but how it has been won. “It disturbs me the most; even terrifies me. There have been failures on multiple levels. Citizens were engulfed with so much information that they couldn’t figure out what was true and what wasn’t,” he stressed.
Fedor also thinks that the division of society after the election will be great. “The key word is unpredictability. No one can say what kinds of decisions the Trump administration will be making,” he stated. Fedor thinks that politicians have started to respond to people’s lowest urges and thus don’t address the real problems. “Politicians have begun adapting too much to what they see on social networks,” he added.
