Trump's ultimate revenge fantasy hits a wall

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner with the leaders of the C5+1Central Asian countries in the East Room of the White House. (REUTERS)

Polls suggest President Donald Trump’s Republican Party will lose control of at least one house of Congress, but Bloomberg reports the vengeful president will likely take electoral defeat as a “cue to step up his interventions abroad, renewing his attacks on Iran, attempting to force Ukraine to bow to Russian demands, or revisiting global tariffs.”

“He could easily accelerate his agenda,” said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore. “Extremely angry” after the elections, “he will be looking for an opportunity to continue to show leadership in the way that he thinks is important, and so I do think that he will aggressively pursue his trade agenda.”

But Bloomberg reports there are indications that Trump’s power may already have peaked, not just at home — where voters are giving him a trouncing and neutering his rubber-stamp Congress — but also globally as a batch of recent elections have bounced his international allies pivoted the world away from global Trumpism.

“In the clearest repudiation of Trump’s influence, Brazilian voters last Sunday wrong-footed analysts and market expectations to rally behind veteran leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for an historic fourth term,” Bloomberg reports. “In doing so, they not only rebuffed right-wing candidate Flávio Bolsonaro — the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, known as the ‘Trump of the Tropic’s— but defied Trump’s push to assert U.S. dominance over Latin America. Lula campaigned on sovereignty, asserting that Brazil was nobody’s backyard.”

Flávio Bolsonaro ended up fleeing to Florida as Brazilian authorities ramped up efforts to investigation his allegations of corruption that Bolsonaro was hoping to halt with his election victory.

“In another rejection of MAGA-aligned populism, Serbian strongman Aleksandar Vucic — whose acquaintances include Donald Trump Jr. and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner — was unceremoniously ejected last weekend by voters wearied by his long years in office,” reports Bloomberg. “In his place, they elected a student-led group that tapped into public dismay at institutional corruption.”

And during a summit in Montreal this week, the European Union and Canada did an end-run around their estranged and Trumpified American allies and committed to “deepen ties in fields from defense and security to education,” according to Bloomberg.

“It’s no secret that the Trump administration has been quite a handful to deal with,” said Dino Djalal, a former Indonesian ambassador to the US.

Djalal predicted “a rebalancing of US politics” from Democrats’ projected gains in the House or Senate, which could ease international tensions and reduce the “climate of fear” global nations operate under while dealing with Trump.

Others, meanwhile, are simply hoping the midterms will bring some “respite.” This includes South Africa, which Trump has accused of waging war against its white residents, without evidence. Trump even shut the nation of this year’s US-hosted Group of 20 meetings, despite it being a permanent member since it ended apartheid.

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