Brendan Hoban: The White House is now a moral-free- zone                  

Western People 25.3.2025

When the history of the present time is written historians will agree that the key change that took place in the second Trump presidency will be the dramatic change in the position of the United States of America in relation to the rest of the free world.
From 1949 and the founding of NATO to 2025, the USA, the richest country on the planet and the financial power-house of the world was guided by a series of American presidents who consistently extended an umbrella of protection over more vulnerable nations threatened by any nuclear power.

When, under Donald Trump, that established order was up-ended by an infamous vote in the United Nations in which the USA supported Russia, a new world order was ushered in.  

Why did this happen? It is, of course, because that new order is fundamentally disordered by the glaring lack of a moral compass.

In a recent issue of The Tablet, Nicholas Boyle, a fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, wrote that the voters of the United States had chosen to give supreme executive power to ‘a convicted criminal, a multiple bankrupt and incorrigible liar who sought to falsify election results, urged a mob intent on murder to invade the nation’s seat of government to take revenge on those who have persecuted him for his crimes or declared the obvious: that he is a person wholly unsuited for public office.’ That’s why it happened. It was a democratic vote but the damage was self-inflicted. The voters have no one to blame but themselves. After a list of presidents, with differing personalities and varied political objectives but all with a sense of moral responsibility for the office, Trump represents a very different perspective, not just a decline in moral rectitude but, apparently, a moral-free zone.

The Trump presidency represents an historic low in American history, as those who see the probability of enormous damage being done by Trump struggle to voyage around a figure whose need to be liked and told he is wonderful unmasks an extraordinary narcissism.

Its predictability was seen in his encounter with Keith Starmer, the UK prime minister, who at a crucial moment whipped an invitation from King Charles out of his pocket as Trump almost salivated before him in gratitude. Micheál Martin adopted a marginally less dramatic stance in nodding his head furiously on the few occasions that agreement between them was in danger of breaking out.

In all such encounters, Trump displays a childish need for affirmation – ‘I think the Irish love Trump’, he told Martin at one stage, ­as usual getting things exactly wrong – apart from when he bullies and berates people while attempting to cast himself in the role of victim.

What is truly amazing now, apart from the lack of any sense of morality or responsibility in the American political landscape, is the almost complete absence of shame and honour. The Trump bandwagon, in its varied pathetic depictions, must be a source of gratuitous embarrassment to those of even moderate discrimination. The complete capitulation of the Republican party (with the honourable exception of Mitch McConnell) and the main American media, and embarrassingly for American Catholics, the high percentage of Catholic votes that delivered the White House to Trump serve as not just improbable but unforgivable. Reflection on those realities must be a difficult sweet to suck on.

As usual, social media can hit the spot. One such comment that indicated the depths to which the American political system has plumbed and their own sense of themselves has declined was a poster with the following obvious but insightful comment:

AFTER 9/11, 90 COUNTRIES HELPED OUT THE USA AND NOT ONE

ASKED FOR A REFUND OR FOR USA’S NATURAL MINERALS IN PAYMENT.

Think about it. The richest country in the world is asking for its money back from Ukraine even though it was never regarded as a loan and no one, including the USA, expected that it would be returned. In any credible jurisdiction, trying to re-write in retrospect the terms of  such an agreement would be ‘laughed out of court’. 

It is indicative of how much Trump has compromised the spirit and the reputation of the USA that no credible voice has raised any objection to what is, effectively in his treatment of Ukraine, bullying a country that has fought for three years to withstand an invasion that has been almost universally condemned. And, worst of all, to use the distressed condition of Ukraine and its people as a way of helping themselves to (that is, stealing) resources that are badly needed for the future of that country. Where, where, where are the voices in America that should be crying ‘Shame! Shame! Shame!’?

Compare the recent mugging of President Zelensky in the Oval Office and its fall-out. It is clear that the situation was wholly contrived – complete with a hanger-on taking exception to Zelensky’s suit, vice-president Vance in a supportive abusive role and Trump wagging his finger in Zelensky’s face  – in an effort to bully him into submission. Instinctively, Europe’s reaction was to reach out to Zelensky with Keith Starmer inviting him to London and warmly welcoming him with President Macron of France and over 20 other European countries similarly on his side.

Starmer, in particular – despite having to grovel to some extent when meeting Trump in loyalty to his electorate (as Micheál Martin had to do too) was clear on why he was supporting Trump. He told the House of Commons: ‘For two reasons; one, it’s the right thing to do; and two, it’s in our own interest’.

In particular, Starmer’s clear moral voice is a refreshing change from the winter of discontent and obfuscation that the morally lightweight Trump represents for America and for the world.

Nowhere was his lack of moral fibre more evident than in the grotesquely embarrassing display of Trump and Conor McGregor in the Oval Office.

Birds of a feather. Both recently coming out on the wrong side of a civil sexual assault case. Both living in a place where there is no shame. It is the stuff of nightmares.