IT is commonplace today in the American and European press to criticise President Trump as moving in the direction of authoritarianism.

When other presidents and the European prime minister went straight into the authoritarian sea, there were no cacophonous reverberations in the American and European press and in Western academia.

We are witnessing the spectacle of the American media, Western academia and European leaders focusing on every policy decision of Mr. Trump and the emotional and academic outcry are about things Mr Trump is doing that have been done before right in the US and in Europe.

Let’s start with Greenland: Mr Trump says he wants that Danish territory. There is a mountainous exclamation against that. But previous US presidents said they wanted a piece of Cuba named Guantanamo and they took it. Guantanamo is part of Cuba. Then previous American presidents set up a huge prison on Guantanamo where the accused have been languishing in those jails for over 20 years without charges in violation of international laws. It was not Mr Trump who started that.

Mr Trump is getting roasted for deporting illegal immigrants. The British Prime Minister Theresa May did worse than Trump. So far there is no evidence that Trump has deported any America-born citizen. In what has now gone down in history as the Windrush Scandal, Ms May began mass deportation of Caribbean citizens of which a large number were in fact British citizens.

It was not Mr Trump that invented two foreign policy decisions of which one is “rendition,” the other is “black sites.” In the former, American and European governments, secretly kidnapped terror suspects from around the world. This was called “rendition.” The suspects were then held in unknown sites in various European countries where they were tortured and ended up in Guantanamo. These present and past European leaders are now berating Mr Trump, conveniently forgetting the cruel things they did that no democracy should have tolerated, much less accept.

In 2013, under President Obama, the plane carrying the Bolivian President was intercepted and forced to land in Austria where the governments of Spain, Portugal and France refused permission for the plane to land. These governments did not recognise that a plane carrying the president of a country is bound by international law governing diplomatic immunity. Mr Obama ordered the plane to be intercepted because he believed that it was carrying Edward Snowden.

Mr Trump spent four years as president and did not deport the number of persons that President Obama did. Under President Obama, more whistleblowers were arrested than all the combined presidents before Obama’s presidency. Under previous presidents, the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and was involved in the overthrow of the Libyan president, Muammar Kaddafi.

The US remained in those countries under President Obama and Biden. It was under President Trump that the decision to pull out of Afghanistan was made. Mr Biden later pulled out of that country after a stay of 20 years. In his first tenure, Mr Trump did not invade any country around the globe.

In his first term in power, Mr Trump was greeted with widespread protest action spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement. There were no life-threatening injuries received by any of the protesters. Across the ocean, President Macron faced similar demonstrations. Police action against the French protestors resulted in widespread injuries, including loss of sight and limbs among the demonstrators.

Mr Trump is being lampooned as a dictator by the American and European media, but the European Union has a strict criterion for entry into the union – free and fair elections. Yet in this so-called bastion of democracy, one of the EU countries – Romania – has banned a candidate from contesting the upcoming election after the first round of voting showed he was the front-runner.

The reason for the ejection was because he was a pro-Russia candidate. If that scandal had occurred in any Third World country, that nation would have been put on a sanction list. Vice-President Vance went to Europe and pointed out to EU leaders that what Romania did was undemocratic. Yet these very EU leaders are pointing to President Trump as a nascent autocrat.

Finally, in which country anti-Israeli protestors and university students denouncing genocide in Gaza were arrested and expelled from their universities? It was the US of course, but Trump was not the president.

In the UK, Canada and Germany, the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” was made illegal. Germany went on a rampage victimising anti-Israeli protestors that caused Guyanese columnist, Ashma John who lives in Germany, to refer to Nazi-like secret deportations. Come to think of it – which politician from the Biden administration and which European politician has the moral authority to criticise President Trump?

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.