Fall of a president, demise of a nation? Trump’s troubled presidency and America’s self-inflicted wounds

By Richard B. Muhammad and Charlene Muhammad The Final Call @TheFinalCall | Last updated: Oct 28, 2019 - 11:31:03 PM

The United States is in a very critical moment as the impeachment inquiry by Congress and public opinion turns against President Donald Trump. But is this signaling the downfall of a president or the beginning of the collapse of a country?

“I think that we have arrived at a time in our country where we see the most powerful regions of the government in open conflict with one another such that for spiritual or religious people, it makes us to think about the scriptures, and the scriptures ask the question if Satan cast out Satan, how can his kingdom stand?” said Student Minister Demetric Muhammad, a Nation of Islam author and researcher based in Memphis, Tenn.

“For Black people, we know that the federal government has always interfered and worked to sabotage our efforts of liberation … so in the Black community, what we’re witnessing in terms of corruption, in terms of bad government, is not something that’s new to us. I think that what is new is the fact that it’s being televised. I think what’s new is the fact that it is so severe and that we appear to have a president who has become an embodiment of uncouth, immoral, insensitive and inhumane conduct and it’s being publicly and widely distributed all over the world,” he said. “Blacks have never seen the White power structure openly at odds with one another as they are now, so it’s very intriguing.

“Who would have thought that the big power (America) would suffer such disgrace in this day and time? This is to teach you and me, Black brother, that the great power (America) is becoming weak and she is falling. I say, Black brother, join onto your own kind. Come follow me, for the world that you and I have known, will soon be known no more,” wrote the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, patriarch of the Nation of Islam in “The Fall of America,” first published in 1973. He wrote that America was doomed for destruction foretold of in the Bible and the Holy Qur’an, the Muslim book of scripture. America was number one on God’s list to be destroyed because of her murder and mistreatment of Blacks and the Native Americans.

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan has regularly repeated this warning and forecast early in the Trump presidency that the hotel magnate could take the country to hell on a rocket ship. He has warned division inside the country, attacks on the Congress, the media and the courts are weakening America.

“America you have to answer and you have cooked a hell of a meal for others but now you are going to have to sit down and eat what you cooked for others because it’s all coming back to you,” Min. Farrakhan said during a major address marking the 24th anniversary of the Million Man March in October.

“The interesting thing about these scriptures and the Babylonian persecution of the Children of Israel, corrupting them, taking away their names and religion, Nebuchadnezzar once had the heart of a human being and the prophesy said that heart of a human being would be taken out of him and he would have the heart of an actual beast,” said the Minister in another message earlier this year.

“I don’t know what that means to our president but there’s a heart there that in some cases is not human. But the thing about Nebuchadnezzar was the dream was that his nation or government was like a huge tree with branches and fruit. God ordered it be cut down to just a stump and the root of it was banded around by iron to keep it from growing,” he continued.

“But under that condition of loss, Nebuchadnezzar’s reasoning began to come back, the heart of a beast was beginning to come out of him, and become human again. I say to President Trump, God is punishing America for what she’s done to Black, Brown and Red people, particularly the Black that God is after and you won’t let them go.”

Hypocrisy, corruption in government

Dr. Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, pointed to the hypocrisy in politics as another troubling sign for America.

“The reason I say that is that any one of 15 or 20 different things that have occurred would have either resulted in serious censure of President Obama and / or immediate impeachment proceedings,” Dr. Daniels told The Final Call.

Congress has been investigating allegations that President Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate the son of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden in an effort to damage his political foe and inject a foreign power into American elections.

A whistleblower’s complaint that Trump was attempting to use his office for personal political gain during a July 25 phone conversation with Ukraine’s president led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open the impeachment inquiry.

“There’s incredible hypocrisy on the part of a substantial number of people, particularly the Republican Party, but not only the Republican Party,” said Dr. Daniels. “When you see the polling, these supporters of Trump are true believers, so anything he does, they’re prepared to accept and to rationalize and that becomes the danger to any democracy, to the degree that you have people who are so fanatically committed to a person whose politics are racist, xenophobic, homophobic and any number of other things. That’s a danger to the very fabric of any society and of course this society is incomplete, it’s flawed, it’s imperfect already and so this is a dark moment in the history of this country.”

When Republicans stormed a private impeachment hearing on Oct. 23, it was about attacking the process, not so much about negating what was being said, Dr. Daniels said.

“They’re willing to do that—circle around the person—because he is willing, for all of his flaws and ugliness, to advance their right wing negative, and I will say immoral, agenda, and so they’re prepared to look the other way. But it’s starting to get to the point where it is so ugly, so transparent, so totally vile that even his most staunch supporters are finding it ever-increasingly difficult to,” he added.

He also feels it’s important for Blacks to see the hypocrisy and try to “cleanse the system,” at least in part, by voting Mr. Trump out of office in 2020.

And, he added, “advance a Black agenda that is visionary, that is about really justice for people of African descent and justice for all oppressed people, which is consistent with the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and of course the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

“We are in a world that is falling. It will soon be going up in flames. In Berlin, Germany, the cold war between the East and West will soon erupt into a hot war. It will never be settled in peace. East and West Germany must and will fight it out with all the deadly weapons that the war-scientists have planned and perfected for the final showdown,” wrote the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in his prophetic text “The Fall of America.”

Mr. Daniels described the current political climate as fraught with danger as President Trump continues to inject racial overtones into the House impeachment inquiry. On Oct. 22, the president comparing the Democratic-led investigation into his handling of U.S. policy toward Ukraine to a “lynching.”

Mr. Trump told reporters people are “angry” because “this isn’t a takedown of the president; this is a takedown of the Republican Party.”

In reality, said Min. Demetric Muhammad, America could be headed towards a civil war, particularly because President Trump has tremendous appeal among a very large base of support in White America.

“And as he famously stated, ‘I could shoot somebody in the middle of Times Square and I would not lose any of my followers.’ And his followers have proven to be that loyal, so I think that is perhaps one of the reasons why the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may have been rather guarded and kind of dragged into impeachment proceedings, because I think she understands that there’s a line at which you don’t really want to cross when you have a president that is this popular. You’re not just up against him. You’re up against his followers, and he has not really lost any followers throughout this,” said Demetric Muhammad.

The only people that are falling away from President Trump are establishment Republicans, not his base comprised of many working class people in White America, he continued.

The allegations leading to the impeachment inquiry reflect a warning delivered by Minister Farrakhan in his pivotal book, “A Torchlight for America.”

In the chapter titled “America on Her Deathbed,” Minister Farrakhan wrote, “When the desire for the realization of self-interest becomes excessive, the first casualty in this struggle is ‘truth.’ ”

The leaders in the society, in their struggle to achieve inordinate self-interests, engage in hiding the light of truth from the American people, said the Minister. Without truth the American people are left paralyzed, unable to constructively address their problems, he said.

“Eventually, their only responses will be to react destructively because their very lives are at peril’s door, and they know not why they are in this condition nor how to save themselves. So the country could be facing revolution because, in the main, the government and leadership has hidden the truth and will not or does not have a solution for the suffering and the root problems of the people of this country,” Min. Farrakhan wrote.

For decades the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan have warned America would crumble from within, which is now taking place. Her dollar is falling, and her military might being weakened, as the two great men prophesied.

“America is falling. She is now losing the power and authority that she was enjoying in foreign lands. Her fall is very visible. Wherever her authority has been exercised the people are now crying out in one voice, ‘Leave us, leave us; American’s go home to America.’ The citizens of other countries are telling the American citizens, ‘Leave us.’ America no longer has friends,” wrote the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in “The Fall of America.”

That scenario is playing out in Syria as a diplomatic debacle took place with the president essentially approving a Turkish invasion of territory held by the Kurds, an American ally. After his blunder, which the president has refused to admit, Mr. Trump pressed Turkey to end its assault. There was a brief cessation of hostilities, but the situation remains volatile. And Kurds, who lost thousands acting as America’s proxy army against Isis, the radical Islamic group in Syria, pelted Americans with vegetables as they withdrew. Iraq said U.S. troops could enter their country for a brief stay on the way to a pullout from the region. American troops would not be allowed to stay in Iraq, said the officials.

Dr. Sekou Franklin, an author and associate professor of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University, supports the Trump impeachment inquiry and believes he will be impeached. A conviction in the Senate may be harder, because it would require Republican support, he noted.

“Will he be convicted in the Senate, because you need a super majority in the Senate to convict—sixty or more people to vote—that’s going to be the harder, the higher barrier to climb, and I’m not entirely sure that that’s going to happen, because you’re going to need some Republicans to support that,” he said.

“I do think that Trump will double and triple down the deeper that we get into this impeachment inquiry, and I think that he’ll do all that he can to polarize the electorate, including polarizing around race as a way to drum up right wing opposition, particularly among racial conservatives, to his impeachment. So, I do think that things will become more polarizing racially as we move forward,” Dr. Franklin told The Final Call.

“So, I do think that we’re in a period of time in which we’re just going to have to buckle down. It’s not going to get any better. I don’t know if the country’s going to explode. I’m not into this like race war and talks like that, but I think it’s not going to get any better,” admitted Dr. Franklin.

(Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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