UpFront

UpFront special: Welcome to the Trump era

We debate what a Trump presidency means for the world, and Katrina vanden Heuvel reflects on Obama’s global impact.

Donald Trump is the new president of the United States. What will that mean for the US and for the rest of the world?

In this UpFront special, we looked at what the US and the world can expect from President Trump.

And in an interview with The Nation editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, we examine the foreign policy legacy President Barack Obama will leave for Trump.

President Trump: What now for the world?

Donald Trump’s win left some concerned about the future of the US, and the world.

But what can we expect from a Trump presidency? In a special recorded in November 2016, Robert Hormats, David Cay Johnston, Naomi Wolf and Hamid Dabashi debated the future of Trump’s administration.

“The real question before us now is: Does he govern the way he ran for the presidency?” asks Robert Hormats, who served as US under-secretary of state. “If he does, then we have major troubles ahead for us domestically and internationally.”

“I don’t think this is going to go well for the country,” says investigative journalist David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump. “Trump could have me swept off the streets … held incommunicado.”

“We have something called clause 1021 in a bill that was passed in 2012 [under Obama’s presidency] that allows this guy to hold any American indefinitely without charge or trial,” says Naomi Wolf, the author and a former political adviser to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. “I’m extremely troubled and frightened as an American, as someone who cares about democracy.”

“I can tell you – chapter and verse – since 9/11, I have not seen New York so frightened,” says Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor at Columbia University.

How will we remember Obama on the world stage?

Today marks not just the inauguration of Donald Trump, but the departure of Barack Obama. What legacy does he leave on the international stage?

In a special interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine, we asked her about the impact of Obama’s foreign policy decisions.

Obama was “more continuity than change”, vanden Heuvel tells UpFront host Mehdi Hasan.

“This country desperately needs a different foreign policy,” she says. “One in which the United States isn’t the policeman of the world. One that doesn’t make regime change an American foreign policy.

“I don’t think presidents need hubristic foreign policy doctrines. I do think ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not a bad one at this time. But unfortunately, I think the United States continues to do stupid stuff.”

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