DONALD TRUMP

Trump is more than just a president; he is also a mirror of the metastasis of a cancer in society, a virus in a suit that reflects everything broken in both American and global politics. 

Leadership is not a vibe. Neither is it supposed to be a reward for winning arguments on television or weaponizing anger on social media. Leadership is a sacred contract between power and responsibility. When that contract is broken, people suffer, systems collapse, and innocents die.

Donald Trump’s rise and reign have been defined by the glorification of spectacle over substance, cruelty over compassion, and corruption over courage. He is not a leader in so much as he is a virus injected into the veins of democracy; a walking manifestation of what political theorist Max Weber called the shift from the ethics of conviction to the ethics of responsibility. 

And yet Trump does not even believe in responsibility. He believes in the immunity that power provides.

Melania, Epstein, and Trump

Let us start with something deceptively simple. The man who introduced Trump to Melania was not just a friend. Paolo Zampolli was a modeling agent, a businessman with deep ties to international networks that blended fashion, sex, diplomacy, and money. 

Zampolli sponsored Melania’s visa to the US, he provided her apartment, and he built the portfolio that got her noticed. He also sat on the board of TerraMar, the so-called ocean conservation nonprofit created by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted for her role in trafficking underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s global sex operation.

Though her modeling career was modest by industry standards, by 2001, she had obtained a green card under the EB1 category, colloquially known as the Einstein visa. This designation is meant for Nobel laureates, Olympic medalists, or individuals of truly extraordinary ability. Not lingerie models. The message was clear: Connections beat merit. Always.

Meanwhile, Trump's buddy Epstein was running a global operation that trafficked girls across borders with the help of the powerful. Prince Andrew. Bill Clinton. Alan Dershowitz. Jean-Luc Brunel. The list is long and redacted. 

While Trump headed to the White House, Epstein wasn't so fortunate: he went to jail, where he died suspiciously. And despite overwhelming evidence of his crimes and his high-octane accomplices, surveillance footage vanished, witnesses were silenced, and files were sealed. 

US officials, including Bill Barr, Pam Bondi, and Dan Bongino, shifted from demanding justice to pretending the Epstein client list never existed.

Political scientist Robert Putnam warned of vertical networks of patronage that erode public trust. These are systems where power flows not through transparent institutions, but through personal deals, favors, and quiet threats. 

Trump did not create this system. He simply lived by its rules, perfected its language, and marketed its exploitation as cleverness and strength. It’s a system where everything is transactional, loyalty is bought, laws are optional, and justice is delayed until it can be buried. 

In the end, Trump's charities were exposed as scams, and his businesses were fined for fraud. But Trump is unstoppable. While his fixer Epstein was dying in prison, Trump became president. Today, his cabinet is filled with grifters. 

That is not leadership; it is organized criminality hiding behind a presidential seal.

Why Kenya Should Pay Attention

This is not just an American story. It is a warning to the world. 

Kenya has seen the same story in a different accent. We, too, have watched men rise to power on the backs of tribal loyalty and media spin. We, too, have excused corruption under the guise of “development.” We, too, have allowed institutions to be captured, courts to be threatened, and public money to disappear while citizens clap for ethnic victory.

Look at our elections. They have become contests of personality and ethnicity, not of competence. 

Look at our coalitions. They are not built on vision, but on elite survival. When President Trump laughed off COVID, so did many of our leaders. When he called climate change a hoax, it delayed action that would have saved crops in Kitui and forests in Kakamega. When he used state power to bully the press and pardon criminals, it gave cover to others watching closely in Nairobi, Kampala, and Lagos.

Political theorist Francis Fukuyama warned of neopatrimonialism, where formal institutions exist, but real power is exercised through informal networks, family ties, and private deals. 

In Kenya, neopatrimonialism is not a theory. It is a lived reality. It is why the same faces rotate through power regardless of performance, why political scandals are forgotten, not resolved, and why cartels survive every regime.

Trump’s defenders love to say politics is dirty on all sides. But this is not about sides. This is about lines. There are lines you do not cross. 

For example, you do not empower predators, you do not erase victims, and you do not put the state at the service of your ego and call it patriotism.

The Trump presidency crossed those lines, knowing that institutions would fold rather than fight. And the price was paid not just in America, but globally in the emboldening of authoritarians, in the rollback of women’s rights, and in the deracination of truth itself.

This is why the selection of a president is not a game. It is not a vibe. It is not a tribal coronation. It is not a marketing exercise for Instagram reels and TikTok soundbites. 

It is a moral test and a judgment on whether we want to be governed by crooks or by people with a conscience.

Leadership is sacred. And when you hand it to the unworthy, you do not just get bad governance, you get blood on your hands. 

Trump has happened. His baleful impact will resonate for generations.

What happens next, here and elsewhere in the world, depends on whether we dare to remember.

Gem Musings is a seasoned International Relations and Public Affairs Strategist with extensive experience in global diplomacy, communication, and policy analysis.