JUDY V KUBLALSINGH

FOR FOUR years Donald Trump unapologetically attacked the lynchpins of US hegemony, earning him unprecedented hatred from the Washington establishment and the adoration of a growing populace resentful of unbridled economic and political power wielded by corrupt Washington officialdom.

Here are some reasons to hate or love Trump.

Nineteen years after the US deployed troops to Afghanistan, with troops in Iraq for 17 years and thousands deployed to dozens of countries, as Trump moved to remove US troops from Afghanistan and Syria, calling Syria a land of 'sand and death,' official Washington was livid. The outrage bordered on hysteria, with the press core saying that Trump hated the military; no celebration as you would think, with the prospect of Americans out of harm's way.

What mainstream media will never tell you is that nearly half of senior Defence Department officials are inextricably linked to military contracts. Weapons manufacturers pressured the Pentagon to override the decision of the president on Afghanistan. Trump's calling out of the defence industry was unprecedented. 'Top people at the Pentagon want to fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs, the planes, everything else…they're happy.'

On the heels of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's horrific eight-year assault on the Middle East causing a mass exodus of millions, a refugee crisis and the killing of millions, deep state warmongerers, plying for war in Kosovo and Serbia, the Middle East and North Africa, Syria and Afghanistan, were stopped in their tracks.

Trump would fight trade wars for America, reduce oppressive regulations to incentivise companies, focus on rebuilding the American manufacturing base, and making America great again, not regime change wars abroad. His forte is trade, business and manufacturing, not genocidal wars.

International and local mainstream media which were largely silent on these atrocities had their job to do from the moment Trump announced his candidacy. Trump comes from construction, the kind that changed the landscape of New York in the 80s and 90s. From part European lineage, also marrying outside, brash, tough-talking, outsider Trump was an immediate, dire threat to Washington swamp establishment. He called out the media, "the most dishonest people on the planet,' acknowledging upfront the concentrated capital in the hands of their corporations and elites to which Washington is begotten.

Trump's challenge of US intelligence agencies was also unprecedented, exposing glaring chinks in FBI and CIA armour, showing up that compromised estate for what it is, begotten to big business and politicians.

He renegotiated global trade agreements (NAFTA, he rejected TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership) which favoured large global monopolists and which had over time debilitated the working and middle classes and US small and medium businesses. He negotiated a more equitable funding of NATO. He moved the US towards energy independence, towards mining energy at