Donald Trump wasn’t greeted in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum today just by protesters, attendees walking out on his speech and European business people suspicious of his “America First” agenda, but also by the echoes from a speech this morning by George Soros, who called the American president a “danger to the world.”
George Soros says the Trump administration is a “danger to the world” https://t.co/27DgMD3HX7 pic.twitter.com/h5zqn3xC6B
— Bloomberg (@business) January 25, 2018
The Republicans may use the very name of George Soros to scare their children and raise donations from the deplorables, but the 87-year-old Hungarian-American businessman deserves credit for building a major hedge fund and putting his fortune where his heart is – to support Democratic candidates and a progressive worldview that put forth by his Open Society Foundation.
Soros did not spare the rod as he gave Trump a brutal verbal spanking.
“The United States is set on a course towards nuclear war by refusing to accept that (North) Korea has become a nuclear power,” Soros said in a rare public appearance.
“This creates a strong incentive for North Korea to develop its nuclear capacity with all possible speed,” added Soros, “which in turn may induce the United States to use is nuclear superiority pre-emptively, in effect to start a nuclear war to prevent a nuclear war, obviously a self-contradictory strategy.”
Watch George Soros speak in this clip.
George Soros considers the Trump administration a "DANGER" to the world and a temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020 or even sooner. -Davos18 pic.twitter.com/m8EI2mwVLb
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Soros compared Trump to authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“In the United States,” added Soros, “President Trump would like to establish a mafia state, but can’t.”
He said Trump, like Putin, wants to suppress individual rights.
What stops him from doing what Putin has done in Russia, explained Soros, is America’s constitution, institutions and it’s “vibrant civil society” which will not allow it.
While much of the money Soros spends through his foundation has gone to help bring democracy to Eastern Europe and more recently to help raise up developing countries around the globe, he has now shifted his focus, he said, and will spend at least half his money “to protect the democratic achievements of the past.”
“Not only the survival of open society but the survival of our entire civilization is at stake,” added Soros. “The rise of leadership such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea and Donald Trump in the United States have much to do with this.”
The way to deal with North Korea and head off a nuclear crisis is not confrontation and name-calling; said Soros, it is to take a “carrot and stick” approach. He said that means rewarding North Korea for “suspending further development of nuclear weapons.”
Soros said he sees Trump’s place in the world as “temporary, phenomenon that will disappear in 2020 or even sooner.”
“The fact of nuclear war,” warned Soros, “is so horrendous that we are trying to ignore it, but it is real.”
As for the U.S., Soros said he will be mobilizing his own political forces to try to defeat Trump. He believes the groundswell of opposition that Trump has inspired will be the president’s downfall.
He predicted a Democratic “landslide” in the November mid-term elections.
Soros said he was worried about the future of the European Union because the bloc is “in a revolutionary period” where the E.U. is in disarray and Russia is rising again.
The two biggest threats, said Soros, are a nuclear war and climate change.
The concept of global warming caused largely by human activity is something else that Soros and Trump disagree about.
Soros believes in the vast majority of scientists on the climate crisis issue while Trump is aligned with the witch doctors of the alt-right and their greedy business allies like the Koch brothers, whose companies are among the world’s biggest polluters.
“Mankind’s ability to harness the forces of nature,” said Soros, “both for constructive and destructive purposes, continues to grow while our ability to govern ourselves properly fluctuates, and is now at a low ebb.”
“The survival of our entire civilization,” the political activist added, “is at stake.”
Trump has blustered and surprisingly, Soros has wisdom, which in the long run is probably of more value. His point, however, is that if Trump decides to hit his great big button it won’t matter because we will all be lost in a nuclear nightmare.
Let’s hope Soros’s view is the one that prevails.
George Soros just launched a scathing attack on Facebook and Google, referring to them as a "menace" and calling for greater regulationhttps://t.co/n83jWI2y1H pic.twitter.com/aC5ibrIW9H
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) January 25, 2018