Trump promising things he cannot deliver: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist in Washington, about US presidential candidate Donald Trump pledging a top-to-bottom overhaul of US foreign policy.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It was a pretty different Trump that we saw tonight, wasn’t he, in the sense that he appeared more mature, but regardless of the sentimentalities involved, now he has promised to crush Daesh very quickly and also bring some order to the chaotic world. Do you think he can carry out that top-to-bottom overhaul of foreign policy that he presented?  

Porter: No of course not. What Donald Trump is doing at this point is a kind of caricature of every political candidate who has run for the presidency since anyone can remember which is to basically promise to do things that were really outside their ability to deliver or which they had no intention of delivering in many cases and Trump although he sounded more like a conventional candidate carries that further than anyone else by for example claiming that he is somehow going to make the Mexicans pay for a wall, he is going to force the Chinese to accept our trade proposals, all of which are simply outside the realm of reality and he is basically playing to the least well-informed part of the electorate which is sort of the Tea Party segment of the Republican Party and so it is a natural trope for him to pursue at present point in his candidacy.

Press TV: Are we witnessing some sort of a transformation across the American public sphere or is it something which cannot be changed, and it would, obviously ideally speaking for Mr. Trump, it would take for the American system to stop being the American system and to try being something else which it hardly can be? Do you share that?

Porter: It is definitely very, very difficult to change the US political system for all kinds of reasons we do not have time to discuss. However, we are in 2016 at a fundamental turning point politically in this country in which the two-party system is very, very much in jeopardy of breaking up.

There is a lot of discussion now not just behind the scenes either about transition potentially to a four-party system that is both Republican Party and the Democratic Party really being so disastrously decrepit at this point that is the party apparatus and the party leadership, traditional leadership being so unpopular that those traditional parties are really not going to be able to continue much longer to maintain their dominance and new political formulations are rising. This is a distinct possibility in the very short-term future. I am not going to predict that we are going to have four parties in the next couple of years but we are close to that.

Press TV: And regarding what Mr. Trump said about the Iranian nuclear deal being a disaster, if he were to hypothetically become the next US president, do you think he has the wherewithal that is political wherewithal to scrap that deal unilaterally? Of course we understand that America is not the only single party to the deal so that would have some international ramifications for Washington, wouldn’t it?   

Porter: It would have very, very large ramifications and those ramifications would instantly be brought to his attention by the CIA, the secretary of defense that he has appointed as well as the secretary of state that he has appointed who regardless of their politics would have to be aware that this would expose his administration in the US to a very dangerous situation.

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