Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff. 

By Britt Nelson

The walls of the West Wing are bulging outward with the complex personality of one man — President Donald John Trump. The Oval Office has not seen anything like Trump since the days of presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan. It’s been a while since America had a strong president.

All eyes worldwide are watching with a hostile media questioning everything this brand-spanking-new president does but who can keep up with it all? Executive orders, cabinet confirmations, taxes, 2^nd Amendment, Chicago murders, U.S. Supreme Court nominee, trade agreements, new health care, defundings, border wall, import fees, auto and steel makers, union leaders, pipeline approvals, meetings with England, Canada, Mexico and Israel, and on and on.

The pace at which President Trump is making everyone else around him rise to the occasion and get things done is at break-neck speed. No more studies, no more blue-ribbon committees and no more reviews because President Trump and half of the American people know what needs changing. All the issues have been studied and debated for decades with little to show for it. The Democrats are looking as silly as a Beavis & Butthead cartoon or an old Keystone Cops black and white movie. A few days after Trump becomes president the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday morning hit 20,000 for an all-time record high. The business community is diggin’ the new guy with the crazy hair.

In February, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting with President Trump at the White House. During the presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted to be the first foreign government to locate its embassy in Jerusalem the capitol of Israel — an ancient city claimed by Jews and Palestinians with historical religious sites significant to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Moving the U.S. Embassy out of Tel Aviv would be risky in that the embassy and staff would become a bigger target for radical Islam. Surely this will come up during the Trump/Netanyahu meeting and surely the U.S. Embassy will be moving in the coming weeks — not months, not years – now and with it will come new ideas to attempt a lasting peace in Israel.

President Trump has also signed an executive order removing the USA from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement because in Trump’s opinion the TPP is not in the best interests of Americans. The TPP had been negotiated for seven years. According to news reports, Trump intends to renegotiate this trade agreement and others to put “America first.” South of the American border only Mexico, Chili and Peru are in the TPP having no effect on Costa Rica or its next-door neighbors. Without the USA the TPP cannot be ratified and must be renegotiated. President Trump will get these trade agreements renegotiated within months, not seven years like it took President Obama. It may be in Costa Rica’s best interest to participate in a future version of the TPP, Panama and Nicaragua, too.

Apparently also on President Trump’s desk is another executive order to direct the Pentagon to keep open the U.S. military’s prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba that President Obama promised to close but couldn’t, according to the New York Times. Opened in 2002 by the Bush administration and kept secret for years the prison camp is a holding tank for captured radical Islamic extremists. The prison’s population has gone from 779 to the current 41 prisoners still being held and judged as too dangerous to be released. Over the years many of those captured have been released and some have returned to terrorism and have been recaptured or killed. While others have been released to Islamic countries willing to accept them and hold them in their prisons.

A lot of people don’t understand the need for such a prison. If these ‘enemy combatants’ are brought to the USA they would get constitutional rights and without evidence they would be set free. These people that hate America are captured on the battlefields of the Middle East and Africa. There are no crime scene investigations, no photographs, no evidence gathering like on TV crime shows, but they are guilty. Common sense says keep the ‘Gitmo prison’ open because under the Trump administration more radical Islamic extremists will be captured as the war on terror rages on. There will be many more one-way tickets to Gitmo.

President Trump is the fly in the ointment. He is the thorn stabbing the left wingers where it hurts — with the voters. President Obama’s legacy is being washed away like a child’s sand castle disappearing with the tide.

About the Author

Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.