I recall two World leaders who have shared one or two things in common with Donald Trump.
Grover Cleveland had become the first American President in 1893 to have had a chance to be elected President for the second time after losing to someone else after serving his first term.
It has also been said but not verified that Adolf Hitler was also a convicted felon before he got democratically elected as the German Chancellor in 1933, six years before he became a full- fledged Dictator who had led Germany to the Second World War from 1939 to 1945.
It was a War in which my own biological father Sergeant Samuel Akintide Gbangba had served as a foot soldier in the Royal West African Frontier Force which had fought under the British flag in the other theaters of that War in Egypt India and Ceylon. I was born in Akure the Ondo State of Nigeria while my father was busy serving in that War.
Donald Trump also shared the Company of the great Ronald Reagan only in one sense.
His official inauguration ceremony like that of President Reagan had to be moved inside the Capitol due to frigid weather like we are all witnessing today January 20 in Washington DC
President Joe Biden and the Authorities had taken a decision to move the inauguration ceremony indoors today because there was once an American President who had held his inauguration ceremony in a very inclement weather and had suffered a bad Pneumonia which ultimately killed him within 3 months of his Presidency.
Donald Trump has also become the first American President in History to disrupt a smooth transition of power from one President to another by refusing to accept the result of the election which his successor had won in a landslide with more than 7 million in the popular vote and by 100 votes in the Electoral College tally.
Donald Trump and his First Lady had chosen to not attend the inauguration of his successor in 2021 even though his Vice President Michael Pence had the patriotism and and the discipline to not boycott the ceremony like his vendetta- driven Boss had done.
So the smooth transition that Donald Trump and his Vice President are enjoying today with pomp and pageantry, albeit in a very cold weather is only made possible by his predecessor Joe Biden the 46th President and the most experienced institutionalist and patriot who had served 36 years as the distinguished Senator from Delaware, 8 years as Vice President to the first Black President in Barrack Hussein Obama before being elected as President for 4 years from January 2021 to January 2025.
President Biden to his everlasting credit and honor had chosen not to pay Donald Trump back in his own coins by asking for his own pound of flesh.
He has, as a more decent patriot, refused deny Donald Trump a smooth transition of power for the good of the country.
It is a development that the whole World must acknowledge that America as the Bastion of Democracy and the Leader of the Free World, cannot afford to dismiss with the wave of the Hand.
It would have been a tragedy of unmitigated proportion for America, if Joe Biden has refused to show some courtesy today to Donald Trump by being physically present to symbolically and formally hand over power to Donald Trump.
I take pride in applauding this development as a Historian and as an American citizen who values America and what she stands for as the most powerful country in the World and the only surviving Super Power.
I rest my case.
Dr. Wumi Akintide
