Billionaire speculator and social activist George Soros came out swinging at Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos Thursday, accusing the U.S. President of trying to turn the country into a “mafia state.”
“I find the current moment in history rather painful,” Soros stated in his remarks. “In the United States, President Trump would like to establish a mafia state but he can’t, because the Constitution, other institutions, and a vibrant civil society won’t allow it.”
The left-wing billionaire also said that “the United States is set on a course toward nuclear war by refusing to accept that North Korea has become a nuclear power.”
“Not only the survival of open society, but the survival of our entire civilization is at stake,” he said. “The rise of leaders such as Kim Jong-Un in North Korea and Donald Trump in the US have much to do with this.”
In his address, Soros said that he considers the Trump administration “a danger to the world,” while insisting, however, that it is “a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020, or even sooner.”
“I give President Trump credit for motivating his core supporters brilliantly, but for every core supporter, he has created a greater number of core opponents who are equally strongly motivated. That is why I expect a Democratic landslide in 2018,” he said.
Along with the danger of nuclear war with North Korea, Soros said that he fears climate change, and once again blames Trump for the lack of political will to implement the necessary measures to contain it.
“The other major threat to the survival of our civilization is climate change, which is also a growing cause of forced migration,” Soros said.
“I don’t want to go into details on climate change either because it is well known what needs to be done,” he said. “We have the scientific knowledge; it is the political will that is missing, particularly in the Trump administration.”
Soros said that whereas in the past he had focused his economic might on “the so-called developing world,” now he was targeting “the United States and Europe” in an effort to influence the course of these societies.
Our current aim, he said, “is to help save the European Union in order to radically reinvent it.”
“The EU used to enjoy the enthusiastic support of the people of my generation, but that changed after the financial crisis of 2008. The EU lost its way because it was governed by outdated treaties and a mistaken belief in austerity policies,” he said.
“As a consequence, a large proportion of the current generation has come to regard the European Union as its enemy,” Soros said, citing the examples of Great Britain, Poland and Hungary. “In several other countries anti-European parties are on the rise. In Austria, they are in the governing coalition and the fate of Italy will be decided by the elections in March,” he said.
Central European nations have, in fact, been the most vocal opponents of Soros’s interventionism, and the Hungarian government asserts that the progressive billionaire is behind the EU’s plans to open its borders to millions of Middle Eastern and African people through the institutionalization of mass migration.
“How can we prevent the European Union from abandoning its values?” Soros asked Thursday. “We need to reform it at every level: at the level of the Union itself, at the level of the member states and the level of the electorate. We are in a revolutionary period; everything is subject to change. The decisions taken now will determine the shape of the future,” he said.
Earlier this month, Soros said he would “fight back” against the “dominant ideology” of nationalism, while lamenting that the European Union is “on the verge of a breakdown.”
Alluding to the collapse of the USSR, Soros said: “It’s déjà vu all over again with one big change — the dominant ideology in the world now is nationalism… It’s the EU that’s the institution that’s on the verge of a breakdown.”
“And Russia is now the resurgent power, based on nationalism,” he said.
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