Photo: ReutersThe United States may be facing the worst political and constitutional crisis since the American Civil War in the 1860s, a University of Otago academic says. The global reputation of the United States as "an exemplary model of democracy" had earlier been in decline, but Mr Trump had in the past year accelerated this. "In particular, President Trump has considerable responsibility for contributing to a polarised political climate which has made storming of Capitol Hill possible," he said. Prof Patman said as a liberal democracy, New Zealand strongly depended on both an internal and global system of rules-based order. Such rules had long been under attack by President Trump, who was unsympathetic to the multilateral rules New Zealand relied on, and he had damaged New Zealand’s international interests.

Source: Otago Daily Times January 07, 2021 15:35 UTC