Donald Trump’s presidency, from 2017 to 2020, was unlike any other. And neither did the transition that followed, as recalled by the historian Yves-Marie Péréon who has just published a work on the subject (Return powerTallandier): “In 250 years of history, no president before Trump had ever contested the result of an election. And this is not his only singularity. He has not written his memoirs (apart from an album photos accompanied by a collection of letters), he did not create a library, he did not associate his name with a cause and, last but not leasthe snubbed all his living predecessors, going so far as not to attend the transfer of power ceremony, the famous Inauguration Day, which has been unprecedented for a century and a half. All this, Péréon concludes, gives an idea of the transgressions of which Trump is capable.
Let us also add that apart from Grover Cleveland, president from 1884 to 1888 who returned to power in 1892, no defeated American head of state has ever tried to reconquer the White House four years later.
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Obviously, Trump’s campaign will be unlike any other. To begin with, the former president decided that he would not play the usual primary game. According to tradition, all the candidates participate in the televised debates so that viewers can get an idea of the comparative merits of each of them. Donald Trump, for his part, chose to boycott these oratorical contests, believing that they were not of the level of a former head of state like him. On the contrary, he goes so far as to organize political meetings in the cities where these televised debates are held, as he did in Miami at the beginning of November. And this, with the aim of stealing the spotlight from his eight rivals who are far behind him in the polls. Long presented as possible threats to Trump’s comeback, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are not really taking off in Republican voting intentions.
On top of that, Donald Trump is facing an avalanche of legal proceedings, which, for a presidential candidate, is also unheard of. Four in all. They concern the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the attempted fraud in Georgia (Trump had put pressure on the organizers of the vote by telephone so that they “find” him 11,780 additional votes), the misappropriation of stored secret documents in his rococo residence of Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach (Florida) and, finally, the affair of the bribe paid in cash to the porn actress Stormy Daniel through the intermediary of her ex- lawyer Michael Cohen.
“It’s counterintuitive, but these legal troubles will undoubtedly not stop Trump’s rise,” observes United States specialist Laurence Nardon, of the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) think tank. On the contrary, the three trials starting in the spring will favor him, she adds. During the campaign, he will pose as a victim of the elites, the deep state and the Biden administration.” And, with the help of the judicial calendar, no conviction will occur before the election. In any case, Trump has seen others. Since beginning his career in the 1970s, he has been involved in 4,000 legal cases, as plaintiff or defendant, in American courts.