But who will prevent Donald Trump from winning a new term on November 5? A little over three years ago, the question might have raised a smile, when, after the assault on the Capitol in Washington, we thought that the future of the outgoing president was more a matter of the courts than of the campaign platforms. It was said that the old Republican Party, that of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, would never agree to give a new discharge to someone who considers himself a “political dissident.” However, over the course of the primaries that have been taking place since January, this is what is happening. Donald Trump’s large victory in South Carolina against Nikki Haley on February 24 now offers the New York businessman a path to winning the Republican nomination.
Many still hope that the former tenant of the White House, who is leading the race in the polls, will be overtaken by his legal troubles, or quite simply by his political excesses. Which, of course, is still possible. But have we already forgotten the 2016 scenario, and the victory of Donald Trump, described as improbable until the last minute? With the election of Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, part of America – but also the world – thought they had put an end to the peroxide nightmare and its poisonous tweets, which, for four years, had sowed division in their country and caused global disorder. Without understanding the seduction exercised by the populist leader, who, at 77 years old, intends to beat the current octogenarian president, incapable of preparing his succession.
Funny America, which continues to govern the world, and whose two candidates for the supreme office are nevertheless far from receiving popular anointing. To think that in the early 1980s we made fun of the old guard of Soviet apparatchiks, who, from Leonid Brezhnev to Konstantin Tchernenko, succeeded one another in the Kremlin: with the Trump and Biden tandem, we are far from the ardor of John Kennedy, elected at 43, or Barack Obama, who arrived at the White House at 48. But it’s not just a question of age. And on the European side, it is high time to review the transatlantic relationship by preparing for all scenarios. The first, in the event of Trump’s victory, requires, as Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo mentioned last month, to rethink “a Europe which must prepare to act alone”.
Because this time, there won’t even be the famous “adults in the room”, these famous advisors deemed reasonable to Donald Trump during his first term, to moderate his excesses. But even in the event of defeat on November 5, the extent of Donald Trump’s electoral support over the past eight years shows the extent to which a part of the American people has strayed from democratic values. Political division, international disengagement and populism will always be there: Europe should remember this. More than ever, she must learn adulthood. That of autonomy.
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