This is the election that no one wanted. The 2020 remake. The return of Trump. The confrontation of an octogenarian president (81 years old since November 20) with his septuagenarian predecessor (78 years old next June). In general, Americans are fond of comebacks, a Hollywood archetype, like Rocky II. But this time, the boxers return to the ring exhausted. And exhausting. “No one wants to relive the election of three years ago; it was the worst in our history,” says Luke Mogelson, a journalist at New Yorker and author of Angry America (Tallandier), the story of a divided country.
“Politics disgusts everyone,” he adds. “Democrats are sorry for the fragility of ‘grandpa’ Biden and a good portion of Republicans have had enough of the Trump circus.” In truth, these two are holding each other by the goatee: Trump is the only opponent Biden could beat, and vice versa. Any other, younger candidate would be almost certain to win or, at least, to inject a positive dynamic into America. But, like old actors, they hang on, each convinced to supplant the other.
In this little game, it is Donald Trump who, since the “earthquake” of November 5, holds the rope. That day, a poll New York Times/Siena College among registered voters in the six swing states Americans – the famous pivotal states which swing the election to one camp or the other – reveals that the Republican has a 4 to 10 point lead in five of them: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Undoubtedly a direct consequence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: President Biden’s stated support for Israel displeases the left of the Democratic Party, who would abstain rather than vote for him. Another warning sign: 22% of African-Americans plan to vote for Trump! A staggering progression: in 2020, 8% of Black people voted for him and in 2016, 6%. Proof, too, that “asset” Kamala Harris, vice-president supposed to attract the “black vote”, does not work.
“Old Biden doesn’t print”
“Biden’s decline is all the more surprising since ‘Bidenomics’, that is to say his macroeconomic results linked to different Keynesian recovery laws (on infrastructure, ecological transition, research, etc.) are rather good”, estimates Laurence Nardon, of the French Institute of International Relations. “Moreover, his strong positions on support for Ukraine and Israel disprove the idea that, since Jimmy Carter, president from 1976 to 1980, Democrats would be ‘weak on defense’, that is to say, weak on questions of defense and international politics. But, despite this firmness, old Biden ‘doesn’t print’.”
Debate between Republican candidates, from g. from left: Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.
© / Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
Even Trump’s legal troubles do not stop his rise. “It’s counterintuitive, but the three trials that start in the spring will favor Trump, continues this researcher. 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. A few weeks ago, the presidential election seemed unwinnable for Trump. Now everything indicates that Biden could lose it. With, as a result, incalculable consequences for the entire world.
“It would be a nightmare,” says German MP Norbert Röttgen of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, right), bluntly, who expects Trump to stop supporting Ukraine. “Without certainty, he will present this conflict as an affair between Europeans and will let them sort it out among themselves,” predicts this conservative who sits on the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee. “He will put us up against the wall and suggest we buy American weapons to support Ukraine.”
There is nothing impossible about this scenario. “Trump could use his executive power to slow down or even stop support for Ukraine approved by Congress,” adds Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer of the German Marshall Fund. He is already riding on war fatigue within the political class and of American opinion: during his meetings, he works in this direction with his anti-Biden slogan: ‘Ukraine first, America last’.” The specialist in Europe-United States relations even anticipates a rapprochement with Putin. “From the first days of his presidency, Trump could convene a bilateral meeting with the Russian leader to conclude a ceasefire agreement aimed at freezing the conflict without consulting the Europeans and his NATO partners.”
Trump’s return to office would also impact the Middle East with, on the one hand, a tougher stance than that of Biden towards Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah and, on the other hand, a “total support for Israel”, as the candidate has already announced. A position linked to the vote of evangelicals: favorable to Israel, they represent 20% of voters. In Asia, he could start an economic war against China by demanding that Germany and other European countries align with Washington and stop trading with Beijing or face American sanctions. “In short, it would be a period of disruption like the West has never experienced; not even during Trump’s first term,” concludes Norbert Röttgen.
Trump will choose “loyal” personalities everywhere
With a renewed team, more right-wing and better organized than the previous one, Trump will overturn the table. “To begin with, he announced that he would appoint a prosecutor responsible for investigating his predecessor in order to smear him,” describes the jurist and Americanist Anne Deysine, also author of The United States and democracy (The Harmattan). After these hors d’oeuvres, Trump would place under his direct control public agencies, currently independent, such as the Food & Drug Administration (which issues authorizations for drugs) or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which protects customers from financial sector).” Trump also intends to eliminate job security for tens of thousands of civil servants who, according to him, work for the “deep state” rather than serving the tenant of the White House.
Trump would choose figures everywhere he considers loyal. “During his first term, he fired FBI Director James Comey after asking for his allegiance in the midst of an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections,” recalls Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, who is in daily contact with the Biden administration. His first move would therefore be to replace the FBI director and Justice Secretary. With loyalists in office, any ongoing federal investigation into him could be dropped.”
The lawyer Anne Deysine explains: “With the three judges of the Supreme Court and the 250 judges of first instance and court of appeal appointed by him during his first mandate, the judicial power would no longer be a counter-power in accordance with the “spirit of the Constitution, but an agent of power.” Finally, in terms of immigration, Trump intends to tighten the screws, even more than at the start of his first term: he would notably renew the bans on entry into the country for nationals of several Muslim countries.
If he returns to the White House in January 2025, the former New York real estate mogul will be only the second president to obtain two non-consecutive terms. The first was the unremarkable Democrat Grover Cleveland (1884-1888, then 1892-1896), who hardly made an impression. Trump, it is certain, will leave his mark, believes the historian of the United States Yves-Marie Péréon, author of Return power (Tallandier). “To understand the transgression he embodies, it is enough to know that in two hundred and fifty years, no president has ever contested the result of a presidential election. None has fomented an insurrection. And no ex -president snubbed the inauguration of his successor.” Trump did all that.
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