The genius of manipulation and opportunism is back. Accustomed to scandal, even ridicule, he faces the biggest challenge of his life: removing the label of professional loser.
In his new bid to return to the White House, Donald J. Trump is recycling the supremacist and nativist rhetoric that brought him to the presidency of the United States in 2016. He is back, armed with more than $100 million in pre-campaign funding and the crude lie that two years ago he was the victim of electoral fraud.
In today’s troubled world, nothing is more dangerous than underestimating the enormous danger that this character represents for American democracy and even for international stability. At this point in life, it would be more than naive to assume that behind his new attempt to wrest the presidential candidacy from the Republican Party is only the attempt to “shield” himself politically from the torrent of criminal complaints against him.
Almost a century after the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe, nowadays it is more necessary than ever to reveal the authoritarian and despotic roots of the American extreme right. The same ultra-American that during the Second World War promoted, from important positions of power, the agenda of Adolf Hitler.
As documented by Rachel Maddow in her Ultra podcast, an extraordinary report on the Christian Front, an anti-Semitic front that between 1938 and 1940 used the banner of “America First” and “Make America Great Again” to build a conspiracy of high-level extremists – including senators, congressmen, and religious preachers, paid by Berlin – to provoke a social outbreak that would end with a Nazi coup in America.
That the Trump phenomenon is more a symptom than a cause is something we already knew. What continues to amaze is his ability to open Pandora’s Box of the worst prejudices in the history of his country and capitalize on the frustration of broad segments of society around a media agenda of racism and misogyny.
A kind of caricature of the modern oligarch—, this time the former president faces a new wall: the lapidary words of tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who has perfectly portrayed him with a single word: “loser.” Well, not only has he lost the popular vote twice, but in the recent midterm elections he dragged a good number of his Republican clones to defeat.
“Loser” seems like a small thing given his obvious status as a tax evader, alleged rapist, vulgar harasser, and swindler, but in a country like the United States few traits are more radioactive than “Sore loser”.
From the cold analysis of the disaster accumulated during his four years as a tenant of the White House -the million deaths from Covid, his romances with the worst tyrants, the brutal growth of economic inequality and his permanent torrent of lies and insults-, he It would be logic to assume that Mr. Trump will fail again. If not for the fact that these interesting times seem anything but rational or logic.
In addition, Joe Biden’s lack of media shine does not help the cause of the Democratic Party much. And while the impending special election for the vacant Georgia seat looks like a mini referendum of sorts on Trump’s hypothetical return, hopefully, with his return to Twitter, Trump will soon regain his ability to promote himself.
It is true that there is still a long way to go, 23 months, for the presidential election. But the dynamics of the confrontation will hardly subside, and in the face of an electoral system designed for 50/50, will US citizens make mistakes again?
