“Make America great again”. Again. Donald Trump is back in the White House, and his victory is uncontested. “A second chance”, titre The Wall Street Journal, which mentions in its editorial a “incredible political comeback”. A clap of thunder, when all the polls predicted a very close election and results that would be slow in coming. It didn't happen.
Elected for the first time in 2016 to everyone's surprise, narrowly beaten in 2020 by Joe Biden in a vote whose results he never recognized, Donald Trump will indeed be the 47e president of the United States.
At the end of a completely crazy campaign and rare violence, the Republican candidate even won quite comfortably over his opponent, Kamala Harris. Without delay, Donald Trump, who claimed a victory “never seen” in the country, promised a new “golden age” to the Americans. The Republicans even regain the Senate, where they are assured of having the majority.
The ex-president has come a long way. In 2021, after the Capitol riots, some said it was over, even though many analysts predicted that Trumpism would survive. The billionaire was able to bounce back, winning a clear victory in the Republican primary. Before being the victim of an assassination attempt on July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania. His photo, his bloodied face and his fist raised in defiance, will remain as one of the strong images of the presidential election. The Republican candidate immediately left for the campaign, “hurt but stronger than ever”, then explained Politico, his supporters galvanized.
Faced with an aging president (and still a candidate at that time), Donald Trump was the big favorite. Eight days later, Joe Biden threw in the towel. Too late, undoubtedly, as Susan Page points out in USA Today. The head of the American daily's Washington bureau questions the weight of a “burden named Joe Biden” for his vice-president. It's an understatement to say it. The euphoria around the candidacy of Kamala Harris, invested in August, was short-lived.
This is not entirely a coincidence, Nate Cohn explained last week in a long analysis published in the The New York Times. “The Democrats' current setbacks seem to be part of a generalized bad patch for the parties in power. Voters seem to aspire to change,” he writes. But it's not just that: for several years, “Democrats are on the defensive on substantive issues. They have right-winged their discourse on immigration, energy and crime. They have muted their traditional priorities. The long period of liberal domination of the American political scene may well be coming to an end.”
An inability to reinvent oneself which will have greatly benefited Donald Trump. Because, at the same time, he toughened his speech a little more, increasing the excesses, using increasingly filthy, sexist, racist language. “Vermin”, “parasites”, “enemy within” : Donald Trump speaks like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, Anne Applebaum recently accused in The Atlantic.
Is the sulphurous billionaire a fascist? The question has agitated the American media in recent weeks. To better understand the terms of the debate, read the meeting with the American historian Robert Paxton published in The New York Times Magazine.
How is the new Trump presidency shaping up? Much worse, says Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times, based on the recent statements of several of his former advisors, and not the least: John Kelly, John Bolton… “A second Trump term will not be a harmless repeat of the first version,” warns the columnist. “When Trump says he will order prosecutors to prosecute Joe Biden and 'les Pelosi', he's not joking. When he insists that he will punish companies like Amazon if he does not value their opinions, he is not joking. When he says he believes that the Constitution gives him 'the right to do whatever[il veut] as president', he’s not joking.”
Same concern Financial Times. “Trump has a mandate to reform the United States in incredibly disruptive ways, writes Edward Luce. There will be no going back” after this electoral earthquake. The world has been warned.
