Why is Donald Trump more popular than ever?

Let’s think about it! On June 16, 2015, the (already controversial) businessman announced a candidacy for the White House that seemed provocative and doomed to failure. He aroused sneers until Donald Trump won the nomination of the Republican Party – whose leader then chose to boycott the Convention, in an unprecedented gesture of disavowal. Elected to everyone’s surprise, Trump has exercised power in an often chaotic and generally unproductive way (his record essentially boils down to tax cuts). Defeated four years later, he jeopardized the institutions he swore to protect, irrationally contesting the results and encouraging a bloody assault on the Capitol. This tragedy should have been enough to dishonor and discredit him. Instead, this seventy-year-old, who has suffered two impeachment attempts and is now being tried in four (unheard of) criminal trials, is running for the third time, seems certain of running again for his party and, according to the polls, has every chance of returning to the Oval Office in a year.

Can Donald Trump be excluded from the presidential election even if he is the favorite in the polls?

A populist attitude

How to explain this incomprehensible journey – especially since, having become the leading figure of the Republicans, Donald Trump has systematically exposed the party to the electoral disappointments of 2018, 2020 and above all 2022 (the Republican wave expected in the legislative elections did not materialize carried out, the candidates supported by the former president having almost all lost)? The political newcomer’s initial success had been attributed to his claim to be the voice of the voiceless (and toothless), to defend the millions of Americans supposedly forgotten by Washington elites. A populist attitude without much originality and without much substance (the candidate’s speeches, expressed in a ramshackle vocabulary and sprinkled with flowery insults, have always been of abysmal indigence and shocking incoherence), but which worked, despite the difficulty of conceiving the interests the poor and the little ones, in deep America, who are cared for by a New York millionaire whose professional conduct had already been called into question many times.

After four years of a presidency spent largely on golf courses, which has not improved the lot of the poorest (where is the major health care reform that was supposed to replace Obamacare?), but, according to numerous polls and reports, , helped further enrich the Trump clan, many Republican voters should logically be disappointed. This is evidently not the case, which leads Mitt Romney, like other observers, to deduce that “many people in this country are disconnected from reality and ready to accept everything Donald Trump tells them.” The candidate had taken this unshakable loyalty for granted since the 2016 campaign. In a meeting in Iowa on January 23, he had ventured this prediction: “I can find myself in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, I won’t do it.” lose any voter. It’s incredible.”

https://www.lalibre.be/international/amerique/2024/01/18/une-photo-de-donald-trump-interpelle-les-internautes-sur-son-etat-de-sante-TV7FHMKDIND5RJM4Q7SZVISHTA/

The weight of the conspiracy

Incredible, of course, but true. For what ? Donald Trump’s electoral business remains the population with little or no education, without a university degree and often without even a high school diploma. Ignorance is an essential factor to be taken into account in the blind loyalty shown to the candidate. Among activists interviewed during the recent Iowa caucuses, one admitted to knowing nothing about Trump’s exact position on abortion (a crucial issue in this conservative state), another had difficulty guessing the candidate’s agricultural policy (essential in the Midwest). , a third believed he knew he was “the most respected American president in the world” and said they were overwhelmed with pride and recognition. “Ignorance is strength”, said George Orwell to the dictators of “1984”. Donald Trump can only agree.

The polarization of the media (which tends to apologia one’s own camp and caricature the opposing camp), the disinformation favored by social networks and the astonishing vitality of fake news (equated to “alternative facts” by Donald Trump’s advisors) stimulated the trend to prefer lies to truth. The increase in the power of the conspiracy has strengthened the phenomenon, allowing it to feed itself. If the myth of the “stolen election” in 2020 is attacked in court, it is proof, for Donald Trump’s supporters, not that the accusation of fraud is unfounded, but rather that Democrats want at all costs to hide their crime . And if justice is only beginning now, it is not because the investigations were long and difficult, but because their only objective is to prevent the Republican’s re-election. “The past has been erased, erasure forgotten, and the lie has become truth,” observed George Orwell.

“Go home to your mother”: Donald Trump attacks an environmental activist who interrupts him during his speech

Success among young people

Donald Trump’s enduring popularity is of course also due to his personality. His public persona was shaped by television and reality shows that made him famous. Through his excesses and a sense of formula that compensates for his lack of eloquence (from “Sleepy Joe” to “Pocahontas”, we must recognize his gift for outlining his adversaries), the man amuses and entertains – a not inconsiderable quality in a time when the news is often sad and anxiety-provoking. The comparison with a Joe Biden perceived as boring (especially because he is unable to sell his records well) works in his favor, especially among young people. A New York Times/Siena College poll found last month that 49 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds prefer Republican and 43 percent prefer Democrat. In 2020, Biden won in this age group 59% to 35% for Trump.

Psychologists know this: human beings do not like burning what they have loved, nor finding themselves on the losing side. While they are perhaps lucid about the weaknesses of their former president who is running for re-election, Donald Trump’s supporters maintain their faith in him by attributing the responsibility for his mistakes to others: to the “radical left”, to the RINOs (“Republicans in name only “), to traitors, renegades and other enemies of America, whoever they may be. Even their idol was careful not to open his eyes – and we must praise the foresight of those who convinced him to do so. By refusing to participate in the five debates organized before the primaries, Trump achieved a threefold, profitable objective: to put himself, imperially, above the fray; he let his competitors fatally tear each other apart; and he avoided having to defend positions (which almost always divide) and present a program (which is non-existent, apart from the desire for revenge that the former president has towards the political world, the press and justice. ). The candidate, however, was able to continue to operate with slogans and imprecations, advocating easy solutions to complex problems, which also have the advantage of flattering the voter’s indolence. When faced with an epidemic, it is always friendlier not to impose confinement or vaccination.

For the price of services rendered

However, it should be underlined that Donald Trump’s success does not derive only from the vagueness of his beliefs. He has in fact managed to obtain support that is as solid as it is unlikely, and sometimes decisive. That of the Christian right, for example. He, the divorced man, married three times, with a tumultuous love life, accused of having paid porn actresses, became the bulwark of Protestant morality. Certainly spiritual leaders harbor no illusions about character. Some even expressed their disapproval. In August 2020, Jerushah Duford called not to re-elect Trump, believing that the support he enjoyed in the churches was “an insult to his grandfather”, Billy Graham, a historic pillar of the evangelical movement in the United States. But the Christian right knows what it owes to the former president: the appointment of three conservative judges to the Supreme Court and the subsequent repeal of the “Roe v. Wade” which legalized abortion throughout the country. He had been waiting for it for fifty years. Trump is therefore worth nothing. And a re-election.

If Donald Trump was not initially recognized by the Republicans as one of them, and if he did not really abandon the image of a workaholic when he was in the White House, he is nevertheless perceived as a reliable person, capable of delivering the results expected by the Republicans. powerful pressure groups such as the RNA, the gun lobby. His poor command of files, his limited intelligence (several senior officials in his administration have described him as an idiot…) and his childish vanity, which makes him vulnerable to flattery, make him, moreover, a person ” influenceable, even malleable.And, unlike Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who went to war with Disney, Trump is unlikely to upset the business world over ideological issues – a good point among Republicans.

Iowa Caucus: Donald Trump undisputed leader of the Republicans

Freed from all opposition

Finally, the former president has the advantage of having triumphed over all the opposition. He who should have been marginalized, instead managed to marginalize his rivals, to the point of flying to the primaries with a 30% advantage over the competition reduced to two unfortunate and naive contenders, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. More surprising than Donald Trump’s popularity is the inability of Republican Party leaders to get rid of him. The opportunity was handed to them on a silver platter with the storming of the Capitol, but they inexplicably preferred not to vote for impeachment – ​​even the Republican majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, regularly humiliated by Donald Trump , he remained silent. Few have dared to denounce a danger to American democracy. Those who did, like Liz Cheney, daughter of George W. Bush’s vice president, were stripped of all their mandates. Those who, on the contrary, have shown loyalty, to the point of endorsing the shameless lie of the stolen elections, have been promoted, from Mike Johnson to Elise Stefanik, respectively “spokesperson” of the House of Representatives and president of its Republican Conference.

From the Capitol, Donald Trump should have been taken to Tarpeian Rock. The leaders of the Republican Party preferred to let him return to the summit of Olympus, perhaps in the hope of sharing with him the joys that will accompany his possible election on November 5th. In doing so, they helped deceive the tens of millions of Americans who continue to see him, despite the evidence, as the champion of the Republican cause and national greatness.

2024-01-20 18:09:00
#Donald #Trump #popular