This time there will be no surprise. Unlike the 2016 victory, the world is warned. Donald Trump’s years in the White House are enough to imagine what awaits us, but his last four years of evasion of justice, racist radicalization and appropriation of the Republican Party add more elements of concern. The It was Trump It has been almost a decade since the announcement of his candidacy, but now he faces the dilemma between a triumphant, more extremist and dangerous culmination or a defeat that could land him in jail and is not exempt from the risk of civil confrontation.
The trace is unmistakable and does not deceive about the future. The former president has managed to go through Biden’s entire mandate with impunity, without being held accountable for his interference in the recounts and his incitement to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He has turned the electoral theft that is considered Republican dogma. victim, so that almost 70% of its voters consider Biden’s election illegitimate. And the old Republican Party has become his private property, after the flight of the hawks neocons and traditional liberal-conservative families.
In the four years out of power he has reaped the fruits sown during his presidency with the control of republicanism and the appointment of more than 200 judges from the most extreme right. The blocking capacity of the Republican minority in the Senate allowed him to avoid the second impeachment procedure or impeachmentfor incitement to insurrection, thus repeating the exoneration scheme of the first impeachmenttwo years earlier for abuse of power and interference in the course of justice.
The biggest trophy was achieved when the Supreme Court annulled the ruling that protected women’s right to terminate pregnancy. Without these magistrates appointed by him, the delays and favorable resolutions in the four criminal cases in which he is accused cannot be explained. He has not been able to avoid, however, being found guilty in one of them for 34 crimes of falsification of accounting records to cover up the bribery of a porn actress. Now he is awaiting the criminal sentence that could still send him behind bars.
The Supreme Court has also recognized his presidential immunity, so that he will have new abuses of power and interference in justice at hand if he wins the elections. Then his self-exoneration, the dismissal of the special prosecutor investigating him, the amnesty for the Capitol attackers, and the announced revenge for Biden and the traitor Republicans will also be sung. There is no system of control over presidential power that has not failed.
The wolf’s footprints lead to the four cardinal points of present or future wars. In Ukraine they are obvious: the old and the recent. There have been constant contacts with Putin, at least seven, according to Bob Woodward in his latest book, and also his efforts to make aid to kyiv more difficult. His peace plan is Putin’s. In the Middle East, it has been Netanyahu’s icebreaker: breaking the nuclear deal with Iran, moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan, closing the Palestinian office in Washington and the Abraham Accords to end the conflict. Arab-Israeli behind the backs of the Palestinians.
His comical affair with Kim Jong-un did not serve to disarm the North Korean dictator, but rather gave him courage to consolidate North Korea as a ballistic and nuclear power allied with Russia and now send 10,000 soldiers to fight against Ukraine. The trade war with China already underway does not exclude its mercantilist calculations from handing over Taiwan or unprotecting Japan if they do not pay the bill it demands for the nuclear umbrella.
There are many countries where alarm bells are ringing about the eventual return of the wolf and a few are waiting for it. Ukraine, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan fear it, which have weak cards in the face of Trumpist transactional diplomacy. They will easily be a bargaining chip in deals with Russia and China. Each one must take charge of their own security, a principle that applies to Europe as well as the Middle East, where Israel has the military advantage guaranteed by the United States and the Palestinians with zero consideration for their rights.
Trump has installed two subversive ideas for democracy: the refusal to concede the victory of the adversary and the permanent dissemination of lies and hoaxes to discredit the electoral system. If he wins this Tuesday, he will be a threatening super-spreader of the authoritarian virus from which liberal democracies must protect themselves. These premonitions are easily read in the trail of disorder left behind by the great wolf of the extreme right.
