They were contemplating Mar-a-Lago, the residence of Donald Trump, a few days ago in West Palm Beach, when The duty crossed them.
Hans and Ruben, two Dutchmen on a trip to the United States, were slowly going up from Miami towards the north of the country, but had decided to make a “little stop” in this corner of Florida “to see where the freak show “said one, supported by the knowing smile of the other.
In the distance, the absence of the ex-president was obvious, leaving only a few private club customers visible to the curious, moving behind a forest of palm trees, between an annex and tennis courts.
“It’s a little disappointing,” said Ruben, who was expecting more action and drama. “I didn’t think it was going to be so quiet and insignificant. »
However, the calm was temporary in Mar-a-Lago, from where Donald Trump sought to create the event on Tuesday evening by formalizing with great fanfare his candidacy for the presidential election of 2024. A hasty and expected announcement which seeks in party to establish the grip of the self-proclaimed billionaire on the Republican Party, while voices calling on the political party to break away from the populist are increasingly heard. Particularly in the wake of the midterm elections, where the “Trumpism” candidates ultimately fared poorly.
The strategy could be twofold for Trump who, by throwing himself so quickly into the race for the next election in the country, is now complicating the legal proceedings that hover over his head. The ex-president is in the crosshairs of American justice for having tried to have the American electoral process canceled in the wake of the presidential election of 2020 and for having withdrawn secret documents from the White House in order to keep them in his private residence, in contravention of the laws of the country.
“There is no legal provision that prevents the prosecution of a candidate for the presidency of the United States, said in an interview Frank Bowman, professor emeritus at the School of Law of the University of Missouri. But with this candidacy, Donald Trump thinks it will make it politically more difficult for the Justice Department and easier for him to expose it as a ploy by President Biden to counter a potential rival in 2024.”
Last week, the American president, in the last miles of a Democratic campaign calling for a vote on November 8 to “protect [aussi] American democracy”, said he hoped that everything would be done by 2024 to ensure that Donald Trump “can no longer stand for re-election”.
Donald Trump’s faithful, meanwhile, have set the tone for the tensions to come in the judicial sphere, where, according to several sources, the indictment of the ex-president would only be a matter of weeks away.
“If Biden is using the Justice Department as stormtroopers partisans, then Congress will be justified in using all the tools at its disposal to end this abuse of power,” warned Republican Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, quoted by The Hill. According to this emulator of the populist, the elected Republicans of the Capitol could, among other things, block the financing of the Department of Justice to hinder the proceedings against the ex-president.
Indictments could materialize at the end of the congressional public inquiry into the events of January 6, 2021, which established part of the Populist’s responsibility for the attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Ditto in Georgia, where the attorney general is about to tie up a possible indictment of the ex-president. In Fulton County, he sought to turn up more than 11,000 votes in his favor — and at odds with the ballot box — to prevent the southern state from falling into Democrat hands. The attempted bribery was unfortunately recorded for him during a phone call that has now become compromising.
Outwit an opposition
“The political cost for the Department of Justice and for the Biden government now becomes higher with this formalized candidacy,” political scientist Richard Bensel of Cornell University said in an interview. Trump will use these indictments to pose as a victim of political prosecution, which could also discourage other Republicans from running against him for a primary. By publicly claiming that he is already the presumptive Republican candidate for president, he has just made any opposition an act of treason and an attack on the interests of the party. »
However, in the aftermath of last week’s election, the Conservatives were instead showing signs that they were looking for a replacement, even betting on the Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, qualified on the front page of the New York Post, right-wing tabloid, of “Ron DeFuture.” The ultra-conservative has also strengthened his support in the wake of his re-election in Florida, which rose from 26 to 33% between before and after the election, among Republicans who could vote in a primary. . Trump, for his part, saw his rating drop slightly by one point after the November 8 election: it is at 47%. So he’s still in the lead.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s ex-head of diplomacy, Mike Pompeo, however confirmed the fragility of Donald Trump’s new candidacy by denouncing the victim references of his ex-boss’s speech to formalize the launch of his third presidential campaign. . “We need more seriousness, less noise and leaders who look forward, not in the rear view mirror pretending to be victims”, he wrote on Twitter.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, whose name is circulating on the short list of Republican hopefuls for 2024, said in an ABC interview that the United States would have “better options in the future” than former President Donald Trump, while remaining discreet about his intentions for the next presidential election.
Since the beginning of the American Republic, only one president has succeeded in being re-elected after having lost at the end of a first term. This is Grover Cleveland, defeated in 1888, but reelected in 1892.
“What’s unusual about Trump is not so much that he’s running for re-election, but that he still refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the democratic process and still encourages his supporters to do the same,” says Michael Behrent, professor in history at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, with less and less obvious fervor.
In the wake of her official announcement, the former White House press secretary Sarah Matthews summed up the evening as follows: “This is one of the least forceful and uninspiring speeches I have ever heard from Trump,” she wrote on Twitter. Even the crowd [semblait] to be bored. Not exactly what you want to start a presidential race. »
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund- The duty .