After Donald Trump lost the presidential elections last year, many questions are being asked about his political future. Will he run again in the 2024 presidential election or will he be legally and quickly blocked by Congress if he is convicted of inciting the January 6 assault on Capitol Hill? Will Trump go back to business and real estate or will he stay in the US political game?
Of course, no one can predict the former US president’s behavior. This is how he was in power and how he will remain after he has left office. But his page will surely not be turned soon. It may simply not turn at all, at least for the foreseeable future. Trump has managed to disrupt American democracy.
The “scars” he left behind are not easy to heal. Suffice it to say that he provoked something that has not happened in almost 150 years of US history when he refused to take part in the official transfer of power to the new president. Trump made a point of keeping the American scene pided.
It was a pision that President Biden recognized. In his first speech immediately after the inauguration, he sought to relax the atmosphere and heal wounds. But it won’t be as easy as some people imagine. The United States left by Trump are no longer the United States the world knows.
Many scholars and researchers talk about the consequences of American isolationism and President Trump’s approach to American leadership of the world order. Some even go so far as to speak of signs of erosion of the American empire, as happened to the former USSR.
What matters to me in everything that former President Donald Trump said in his final days in the White House is the promise he made in his farewell speech, if you will, to return to power in one “form” or another, words that must be taken seriously.
They are not, as some people think, face-saving language to preserve dignity and pride (with the way he chose to walk off the stage alone, isolated even without his close presidential staff), or another empty promise or threat. What I find interesting about this statement is that Trump plans to stay on the American political scene.
Whatever his chances of success in this project, closely tied to the next steps Congress takes, his intentions will continue to pide, complicate efforts to bridge the national pide. Trump pulls at the heartstrings of his constituents, some 74 million who voted for him in the last presidential election. They make up a huge segment of the Republican Party electorate.
Trump is counting on all these people joining a new political party he wants to set up. The party would be based on his nationalist slogans and ideas, which many accuse of fanning racism, xenophobia, and white supremacism. Trump also intends to launch a media platform that speaks for this movement, promoting and defending its ideas.
The crux of the matter, in my opinion, is that keeping Trump on the American political scene will be most dangerous for Republicans. The new party will be active in traditionally GOP-controlled areas.
In addition, for many of his constituents, Trump is still seen as a victim of “stolen” election allegations and other ideas that have been propagated under the silence of Republicans. According to polls, about 50 percent of Republican voters believe Trump’s claims about the results of the last presidential election.
A majority of them support the attack on Capitol Hill, the totem of American democracy. More than half of these voters back Trump’s desire to run for the next presidential election in 2024. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted immediately after the Capitol siege showed that 70 percent of Republicans remain loyal to Trump.
My belief is that Trump’s presence in American politics gives clout to the far right. It risks undermining President Biden’s mission to implement his domestic political agenda.
I believe that being out of office gives Trump a great opportunity for media exposure and freedom from the constraints of his office, with the result that his right-wing tendencies are hardened and the social pide widened.
Trump will remain a main character in the American political arena unless the US Senate approves his conviction for provoking the raid on Capitol Hill and puts an end to his political future.
Even then, Trumpism will linger among millions of Americans, including many politicians, among whom some will seek to pick up the slack. In other words, Trumpism will save Trump. The conditions that the former president managed to exploit to win the 2016 presidential election are still here.
Trump campaigned at the time as someone with no political background and no party affiliation. But he addressed those who had lost faith in traditional parties and politicians. They wanted to see their ambitions expressed. They are the segment of the electorate that has backed Trump the most so far.
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