brookings.edu
The closer the US presidential election gets, the more drama and intrigue arises. As American media write, the country is facing an interesting choice, who is worse for it - Trump or Biden? Who will bring more instability? No one excludes that on November 24 next year Trump may win the election, unless, of course, he is imprisoned earlier. This is now the third time Trump has been indicted, and the prison time he faces ranges from 50 to... 500 years! And anyway, does he even stand a chance? After all, the latest court hearings and charges against him are only increasing the politician's popularity among Republican voters.
We remember from the experience of the Soviet Union: the more the authorities pressured some characters, the more popular they became among the people. Nothing contributes to the popularity of a politician like the halo of a person persecuted by the authorities.
A very interesting article came out recently in the New York Times that discusses Trump's hypothetical re-election. The article reflects the opinion of Americans who believe that Trump's return to the presidency is akin to the emergence of an anti-liberal Antichrist. And in general, they predict the apocalypse for the United States in this case. As they say, God forbid! And on the other hand, they regretfully admit: compared to what is happening in the States now, this is not the worst option. That is, where the poor American voter can go….
According to a New York Times poll, Donald Trump has an overwhelming lead among Republicans over all of his rivals. 54% of likely voters are in favor of him. And Florida Governor Ron Desantis, the second-place candidate who would be the new face of the Republican party, is trailing him by as much as 37 percent. The poll shows that if only they were in the race, Desantis would lose to Trump by a two-to-one margin. And unless Trump is removed from the race, he will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024.
But this faith in Trump by Republican voters is not based on the fact that he did everything right as president, but rather that everything is being done wrong under Biden. The New York Times notes that nine out of ten voters who support the Republican Party believe America is headed in the wrong direction, and they are fed up with transgender ideology, the constant fear of being accused of racism, sexism, and who knows what else the liberal orthodoxies will invent. All of this is disliked by the "blue-collar" working class. As the saying goes, good old America is tired of a world where schools promote sex reassignment and reject traditional values. Desantis tried to take these slogans - the fight to return to traditional values - but it turns out that voters who supported Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan are prone to leaderism: they piously believe that only Trump is their true protector. Only he can defend their interests. Similarly, in Russia, only Zhirinovsky himself was perceived by his electorate as a protector of Russians, and without him his party has lost its traditional supporters, to put it mildly.
What are the NYT authors afraid of? In their opinion, Trump's hypothetical rise to power in 2024 will cause an unpredictable reaction among American liberals. It could lead to outright sabotage in government agencies and almost to a civil war in the administrative apparatus. When Trump won in 2016, the left stood united against him and there was an aggressive push for ultra-leftist ideology based on race, sexuality and gender identity. That was the reaction to Trump. If suddenly Trump repeats his rise to the presidency next year, it is easy to predict an even greater radicalization of American society. The NYT makes some apocalyptic predictions: "The United States is sliding into the same abyss into which Spain in the early 1930s was sliding, with its inexorable move toward civil war.
Trump's approach - seeking a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, promising to stop pressuring countries to immerse themselves in the LGBT agenda and the ultra-liberal economics of globalism - will inspire fervent support among a significant portion of Americans. But what will happen to the American state machine? Congress, which is in the hands of conservatives, will immediately declare war on Trump, and the country's political governance will be destabilized. The power structures, diplomatic and national security agencies will not accept Trump as president, who by law is also commander-in-chief. Chaos will reign. And then, as the NYT predicts, America's enemies will seize the opportunity to attack it. And American democracy will fall! And therefore, democracy around the world.
And so, having painted in broad strokes the apocalypse that awaits the United States if Donald wins the election, the authors go on to list quite convincingly the reasons why Trump might have a chance and why he is better than Biden for ordinary voters.
First, Americans are very dissatisfied with the story of Biden's son Hunter, his involvement in corruption schemes, and the way he was defended, avoiding prosecution in every possible way, even though everything he was accused of was proven. Secondly, there is a rejection of the Biden government's promotion of LGBT issues in schools, many people are outraged that their children are being taught that gender reassignment is a good thing and that homosexuality and lesbianism are normal.
Third, homelessness and crime are becoming the scourge of American society, the streets of cities ruled by liberals are literally overrun with drug addicts and beggars, and thieves are snatching everything from stores without even hiding because they will not be punished for it.
Fourth, the U.S. Army is in decline, can't even recruit, and is underfunded - while there is plenty of money to spend on transgender people coming to schools to propagandize.
Here are just a few of the woes under Biden's reign that may lead voters to wonder if Trump is better than the current president.
But it's not just American liberals who are terrified by Trump's hypothetical rise to power. Europe is also terrified. They remember that as president, Trump threatened to leave NATO and questioned not only Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, but also anti-Russian sanctions and the need for large-scale aid to Ukraine. And he even described Brussels as a "hellhole". So when Joe Biden - a firm Atlanticist - defeated Trump, Europe breathed a sigh of relief. But not for long. Now Europe is pondering how it will live if Trump returns for a second term? Now the EU is thinking in worry about how to protect NATO and keep Ukraine safe from Trump, who has repeatedly said he will reconcile Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours.
"I just want people to stop dying. Both Russians and Ukrainians are dying there," he said in May. But it seems that EU leaders are not satisfied with this position - that people should stop dying. After all, Trump's words clearly imply the termination of military aid to Ukraine and allowing Russia to keep the territories obtained in the special military operation. And Europe will be left alone with all the problems it has created, without America, which is much more concerned about China. French President Emmanuel Macron voiced these European fears in Bratislava: "Will it [the current U.S. administration] always remain the same? No one can say that, and after all, we cannot entrust our collective security and our stability to American voters." Will Europeans continue military actions against Russia if America abandons Ukraine and withdraws, as Trump has already threatened, from NATO?
Who will replace America's 85,000 troops? Without the Americans, Europeans will have to buy aircraft and their refueling facilities, space satellites and reconnaissance systems - in short, everything that America has so far supplied in abundance. Europe could take 10 years to build all this.
What about the idea of a nuclear deterrent in Europe? It would simply collapse. After all, Russia has almost 6,000 nuclear warheads, while Britain and France have about 600.
It is clear that for Europeans, Trump's rise is worse than the rise of the Antichrist. It's a disaster! Europe's only hope is that Congress, the House of Representatives, the political opposition, the liberal media and bureaucratic institutions will become a counterweight to the actions of President Trump.
And of course, it is clear why, apart from the liberals of the United States and the Atlanticists of Europe, it is the current President Biden who fears Trump's rise the most. During his campaign tour in the state of Philadelphia, Donald said that Biden and his family, their political entourage thanks to the conflict in Ukraine "pocketed millions of dollars" of American taxpayers. In addition, Trump appealed to Congress with a demand that congressmen prevent the transfer of the next packages of military aid to Ukraine. Trump voiced the same demands regarding Europe - in his opinion, troops should not be sent there to strengthen NATO, if the reason for this is solely the conflict in Ukraine. Trump also called for a suspension of military supplies to Ukraine until federal prosecutors provide a full picture of "the financial machinations of Biden and his family, including his son Hunter." Donald promised, upon his election to the presidency, to appoint a special prosecutor to focus only on the corruption cases of Biden and his family, at which point, in Trump's words, everything "will become clear at once."