Petr Akopov
Donald Trump announced his intention to run in the 2024 presidential election. Although it has long been clear that the ex-president wants to return to the White House, there has been no official nomination – and only now, after the midterm congr-essional elections, Trump has entered the fray.
In his hour-long speech, he said that the country was in a terrible state and in serious trouble. And to make America great and glorious again, you need a great movement, a common campaign to defeat the enemy:
“We will fight against the most corrupt and deep-seated forces imaginable. <…> Our victory will be opposed by lobbyists, media, globalists, Marxist radicals, woke corporations (“corporations of the awakened” – that is, supporters of the ultra-liberal agenda) and political machines of colossal proportions.”
That is, Trump again enters the fight as an opponent of the establishment – this is how he won in 2016 and was close to winning in 2020 (he himself is sure that the victory was stolen from him – and he is not the only one who thinks so). Now all the power of the American media will again fall on Trump – the “Wash-ington swamp”, that is, the very deep state that Trump declared his main enemy, will do everything to prevent his return to power.
And for starters, they will try to block his nomination from the Republican Party – using for this, among other things, the relatively unsuccessful performance of the “elephants” in the midterm elections. The Republicans failed to take the Senate, and in the House of Representatives received much less than expected (although they regained control of it). Trump’s opponents in the Republican Party have perked up, arguing that “Donald Trump cost us the victory,” while Joe Biden and the Democrats are looking forward to the ex-president’s showdown with Ron DeSantis, the triumphantly re-elected governor of Florida.
Republican DeSantis has not yet declared his presidential ambitions, but if earlier he was not only a like-minded person, but also a generally loyal supporter of Trump, now he is avoiding answering the question of whether he will be nominated if the ex-president participates in the election. It will almost certainly be – playing on the ambitions of the 44-year-old DeSantis is not so difficult, because the media and a large part of the Repub-lican establishment will assure him that it is he who can lead the party to victory, and it is time to write off the 76-year-old Trump as scrap. But Trump is a fighter and he won’t give up just like that. Moreover, it was Trump who in many ways gave birth to DeSantis (although the politician from Florida appeared in the House of Represent-atives back in 2012, in the wake of the success of the “Tea Party” – an anti-elite a-nd conservative trend in the Republican Party), helping him to be elected governor of Florida in 2018.
So Trump is not going to go down in history. Whatever today’s ratings show (according to some of which DeSantis is already ahead of Trump in popularity among Republicans), the ex-president has every opportunity to be nominated from a party in which he now has much more serious positions than in 2016, when he was opposed by the absolute majority of the Republican elite. Then he managed to break its resistance, winning the sympathy of ordinary voters, and now he has a stable base of support, a large part of which is sure that he was dishonestly deprived of a second term in 2020. It is impossible to imagine that they will turn their backs on Trump by 2024, unless he himself changes his mind about being elected president, giving way to DeSantis. But that option is almost out of the question now, and if a health condition or a bullet doesn’t stop Trump,
On this day, many people in Russia will also root for Trump, just as they rooted for him in 2016 and 2020. This bet on Trump causes some bewilderment and even indignation – they say, what kind of naive hopes for a strange egocentric, incompetent madcap, surrounded by foreign policy “hawks”? Will he make friends with Russia, stop supporting Ukraine, or disband NATO? How can you trust this pathological liar, much less bet on him?
A negative attitude towards Trump is not only characteristic of liberals – some conservatives in our country consider him not a real right-winger, a populist (forgetting that this term is often used simply as a stigma), they do not believe in his isolationism and anti-globalism. You can argue with both liberal and patriotic opponents of Trump for a long time – pointing at least to the fact that during his stay in the White House he was shackled hand and foot by the joint efforts of the “Washington swamp” and Congress. And that Trump’s statement that “the war in Ukraine would not have happened if I were president” should not be taken only as a demagogic move in the fight against Biden – judging by all indirect data, the decision to prepare for the special operation was made in Moscow after the arrival of the Democratic President in the White House. Not because Putin thought Trump for Russia is not a “dream president” and not a “Russian candidate” at all – we cannot have “our own man” in the White House at all. Trump is a stubborn American nationalist, a man who really wants to “make America great again”, but it is the United States, and not a global empire (the foundation for the construction of which the States should serve), whose mission is impossible, but for the sake of realizing the dream of it, the supranational elite is ready reformat not only the whole world, but the United States itself. Which in the minds of the majority (still the majority) of Americans still remain a country of Wasps (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) with conservative (in modern times) values and concepts. It’s amazing that people like Trump
Trump’s “America-dream” has a chance of revenge in the coming years – although much of the (now cosmopolitan) elite and demographic and other trends are working against it. Such an America – if it returns and takes place – of course, can also be an adversary and even an enemy of Russia. It may not go into neo-isolationism, that is, not withdraw into itself, but try to continue (including by inertia) “to shepherd the peoples” and claim hegemony everywhere and in everything. But with such an America there is a chance not only to be at enmity, but also to talk. And even to agree on the rules of the world order – because for her, first of all, her own national interests, the interests of a strong society and a prosperous state, will matter.
But not everything, but only half of it? No, everything. Because, having dealt with the “rednecks”, the supranational American elite will then reformat its current base, liberal citizens and non-whites, in exactly the same way. However, these are America’s problems, and for us it is only important with whom we build relations there (war is also a certain form of relations). And with Trump’s America, we have something to talk about – that’s why in Russia they will root for him.
Well, those who do not believe either Trump or his dream will root for him simply on the principle of “the worse, the better” – hoping that his election will lead to an even greater split in the States, or even become a decisive step in path to civil war. Although I would recommend that those who dream about it make a bet on Biden’s victory – in order to surely get the desired consequences.
