Would a return of Donald Trump to power spell the death knell for American democracy? Less than a year before the presidential election, this question is being asked with increasing urgency by the former president’s opponents.
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The world’s leading power is “sleepwalking toward dictatorship,” claims anti-billionaire Republican spokeswoman Liz Cheney while promoting her book on the subject.
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The former president, favorite in his party’s primary for the 2024 election, “told us exactly what he was going to do. He will not bow to court decisions. He will make appointments without worrying about them being confirmed by the Senate. “He indicated that he would use the Army in a totally un-American way,” the former Wyoming elected official said in a television interview on Sunday.
Liz Cheney even told the Washington Post that she is considering an independent run in the 2024 election, which, barring any surprises, would pit the former president against his Democratic successor, Joe Biden.
Liz Cheney Getty Images via AFP
avenger
The former White House tenant’s increasingly violent rhetoric has already caused quite a stir, such as when he called his political opponents “vermin.” Or when he promised to “avenge” his supporters after his never-acknowledged defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
President Joe Biden has long made defending democracy a key focus of his campaign. With his economic and social arguments failing, the 81-year-old Democrat insists with renewed enthusiasm on the threat his rival poses and against which he believes he is the best defense.
“If Trump didn’t run, I’m not sure I would run. But we can’t let him win,” the American president said on Tuesday as he toured Democratic donors in the Boston (Northeast) region.
AFP
Donald Trump “tells us what he wants to do. He is not hiding it,” reaffirmed Joe Biden, who also referred to the warnings of Liz Cheney, “a strong voice in his opinion,” and mentioned The Atlantic magazine, whose latest issue is entirely dedicated to depicting a second Trump- Term.
The former businessman could “destroy institutions,” warns The Atlantic, which is reviewing his program on institutions, defense, the environment, immigration, the justice system, etc.
“Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian reflexes, but his political apparatus has become more sophisticated and countervailing forces have weakened,” New York Times journalists said in alarm on Monday.
One of the most sensational columns was signed in the Washington Post on November 30 by Robert Kagan, an intellectual known for his neoconservative diplomatic positions.
“Persecution”
“Let’s stop kidding ourselves and face the truth,” he writes, emphasizing that Donald Trump has a real chance of winning against the stubbornly unpopular Joe Biden, whose age worries voters.
Robert Kagan carefully describes how, if re-elected, the Republican would initiate a comprehensive “persecution” of his political opponents and a purge of the state apparatus, using the army if necessary to suppress any form of dissent.
This challenge would probably be timid, he believes, in the darkest passage of this already very dark demonstration: “In conservative tyrannies, ordinary people suffer all kinds of restrictions on their freedoms, but this matters to them only insofar as they value it.” Many people don’t care about these freedoms.”
The main party is responding to these allegations with its usual return-to-sender strategy: on Tuesday he published a message on his Truth Social platform in which he assured, without really arguing, that it was in fact Joe Biden, the ” “true dictator” would act.
Donald Trump, who is facing multiple lawsuits, believes that the current president is “punishing his political opponents,” “ignoring” the law, “profiting from power,” and “undermining” the Constitution.