For his declaration of candidacy, the former president tried to recreate the alchemy of 2015-2016: a man against the elites, carried by an America in free fall. But after the disappointment of the midterms, the heart is not there on the side of the Republicans.
by Piotr Smolar (Palm Beach, Florida, Special Envoy)
Penetrating Mar-A-Lago is a bit disappointing. We don’t see anything, or so little. Palm trees aligned like toothpicks, empty tennis courts, a lot of busy staff. Impossible to deviate from the limited course for journalists, who came to attend in number, Tuesday, November 15, to the “big announcement” of Donald Trump: his candidacy for the presidential election of 2024.
Impossible, therefore, to approach the heart of the Floridian residence of the former president, where the federal police (FBI) had seized dozens of cards of classified documents in early August. But the very choice of this decor betrayed a form of imprisonment, classicism which is the opposite of transgression, original sap of Trumpism.
It is in the reception room with incredible gilding and friezes, under the high ceiling illuminated by the projectors and crystal chandeliers, that the “king mag” – since he thus nicknamed himself, named after From his Make America Great Again movement – went on stage, between marble columns. A dozen American flags hung on his back. Donald Trump tried to recreate the alchemy of his original ascent, that of 2015-2016: a man against the elites, carried by an abandoned and despised America.
Alchemy, there was hardly, before an audience of high society, made up and endimanché, much less intense than that of meetings. “The decline of America is imposed on us by Biden and the extreme left lunatics which lead our government into the wall,” said Donald Trump. Without direct allusion to his potential rivals within the Republican Party, he warned that the restoration of American grandeur could not be entrusted to anyone. “It is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate, it is a task for a big movement,” he said. Trump and the Maga people against the party: can the past be a future? Even Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the Néocandidat, was not present in the public.
Narcissistic idealization
Long hour, usual mixture of read text and improvisations already experienced on other plans, Donald Trump’s speech confirmed the fears of republican frames. While the bulletins of the mid-term elections were not all stripped or the new majority in the known House of Representatives, the former president delivered a precipitated, sloppy, without muscle or energy.
Like a crooner revisiting his old tubes for lack of alternative, Donald Trump followed the exact canvas of his speeches during the countryside just completed. We found the same apocalyptic vision of America under Biden – “open” border with Mexico, economic relegation, crime, etc. -, the same narcissistic idealization of his own presidency, the same anecdotes with Chinese President Xi Jinping or his South American counterparts. The only inflection was the absence of digressions on the imaginary electoral fraud, even if Donald Trump once again called for a counting the same day of the vote, with paper bulletins.
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