Donald Trump, between the courts and the White House

Donald Trump has appeared this Monday before one of the many courts that accuse him of a string of political and business irregularities. He has to answer to so many processes that, if he is not careful, with the corresponding appeals that he is sure to exhaust, and in the best of cases for his luck, it will take him a dozen years to become a citizen free of charges.  

But he is not giving up: he continues to share his self-defence, pouring millions of dollars into paying off the army of lawyers who have him under wraps and aspiring to return to the White House in the next term.  

At the arraignment, far from being respectful of the court, he reacted with his characteristic arrogance and made a sorry spectacle of himself, accusing the persecution of business activity and lashing out at the judge who called him to order several times. It was an unprecedented scandal for a former president and an aspirant to return to office, no less. He seems so confident that he will succeed and thus postpone the possible codenames that he has already commissioned his loyal advisors to prepare a project for a thorough reform of the structures of the judiciary, presumably so that it will be more favourable to him in the future. 

But if he does not do well on justice, he cannot complain if he competes in the Republican primaries, which are already on the eve of the elections. The polls, which are highly credible and respected in the US, are surprisingly favourable to him. So much so that in five crucial states in the distribution of electoral votes - or compromisers if you prefer - he outperforms the voting prospects of the president himself, Joe Biden, albeit of a different party. In Nevada he trails by ten points and in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin by between two and five.  

The New York Times reports that both in the White House and at Democratic Party headquarters these figures have caused concern. It is clear that what is becoming known about the lies and cheating of the ex-president does not influence broad sectors of public opinion: many citizens either do not believe the reality or do not care. In the Republican Party there is a great division of positions that is reflected both in the Senate and in Congress. On the street there are quite a few who believe that Trump is being persecuted by those who in the 2020 elections cheated with their votes in the ballot counts and stole his re-election. 

Analysts, with some exceptions, cannot explain this belief, even among people of recognised intellectual and cultural ability. Outside the United States, the surprise caused by "Trumpmania", as it is recognised in some newsrooms, is even greater. In European democracies it is not understood, perhaps because the motivations behind the vote in the diversity of states and interests that exist in the United States are not well understood. The complexity of the electoral system, the low voter turnout and, above all, the exaltation of the winners, especially in finance and business, must also be taken into account. Trump became a myth of success when his business triumph was appreciated without stopping to learn about his fiscal and other traps. 

That image of business triumph, the image of symbols such as the sumptuous building on New York's Fifth Avenue that bears his name in gold letters, or his ostentatiously changing exhibitions of women, always exuberant, he ended up transferring to politics. An ideology with no other argument than money, which arouses admiration and an example to be imitated, nothing to do with ethics and even less with a proposal that could arouse the interest that politics determines the vote in other democracies more focused on equality and collective well-being.