Donald Trump: his last days in the White House are chilling
Persistent challenges to the results of the presidential election, repeated vetoes against crucial laws, resumption of federal executions, noise of boots in Iran… The American president's last days in the White House are at high risk. At this rate, January 20, the date of Joe Biden's swearing-in, seems dangerously far away.
Enough is enough! (" Enough is enough ! "). This is what the Republican senators, his own camp, who apparently rallied the Democrats on Friday to allow, despite the presidential veto, the vote by the Congress of the heavy American defense budget seem to have meant to the outgoing US President Donald Trump. of $ 700 billion, by 81 votes in favor and 13 against.
Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump had used his veto power nine times against bills passed in both chambers, but Congress had never managed to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to override it.
Blocking threats
Already, under pressure from all parliamentarians, a week earlier, Donald Trump had finally withdrawn another of his veto, this time on the $ 900 billion economic stimulus plan, which also threatened to block funding for the 'Federal state.
Each time, Trump's motivations are aimed at the same goal: to cripple as much as possible the beginnings of that elected successor to the White House that he still refuses to recognize: Joe Biden.
The appeals lodged against what he describes as "massive" electoral fraud may well, one after the other, be rejected by even the highest courts such as the Supreme Court, and even made up mainly of judges whom he has appointed. appointed, he does not resign himself.
Probably more pragmatic than him - Trump now denounces a "weak and tired Republican leadership" - the Republicans who had for a time supported his challenge to the vote, are more and more numerous to side with the institutions.
Whims of a sore loser
Donald Trump is now focusing all his energy on January 6, the date on which Congress must ratify the vote of the voters who elected Joe Biden president by 306 votes against 232 to Trump. But his legal attempt to allow Vice President Mike Pence to challenge the electoral college's vote in Congress was also rejected on Saturday.
This still does not discourage the last square of the faithful Trumpists who, despite this new setback, attempt a parliamentary sling. White House Secretary General Mark Meadows on Sunday called on parliamentarians to fight back against Joe Biden's certification of victory. According to him, a hundred representatives and a dozen Republican senators will object to the votes of the voters, in accordance with Trump's wish, thus deeming Biden as an illegitimate and falsely elected president:
We’re now at well over 100 House members and a dozen Senators ready to stand up for election integrity and object to certification.
It’s time to fight back.— Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) January 3, 2021
A stubbornness which, even if it will not prevent the election of Joe Biden from succeeding, shapes what could be the deleterious atmosphere of Trump's last days in the White House, but also of the months and years that will follow.
With a deep division among Americans, between "pro Trump whatever the cost", and those, whatever their party, who will choose the defense of American democratic institutions. This Saturday the homes of the two top US parliamentarians, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Democrats patroness Nancy Pelosi, were both vandalized.
The gradual and very real revival of the Republican Party shows that Trump's obstinacy has ended up arousing fears even in his own camp. Who now seems to prefer preserving American institutions rather than the whims of a sore loser.
Donald Trump still has all of his powers as sitting president, however, and is pursuing what looks like a personal crusade in all other possible areas.
A staunch supporter of the death penalty, in July he ended a 17-year moratorium on executions at the federal level. Since then, 10 federal executions have taken place in American prisons. All while also departing from another 130-year-old tradition: that of stopping executions during the transition between two presidents. Conversely, this did not prevent the US president from pardoning, one of his privileges, employees of the private mercenary company Blackwater, who were convicted of murdering civilians in Iraq.
Iranian nuclear dossier
On the foreign policy front, his latest choices are also worrying: taxation of new European products in the old Boeing Airbus conflict and, particularly dangerous, fears of renewed conflict around the Iranian nuclear issue. Weakened by the assassination at the end of November of an Iranian nuclear physicist - of which the Iranians accuse Israel -, the future of the Iranian nuclear agreement, victim of the numerous blows of Trump since he decided unilaterally to s 'withdrawing and reinstating sanctions against Iran, is suspended upon the arrival of Joe Biden at the helm. Unless incidents precipitate the situation before January 20, making it irrecoverable, which many observers fear.
The repeated complaints by Joe Biden and his team, three weeks before the handover, about the withholding of information by Trump's presidential teams in matters of national security, when they should actively and transparently prepare for the transition, do not not reassure.
