Can Donald Trump become US President again?
Donald Trump wants to come back. "I've beaten them twice, and maybe I'll decide to beat them a third time," he said days after leaving the White House, a year ago now. Since then, that phrase resonates for many as a dark threat. His tenure was one of the most controversial in recent US history. Openly xenophobic, misogynistic and anti-establishment, he was the first president to face two impeachment proceedings, leaving behind a remarkably fractured nation and a looted Capitol.
Half the world was touched when at the end of 2016 Trump managed to win 69 million votes in the presidential elections and defeated his rival, Hillary Clinton. Just a few weeks earlier, New York Times polls gave him a 15% chance. So, there were a few who, after his victory, wondered: "How the hell did this happen?".
That is the question with which Michael Moore starts Farenheit 9/11 (2018), a documentary in which the filmmaker tries to understand what were the forces that drove the rise of Trump and which can be seen on RTVE Play. The title, which refers to the date on which the businessman won the elections, explores the figure of the tycoon who reached the White House, also analyzing a broader panorama that allows us to probe what American society is like and why they allowed that man to reach one of the most influential political posts in the world.
Moore puts on the table the strategies of the media that, obsessed with achieving audiences at all costs, boosted Trump's populism. The number of television viewers skyrocketed every time the tycoon appeared on screen, according to the documentary. A media that did as in the time of Hitler, not seeing the danger that threatened. It is the comparison that Moore makes, which shows montages in which he faces the campaigns of the Nazi leader and Trump.
Moore uses his particular humor and irony again to narrate the events, but that does not prevent the viewer from witnessing a somewhat hopeless review. The feeling remains that little can be done in a country where, even when the abuses are flagrant and exposed to the light with crystal clarity, people still do not see the reality.
Teachers who measure tickets for soup kitchens, entire cities (Flint, Michigan) poisoned by multinationals, the Democratic Party deceiving its voters, cheating the results in the election of Hilary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, and the most powerful body building a huge Wall. It is the bleak panorama that the United States offered a few years ago.
Could Trump return to the Casablanca?
As a review of the recent past, Fahrenheit 09/11 brings to the table issues such as education, immigration or the power of the media that can be transferred to current political analysis. Donald Trump has not yet decided if he is going to run in the next presidential elections in 2024, but he has already released several statements that indicate that this could happen.
One year after the arrival of Joe Biden to the presidency, the polls show a certain discontent. The hopes that many Americans pinned on the Democrat could be dashed. Meanwhile, Trump appears to be campaigning on two key pillars: nostalgia for the strong economy that occurred in his pre-pandemic term, and resentment over the outcome of the 2020 vote.
"Let's take America back"
Several American media and journalists have begun to detail some keys to a possible return. In many ways, Trump is already campaigning. At a rally in Iowa last October, the former president told his supporters: "We're going to take America back." Additionally, according to the Washington Post, Trump has begun endorsing federal and state candidates, through fundraisers for his political action committee, Save America, which had amassed $90 million the last time he made a disclosure to the House. Federal Election Commission in June.
"Trump's body language is designed to convince people that he's running, and his power is such that the Republican nomination is his for the asking," Fox News columnist Howard Kurtz wrote on Nov. 24. Though perhaps his The most decisive statements are those that the businessman gave to Fox on November 8, where he announced that he would "probably" wait until mid-2022 to announce whether he will run again in 2024. "I'm certainly thinking about it, we'll see," Trump said. .
In any case, the great legal problems that Trump still has to face are one of his biggest threats on this path. This Wednesday it has become known that the New York Prosecutor's Office assures that Trump's family company falsified its assets to access loans and tax benefits and there is an ongoing criminal investigation in Georgia into Trump's alleged attempts to interfere in the results of the 2020 state election.
