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France 24

Donald Trump acquitted: what future for the former US president and the Republicans?

The acquittal of former President Donald Trump after his trial for “incitement to insurgency” in the Senate on Saturday illustrates how great his influence remains within the Republican Party, even if some of the tenors of this training have distanced themselves. The race is open for 2024. The US Senate acquitted Donald Trump on Saturday February 13 after his second impeachment trial. Even if the suspense was almost zero, the acquittal is obviously a relief for Donald Trump. In the short term, this vote gives him the opportunity to take up one of his favorite campaign arguments: posing as a martyr, the victim of an incessant “witch hunt”. The only president in history indicted two times, he is also the only one to have been acquitted twice. “This can be a rallying cry: to hammer home that he has been targeted by the left and by the press, unfairly,” said Capri Cafaro, former Democrat and teacher at the American University. Reacting to the verdict. of the Senate, Donald Trump seemed to set a date for the future. “Our magnificent, historic and patriotic movement, Make America Great Again, has only just begun,” he said. More Complicated Equation But the equation, which worked during his four years in office, has become more complicated since dark day of January 6 and the violence perpetrated by his supporters. Many Republican officials have distanced themselves, which constitutes a major handicap in view of a possible reconquest even if his ability to galvanize the crowds remains a weighty asset.Without an elective mandate, deprived of his Twitter account, recluse in his Mar-a-Lago Golf Club, more than 1,300 kilometers from Washington, he could also find it difficult to be heard now, especially as the next presidential deadline of 2024 is already whetting appetites. One of the possible contenders for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, has already cut ties and felt he was out of the game for the upcoming deadlines. “He took a path that he shouldn’t have taken, and we shouldn’t have followed him and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we must never let this start again.” The Republican Party, the After having lined up – sometimes reluctantly but always obediently – behind Donald Trump for four years, the Grand Old Party is going through a period of immense upheaval. A handful of elected officials shout loudly that Donald Trump’s place cannot be questioned and that he is the natural candidate for 2024. “This party is his. It does not belong to anyone else”, a few days ago launched the Republican elected Marjorie Taylor Greene, who for a time supported the theses of the far-right conspiratorial movement QAnon. But many party leaders want a new start. Faced with polls which remain flattering for Donald Trump, they wonder how to turn the page: Brutally? Slowly ? Imperceptibly Beyond the trauma of January 6, the party holds him responsible for the loss of the Senate: his refusal to accept defeat for more than two months has placed the “GOP” in a wobbly position during the two partial senatorials in early January, won by the Democrats. Towards a new center-right party? Remains a worrying point for the party’s strategists: support for Trump during his impeachment trial, guided by the desire not to anger the ex -president, could have an electoral cost. “The senators who voted for acquittal may have protected themselves against perilous primaries in the face of more extreme candidates within their party, but they also made themselves more vulnerable during the real elections, “said Wendy Schiller of Brown University (Rhode Island). Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted to acquit, hiding behind questions of law. But to immediately declare that Donald Trump was “in fact” and “morally” responsible for the violence of January 6. A hundred former American officials have circulated the idea in recent days of the creation of a new center party -right that would bring together Republicans wishing to cut net with Trumpism. But the chances of breaking the American model, which has always revolved around two parties, appear extremely slim.

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