Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, travels from his New Jersey golf club to New York to work from his Trump Tower office at least once a week, entering and leaving Manhattan without attracting too much attention. ‘Warning. .
The place is not as he left it. Several of his former employees have left, along with most of the relatives who worked there with him and some fixed parts of the place, such as his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has since turned against him. Trump works there almost alone, with two secretaries and a few bodyguards.
His political operation has also been reduced to a team of former advisers who remain on his payroll, recalling the core of characters who helped a political neophyte achieve his unlikely victory in 2016. Most of them spend days or weeks without personally interacting with Trump. .
But when he spoke at the Republican convention in North Carolina on Saturday night, in what was billed as the resumption of his rallies and speeches, Trump was both a small figure and a giant presence in American life, with remarkable – and, according to many, dangerous – power over his party.
Even without his favorite megaphones and desk accessories, Trump looms over the political landscape, carried by the lie that he won the 2020 election and his own fury at defeat. Unlike other complainants, he has managed to impose his anger and his favorite version of reality on a substantial part of the American electorate – with the potential to influence American policy and weaken confidence in his elections for several years to come.
Still stuck on Twitter and Facebook, he struggled to find a way to influence media coverage after stepping down and promoting the invention that the 2020 election was stolen.
Some party leaders, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, claim he no longer exists but show deference when Trump cannot be ignored.
Others, like Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, have tried to win favor by offering Trump prizes invented to smooth his ego and keep him committed to trying to get Republicans back a majority in the Senate in 2022.
Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said Trump is questioning the model of former presidents who lose elections and tend to disappear, and the experience of Richard Nixon, who has been treated as an outcast in a way that Trump has could avoid.
As for being both tall and short, Beschloss said, “It’s great if the measure is that politicians fear it, which is a measure of power in Washington. Many Republican leaders are terrified of it and decrease in front of that. “
Jason Miller, adviser to the former president, agrees on Trump’s control of the party. “There are two types of Republicans in the Washington circle,” Miller said. “Those who realize that President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party and those who are deniers.”
Even if defeated, Trump remains the top spot for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in all public polls so far. Lawmakers who challenged his dominance in the party, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, who begged his colleagues to reject him after the unrest caused by his supporters on Capitol Hill on Jan.6, have been kicked out of the Republican leadership.
From his strange perch of insignificance and dominance, Trump has focused on three things: repeated false claims that the 2020 election has been “managed” and support for attempts to overturn the results; state and local investigations into the practices of the Trump Organization; and the situation of your business.
Trump, who two White House officials said was overjoyed to see his supporters storm the Capitol on Jan.6 and disrupt the Electoral College’s certification of the vote, told several people he believed he could to be “reinstated” in the White House in August, according to three people aware of his remarks.
It echoed a theory promoted by supporters like Mike Lindell, chief executive of My Pillow, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer sued for defamation by e-voting companies for leaking conspiracy theories about voting security.
President Joe Biden’s victory, with more than 80 million votes, was certified by Congress after the January 6 riot was brought under control. There is no legal mechanism to reinstate a president, and attempts by Republicans in the Arizona Senate to recount the votes in the state’s largest county have been dismissed as bogus and inadequate by local Republican officials, who say the result is an exhausting partisan circus. confidence in the elections.
Either way, Trump has focused on the efforts in Arizona and a trial in Georgia to insist that not only will he be reinstated, but Republicans will regain a majority in the Senate through the same efforts, according to those informed of what. he said.
Some of his advisers are not eager to get involved with him in his conspiracy theories and would like to see him push for a forward-looking agenda that could help Republicans in 2022. People around him joke that the oldest advisor in the world ‘ex The leader of the free world is Christina Bobb, a far-right One America News Network correspondent, eternally pro-Trump, to whom he regularly asks for information on the Arizona audit.
In his 90-minute speech on Saturday (5), Trump repeatedly attacked China for the coronavirus, unraveled a litany of conservative cultural warfare issues, and ended with a long frontal assault on the US vote and democracy. , in which he approved a long list of proposals to remove Republican voters.
Trump raised elaborate and baseless allegations of widespread fraud and of ‘thousands’ of deceased people who voted for Biden, called for voting to be limited in almost all cases to personal voting on election day, and dismissed the results of the 2020 elections as a product of the “crime of the century”.
“I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy,” Trump told an excited crowd, after falsely accusing Democrats of stealing the 2020 election and criticizing votes in the mail and in transit. “I’m the one trying to save her. Please remember that.
The former president was accompanied by his stepdaughter, Lara Trump, who had his sights set on a Senate seat from her home state of North Carolina, but dropped out of the race on Saturday night.
“I’m saying ‘no’ for now, not forever,” Lara Trump told the crowd. Donald Trump said he was waiting for her to make a decision and endorsed from the stage Rep. Ted Budd, who challenged the Electoral College’s count on January 6.
Trump’s first rally after his term in office is scheduled for this month, followed by other public appearances for his own benefit, paid for by his political action super committee, and on behalf of Republican lawmakers who support his agenda, advisers said. .