The hosts of an India Today TV show asked a baby pygmy hippopotamus to guess who would be the next president of the United States, Paul the Octopus style in 2010, and the omen struck like a bolt of lightning. Donald Trump He was going to be, in the most amusing method they could come up with, the Americans’ choice to assume the most powerful office in the world for the next four years. The baby pygmy hippopotamus, to the great frustration of Europeanists, ayatollahs and more than half of Americans, got the better of his instinct. So Trump won the election, he lost it Kamala Harris – without it being necessary to stretch the count – and it is certain that the Republican candidate will govern with a freer hand than during his first adventure.
Some advanced analysts, like Ian Bremmerconsiders this tendency to be the most natural, despite the links established by the most reliable surveys. Seven in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the progress the country has made, he said, and most democracies voted for change. “Only his unpopularity”, he concluded on his X account, retained Trump as “a risky bet”. If the election was contested in seven states, risky or not, he won five.
His divorce from reality during the pandemic didn’t carry weight — enough — when he suggested bleach injections would end the virus. Nor did the memory of his final scenes as president carry any weight, given his success in the popular vote. Trump lost the election, Biden won, and yet he unleashed an unprecedented disinformation campaign to portray himself as the victim of colossal fraud and to the masses who ultimately stormed the Capitol.
The political journalist said Ezra Klein in his podcast that, when he wrote Why are they polarized?between 2019 and 2020, noted the progressive degradation of the concept. In 2008, the division between Democrats and Republicans focused, for example, on sympathy and antipathy towards Obamacare. In 2024, the division established by Trumpism has gone further: it even calls into question the very legitimacy of democracy.
Throughout the campaign, and until last night, Trump maintained suspicions of the system. He left the door open, at any time, to challenge the result if it did not fall in his favor. And it will now no longer be necessary for Indian presenters to resort to the pygmy hippopotamus again to anticipate their next steps. The house is furnished to his liking, with both parliamentary chambers bathed in red, like the Supreme Court, and no president can extend his stay for more than two terms, so there is no reason for dispute.
If the Russians are happy with their victory in bringing Ukraine’s capitulation closer, the Iranians are worried: it was Kamala, not Trump, who advocated for a ceasefire in the Middle East. Europeans’ doubts run deeper. The Republican, in recent months, has repeated and repeated and repeated that his commitment to NATO is relative, and the words of his vice-president on Europe, J.D. Vancesuggest that an ocean of ice will once again separate Brussels and Washington.
There are those who believe, like Mujtaba Rahmanthat we, Europeans, will react with blows: we will ensure our own defense because there is no other choice. Some argue, however, that naivety leads to this idea: Trump’s victory, accompanied by a disoriented Germany, will embolden strongmen, like Viktor Orbanwanting to weaken the European Union from within. These are not two exclusive paths.
