On December 14, 2000, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens considered that the majority of his colleagues had committed a coup d’état when they prevented Florida from resolving the electoral dispute between Gore and Bush. “Although we will never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential elections – he wrote in a private note – the identity of the loser is completely clear. It is the nation’s trust in the judge as an impartial guardian in the exercise of the law”.
Twenty years later, on December 14, 2020, the day on which all 50 states of the Union certified the results giving victory to Biden, Trump insisted that he was the winner, denounced massive fraud and harangued his followers to “defend democracy”. On January 6, 2021, they stormed the Capitol, the culmination of an attempted coup that cost the lives of nine people.
The marble columns of American democracy, the same ones that withstood the challenge of 2000, again resisted the challenge of 2020. The fact that Trump has now been prosecuted proves it. It is not clear, however, that in the elections of November 5, 2024, they will end up yielding to the strength of MAGA, the authoritarian movement led by Trump himself. 15 months to go.
Trump has everything in his favor to be the Republican candidate for the presidency of the USA. Ron De Santis, the governor of Florida who could shadow him, is a bluff. There are many Americans who want him to be their leader.
The polls place Trump and Biden tied with 43% of the intention to vote. That is, there are tens of millions of Americans who will support Trump even if he is accused of conspiring to steal the 2020 election. They don’t care that the evidence against him is overwhelming. They know, as everyone has known for two and a half years, that he lied to the American people, intimidated many officials, and incited violence from his supporters to cling to power knowing he had lost. They believe that she is the victim of a witch hunt, similar to those in Nazi Germany and the USSR.
They don’t care that he behaved like an autocrat and resisted transferring power peacefully. Nor did they care that, as president, he flirted with dictators, denied climate change or the pandemic, harassed judges and journalists, despised the Constitution and maneuvered to enrich his family. They share their anger against the open, plural and inclusive society that the Democrats represent. There is no court evidence that can shatter their faith in Trump.
This is the drama that the United States is facing. The people can elect an enemy of the people and of democracy.
In just four months, Trump has been prosecuted three times: for buying the silence of a porn actress, for keeping secret documents in his home that endangered national security, and for conspiring to alter the outcome of the election and undermine the general confidence in the democratic system.
He knew, when he announced his candidacy in 2019, that nothing could happen to him, even if he started shooting on Fifth Avenue in New York. Dozens of lawyers continue to strive to camouflage the crimes so that it is so. They are lawyers who will now try to delay the trial for the attempted robbery of the last presidential elections. They must ensure that it is not held before November 5, 2024. The maneuvers will focus the campaign of a candidate who will present himself as a victim and the only possible savior of a corrupt country. However, even if they fail and Trump is found guilty before the election, his candidacy will still be valid. He can be elected and he can pardon himself when he’s in the oval office.
What Judge Stevens found in 2000 is much more true today. The reactionary right has eroded trust in institutions. Popular will can topple a dictator. America’s democracy has never been more threatened.
