“It’s a terrible start to the campaign,” said Judge Lara Brown, professor of political science at George Washington University, noting that the former president is going from “scandal to scandal”.
Most of his supporters who had hoped to ride a conservative “wave” in the midterm elections fell to the carpet soon after.
Dropped by the conservative heavyweight in late November, the former president once again found himself at the center of criticism after dining with rapper Kanye West, accused of anti-Semitism and a white supremacist.
“Ridiculous”, “disgusting”, “reprehensible”: elected Republicans, long eager not to incur the wrath of their party’s leader, no longer have enough words to show their disapproval.
Last weekend, the former president went berserk when, in one of his usual diatribes, denouncing “electoral fraud,” he called for the Constitution to be abandoned.
Donald Trump called for the abolition of the United States Constitution
Tuesday’s failure in Georgia of one of his candidates for a seat in the Senate, former American football player Herschel Walker, drove the point home.
“Trump has seen many of his major donors publicly say they will not support his candidacy in 2024,” Professor Brown told AFP.
The billionaire, known for his oratory skills and his meetings in front of a tide of red hats, has not held a modest campaign event outside his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, since announcing his candidacy.
Political concerns that the seventy-year-old would have done well. He is already the subject of numerous investigations into the management of his archives as well as his financial affairs in New York.
capitol attack
His troubles have probably only just begun.
For more than a year, the stormy Republican has been probing election pressure in Georgia that could lead to impeachment.
And a parliamentary commission probing the leader’s responsibility in the attack by his supporters against the US Congress on January 6, 2021, is to submit a detailed report in the coming weeks.
The panel has already indicated that it will recommend prosecutions without specifying who might be targeted by these prosecutions.
The decision on whether or not to charge the former president will ultimately rest with Justice Secretary Merrick Garland, who in mid-November independently appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Donald Trump.
Without waiting, the justice has already condemned his family business for tax evasion, a blow for the former businessman, although he himself has not been tried.
hard core
But be careful not to bury Donald Trump too soon.
Abandoned by part of the conservative nebula after the attack on the US Congress, the former leader managed to regain almost complete control in a matter of months.
The Tribune, whose downfall has been announced a thousand times, has so far escaped all scandal. As if, by virtue of accumulation, they no longer had any effect on him.
Coming to power in an unprecedented political landscape almost no one predicted in November 2016, Donald Trump could also be tempted to play this candidate-rebel position if the defections in his ranks continue.
He’s still one of the big favorites in the Republican primary, and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to remind us of that, sharing any polling going in that direction.
The ex-real estate tycoon can still count on a loyal base, a staunch core that swears undying loyalty to him and continues to attend his campaign meetings.
The latter may also lose patience, predicts Lara Brown.
“If some people in his base will rally to him when he says he is the victim of a witch hunt, many others may grow tired of it”.
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