During the electoral campaign, Donald Trump assured Saturday that he was going to “save America” by winning the November presidential election against the “corrupt” Joe Biden in a “failing” country and on the verge of “World War III”.
Three years to the day after the assault on the Capitol, the former Republican president continued his rallies in the small state of Iowa, which will organize its caucuses on January 15. The state will thus get the ball rolling for the 2024 Republican primaries, giving it oversized weight in the presidential campaign for half a century.
The billionaire, who dreams of being re-elected in November and returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, despite his four criminal charges, will face voters in eight days for the first time since his crashing departure from the presidency , January 20, 2021.
Three years after the unprecedented attack on the seat of Congress in Washington by his supporters on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump asserted in two rambling speeches lasting more than two hours each, in the small towns of Newton and Clinton, that he was going to “win for the third time” the presidential election in November.
“Scoundrel Joe”
Elected in November 2016 and defeated four years later, the tribune considers that the victory in this election was “stolen” from him by Democrat Joe Biden, 81, whom he once again called “Joe-the-Scum” and whose age he made fun of.
Calling him “incompetent”, “corrupt” and the “worst” president in the history of the United States, Donald Trump, 77, who has upset American democracy, judged that the first world power was “in decline “.
Referring to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, tensions with Iran and China, he warned his hundreds of MAGA supporters (Make America Great Again) enthusiastic in Newton: if Mr. Biden is re-elected, the country risks “World War III” and “Depression” like in the 1930s.
“We are a failing nation” and “we are going to bring it back from hell,” he said in the evening at a Clinton school, boasting of being “the only candidate capable of saving America from every Biden disaster.”
“I am a dictator”
Ironically about the warnings from Democrats and the media of a risk of a “Trump dictatorship” in the event of a second term, the businessman proclaimed to laughter and applause: “I am a dictator. »
The day before, in a speech in Pennsylvania focused on democracy in danger, Joe Biden had compared his rival’s rhetoric to that of “Nazi Germany”.
Despite his legal setbacks and the risk of prison for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, polls credit Donald Trump with 60% of the Republican votes against his main opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, whom he did not hold back from making fun.
In Iowa and in many conservative states, the septuagenarian has a base of loyal voters who brush aside his escapades and legal troubles.
The attack on the Capitol, temple of American democracy, remains a subject of deep division in the United States: a quarter of Americans and 44% of Trumpist voters believe, without proof, that the FBI is at the origin, according to a survey of Washington Post and the University of Maryland.
1200 arrests
The FBI also announced on Saturday the arrest in Florida of three people for their participation in the January 6 assault. In 35 months of a sprawling investigation still ongoing, authorities have charged more than 1,200 people, in almost all 50 American states. More than half were convicted.
For Donald Trump, they are “hostages”.
He has denied for three years having incited his supporters to insurrection – new images of violence of which were broadcast on television on Saturday – and to attack Congress, where Joe Biden’s victory was certified on January 6, 2021.
So to judge the pressure he would have exerted to try to cancel the results, a criminal trial must begin on March 4 in Washington.
This will be on the eve of one of the biggest deadlines in the Republican primaries: “Super Tuesday” in around fifteen states, Texas and California, but also Colorado and Maine.
These last two states in December declared Trump ineligible for the presidency due to his actions on January 6, 2021. The Supreme Court took up this case on Friday, even if, while waiting for it to decide in February, the name Trump is kept on the ballot for the primaries.