What Trump’s election means – and what it doesn’t mean

Blindness until the very end! American and European media have persisted until the end in their denial of the people, their inability to perceive and report the expectations of the working classes, and therefore their shameless bias in favour of Kamala Harris. And once again, as in 2016, they have got it shamefully wrong. Let’s bet that they will learn nothing from this crushing defeat and that, as usual, they will keep on talking about the “fascism” of Trump, Orban, Fico and Putin, while praising the so-called defenders of democracy à la von der Leyen, Macron, or Scholz, who came to power by co-optation (von der Leyen) or remain in power against the opinion of 85 percent of their fellow citizens, according to their popularity ratings in the opinion polls (Macron, Scholz). Blindness until the very end!
  In fact, Trump’s victory is not a defeat, but an impressive victory for democracy. First, because this victory is fourfold and indisputable. Victory in the presidential election, victory in the Senate, victory in the House of Representatives, and victory in the popular vote by a margin of more than 5 million votes. The Democrats, having sabotaged Trump’s first term of office by claiming false Russian interference, which was denied by two special prosecutors, and then pushing the issue further with the riots of 6 January 2021, which were immediately presented as a coup d’état, now will have four years to ponder the causes of their defeat and the cost of manipulating public opinion, which no longer has any confidence in established media.
  This time, it will be difficult to blame Putin and block the appointment of Republican cabinet ministers. America is once again at peace with itself – in theory, at least. The President-elect will be able to govern as he pleases – in theory. If the Democrats and the Deep State subverted Trump’s first four years in the White House, at this early moment there is no reason to assume they will refrain from another such operation this time. We must wait and see. In the best of outcomes, Trump will have to take full responsibility for his decisions. All else being equal, at the end of his term, he will be judged by his actions and the competence of his team, not on what a majority of the Democratic opposition in the Senate has imposed on him.

Not a defeat for the
neoconservative warmongers …

Second, this victory signals – at last! – not the defeat of the neo-conservative camp and the warmongers, who have poisoned American policy for decades with their military interventionism, their invasions, and their incessant interference in the affairs of other states, but certainly a blow to the most vocal and aggressive of them. Those who organised the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014, the likes of Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan, John Bolton and the worst of them all, Antony Blinken, a veritable warmonger disguised as a diplomat, will be getting what they deserve. Even if this highly influential clique will not magically disappear, as the nomination of Marco Rubio as secretary of state plainly indicates, its power to cause trouble will be greatly. This is good news for democracy in the United States and beyond.
  It will therefore be more and more difficult for the West to keep on claiming that Ukraine is a democracy when the mandates of its president and parliament expired last May and they are continuing to exercise power without any electoral legitimacy. Other justifications will have to be found to fuel the fiction of a “war of democracies against autocracies’ in Russia and China.
  Similarly, if we accept Trump’s victory, we must also recognise the recent victory of the Georgian Dream party in Georgia, achieved with 54 percent of the vote despite the countless blackmail campaigns that preceded the elections. Allegations of electoral fraud, an old refrain put forward whenever the result of an election displeases the neoliberal, Atlanticist and interventionist elites, should be considered for what they really are – that is, an abhorrent attempt to push a country into chaos under false pretences by imposing a regime change contrary to the will of the people.
  In this respect, it is regrettable that the manipulation of the last elections in Moldova was successful. It should be recalled that the tiny majority in favour of the country’s accession to the European Union was achieved with the blatant interference of the European Union in Moldovan affairs. Since 2020, the E.U. has been heavily subsidising nongovernmental organisations close to the outgoing president, Maia Sandu. Ten days before the election, Ms von der Leyen hurried to Chisinau to promise 1.8 billion Euro in aid beginning in 2025. And that shouldn’t be seen as interference!
  Worse still, the final result in Moldova was reflected a long-prepared distortion with regard to the diaspora vote in favour of the pro-European camp and the incumbent president. For example, 234 polling stations were made available to the 500,000 Moldovan citizens of the E.U., while only 2 – and I mean 2! – polling stations were opened for the hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living in Russia, a territory three times the size of Europe! Several Italian polling stations didn’t register any voters, due to a lack of residents, while in Russia, voters had to travel thousands of kilometres to get to one of the two polling stations open, and some were unable to vote due to a shortage of ballot papers. Of course, of course, the chorus of European media kept denouncing Russian interference while remaining silent about this gross manipulation of the ballot. The same applied to the second round of the presidential election, wherein the majority of Moldovans in Moldova voting against the incumbent president, before European Moldovans overturned the result to the dismay of the Moldovan diaspora in Russia, who were once again prevented from taking part in the vote.

… and no end
to the U.S. pursuit of hegemony

While Trump’s clear victory is to be welcomed, there is no room for complacency. As we mentioned in a previous paper, the future will not be rosy. Even as it becomes more isolationist, the United States will not relinquish its hegemony or its desire to impose its leadership on the rest of the world. The arms lobby and the liberal-interventionists are very likely to continue their efforts to counter those anti-war impulses that emerge in the second Trump presidency. In Palestine, with Iran, with China, with the Europeans, too, tensions are likely to escalate. Bombs, missiles, and war crimes will continue to rain down on Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and perhaps Iranian civilians. The war in Ukraine may subside, but tensions in the South China Sea could well escalate. What is gained on one side may be lost on the other. There are few illusions in this regard.
  But in the meantime, let us savour the democratic respite that the Americans have granted themselves and, perhaps, the rest of the world. •

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Guy Mettan is a journalist and member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Geneva, which he chaired in 2010. He worked for “Journal de Genève”, Le Temps stratégique, Bilan, and “Le Nouveau Quotidien”, and later as director and editor-in-chief of “Tribune de Genève”. In 1996, he founded the Swiss Press Club, of which he was president and later director from 1998 to 2019.