The former president is running again supported by the MAGA movement after two assassination attempts during the campaign
Donald Trump will undertake his third attempt to reach the White House on November 5, after his success eight years ago and his defeat in 2020 against Joe Biden, which led to one of the most serious events for American democracy with the assault of hundreds of his followers on the Capitol after refusing to recognize his defeat at the polls.
Trump, a controversial figure who has emerged as the only heavyweight candidate in the Republican Party after gradually leaving aside other more experienced politicians, has once again made his campaign revolve around a cult of his figure and a series of populist promises that range from achieving the end of the war in Ukraine to a “massive” expulsion of migrants.
On this occasion, he was named candidate after a primary in which he clearly prevailed over figures such as Nikki Haley, who won about 19.5 percent of the delegates, and Ron DeSantis, who withdrew in mid-January. Other candidates were Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy, with even less support.
After defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and falling to Biden in 2020, his rival will be the current vice president, Kamala Harris, who took over from Biden after he gave up re-election in the face of his collapse in the polls due to speculation about his health and his erratic attitude in public.
In this way, he has become the oldest candidate in the history of the country, a fact that he used in the campaign to attack Biden and that in recent weeks has damaged his aspirations by turning against him his strategy to present the Democrat as a person incapable of holding a position of power.
The 78-year-old tycoon is also the seventh former president to attempt a political comeback after being defeated at the polls, hoping to emulate Grover Cleveland (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), the first Democrat to win an election after the Civil War and the only one to achieve a victory after being defeated in his attempt to revalidate his mandate.
Trump, described as “the definition of an American success story” in his official biography at the Trump Organization, comes to the vote as a more experienced politician, after running eight years ago after jumping directly from the television sets, although also with many more critics for his actions and statements both during and after his mandate.
FROM A MILLIONAIRE FAMILY TO THE WHITE HOUSE
The Republican was born in New York in 1946, being the fourth son of tycoon Fred Trump, son of German immigrants, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, born in Scotland. At the age of thirteen, he was sent to a military academy for his bad behavior at school, although he earned a degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, after which he made the jump to his family’s business.
Trump immersed himself in his father’s real estate business and in 1971 he took control of the company, which he renamed the Trump Organization, and later entered the world of entertainment, becoming the host of the popular television show The Apprentice, where participants competed for a contract in his empire.
From these platforms he began to consider the possibility of entering politics, something he did in June 2015, when he announced that he would run for the presidential elections the following year, a fact taken with skepticism and humor by allies and rivals, who did not take seriously that he could be a candidate for the White House.
However, he achieved victory supported by his slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, and thanks to the support of an amalgam of nationalist and right-wing groups that includes sectors of the so-called ‘alt right’ and even groups with racist, homophobic and sexist overtones aligned with conspiracy theories that make up the core of what has been known as the ‘MAGA ideology’.
This movement is based on the premise that the United States was “a great country” that has lost part of its influence, both internally due to immigration and multiculturalism, and externally due to what it considers to be weak policies against rising powers such as China or Russia.
HIS MANDATE AT THE HEAD OF THE USA
During his mandate, Trump translated this vision into the country’s withdrawal from several trade and environmental agreements, an economic confrontation with China and a new peace proposal for the Middle East, made difficult by his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, outside the international community.
He also led the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which raised tensions in the region, and signed a peace deal with the Taliban that ultimately precipitated the fall of the internationally supported authorities and the return to power of the fundamentalists in 2021, with Biden as president.
Domestically, Trump had to tackle numerous fronts, including an investigation into alleged collusion between his campaign and Russia in the 2016 elections – which ended without conclusive evidence to support the accusations – and an impeachment trial for abuse of power and obstruction.
The president, the third president to face impeachment, also maintained a highly criticized stance during the coronavirus pandemic, encouraging theories contrary to science, and saw his term end catastrophically after his defeat at the polls and the assault on the Capitol by his followers.
FROM THE ASSAULT ON THE CAPITOL TO ITS REBIRTH
The assault, perpetrated by a mob of Trump supporters in what was described as an attempted coup, took place after a few months in which the outgoing president encouraged theories about electoral theft and irregularities from the ‘deep state’ to benefit his rival.
The attacks were carried out when a meeting was being held to ratify the election results and led to a second impeachment trial against the tycoon, again acquitted, although his actions during that day continue to be the target of criminal cases.
Despite the blow that these incidents represented for his figure, Trump managed to gather support from the hardest sectors of the MAGA movement by presenting himself as a victim of a political campaign, something accentuated after the trial opened against him to try to hide a payment to a former pornographic actress to buy her silence, which resulted in him being found guilty of 34 charges.
The former president, the country’s first president to be convicted, has consistently claimed that it is a “witch hunt” aimed at removing him from politics and has attacked what he describes as the “swamp” in Washington, referring to the power of various agencies and lobbies that he accuses of actually running the United States.
His third campaign, marked by two assassination attempts against him – including one in which he was slightly wounded by a gunshot – has once again focused on the fight against irregular migration, the cuts in funding to social programs that he describes as part of a “woke” campaign, and the end of the war in Ukraine, after the invasion unleashed by Russia in 2022.
In addition, he faces growing opposition from Republican sectors that criticize his authoritarian tendencies, criticism represented in the words of John Kelly, who was his general secretary in the White House and who said that he fits “the general definition of fascist”, despite which the polls point to a very tight race between him and Harris in the face of what he himself describes as “the most important day in the history of the country”.
