TThree years later, the trauma of the assault on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, continues to mark the political landscape and weighs on the electoral campaign for the American presidential election on November 5.
On the eve of this anniversary, Friday January 5, President Joe Biden gave a powerful kickoff to his new electoral duel with Donald Trump by presenting the upcoming election as a test for the survival of democracy in the United States. . In a passionate speech with visionary overtones, the Democratic president very clearly posed the alternative which, according to him, will be offered to voters in the fall: the maintenance of the democratic regime in the United States or political chaos.
A few minutes later, the Federal Supreme Court announced that it would examine the question of Donald Trump’s ineligibility from February. This question has been asked since the decision of two state supreme courts, Colorado and Maine, which considered that, by virtue of 14e amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting public service to citizens who participated in an insurrection, the former president cannot run in the November 5 election. Similar suits seeking to block Mr. Trump from running have been filed in the Supreme Courts of more than thirty other states.
High risk decision
It was therefore urgent for the Federal Supreme Court, before which the former Republican president appealed the decision of the Colorado Court, to rule on this question, as the season of primary elections within the parties opens. For the highest court in the country, three of whose nine judges were appointed by Donald Trump, this is a high-risk decision: we cannot exclude that, in the event of a judgment confirming that the 14e amendment applies to the candidacy of the former Republican president, his supporters once again resort to violence and call into question the legitimacy of the Court. Another danger: a decision taken by too narrow a majority of the nine judges, revealing the division of the Supreme Court, would worsen the polarization of the country.
Currently favored by the polls, Donald Trump, who continues to contest the result of the 2020 election, makes no secret of his support for the rioters of January 6, 2021. He regularly pays tribute to those of them who were sentenced by the courts to prison terms and which he describes as“hostages” or “political prisoners”.
Joe Biden, who has already made it known that he was a candidate for a second term despite his age (81 years) mainly to block Donald Trump, has therefore decided to present the issue of this election in existential terms for democracy to the UNITED STATES. On Friday, he had chosen as the setting for his speech a symbolic place: Valley Forge, in Pennsylvania, where George Washington, accompanied by Lafayette, had installed his troops during the winter of 1777 to resist the British.
American democracy, the president warned, will not resist the new assaults of Donald Trump and the “political violence” which he encourages. “We all know who Donald Trump ishe said. The question that arises is: who are we? » It is also this question, with serious consequences for the rest of the democratic world, that in a certain way the nine judges of the Supreme Court will have to answer.