In his farewell message as president, which revealed tones of delayed revenge typical of the end of a horror movie, Trump solemnly announced to the world that he will return. “The movement that we started has barely begun,” he pointed out with a messianic inflection to his fans, “there has never been anything like it,” he decreed. “I leave this majestic place with a loyal and jovial heart and an optimistic spirit, and with the supreme confidence that, for our country and for our children, the best is yet to come,” he declared, paraphrasing Sinatra a bit.
The message, encoded for his audience of political stalwarts and the millions of supporters across the country, suggests that Trump will not resign himself to life as a private citizen after leaving the White House. If speculation about Trump’s future after Trump needed any evidence, new revelations about his latest tenures indicate that the former president is already preparing his return to the stage of political life. Since his incitement to the attempted coup on Capitol Hill, Trump has been entertaining the idea of forming a new political party to be called the Patriot Party.
According to sources close to him, he has discussed the idea with various advisers and people close to him and, although the details of the new party are vague and will require a lot of effort – since he will surely face resistance from the Republican party itself – he is not short of money.
In these four years the magnate has discovered new and powerful donors with political will
Despite harsh criticism from many Republicans who abandoned him after the incitement to violence, and the second session of ‘impeachment’ that will take place in Congress, the former president has a solid political and citizen following that plans exploit.
The reality is that Trump remains popular with Republicans, for whom, despite losing the election, in 2020 he obtained 10 million more votes than in 2016, a historic electoral record for a Republican candidate in a presidential election.
His robust base of supporters who have defended the electoral fraud campaign without offering any evidence, objected to the certification of the election results even after the violent assault on Congress, and continue to show signs of obstructionism to come at the confirmation hearings of the president’s cabinet. Joe Biden.
Not for nothing, four years in politics have been very profitable for Trump and his family, who have done business with the government and have known how to monetize political donations. Since losing the election on November 3, Trump has raised $ 250 million, which, after paying off his presidential campaign debts, $ 100 million, leaves him with a box of $ 150 million.
As it is a PAC -Political Action Committee-, the money can only be used for political purposes, but that does not prevent you from using it to pay yourself and your family, and channel expenses in the direction of your businesses.
In these four years of presidency Trump has discovered that politics is not only an extremely profitable business, but that ‘hate politics’ is an extraordinary source of income with powerful political donors such as the influential Mercer marriage and many other millionaires with political will. .
Always mobilized
A new political party would be the ideal platform to help Trump continue to exert influence after his presidency, and to get his hands on the PAC box. Furthermore, the creation of a new party would provide him with a platform for public outreach, which, after the cancellation of his social media accounts, he desperately needs in order to function politically and emotionally.
The former commander-in-chief twice indicted with impeachment charges has already mobilized by making phone calls to his acolyte Republican legislators to find out their intention to vote in his second impeachment process, which, if resolved against him, it would make it impossible to hold the office of the presidency ever again.
Still in the White House the day before leaving, Trump criticized Joe Biden’s opening ceremony, anticipating that “it would be very boring” and that Biden would probably stutter and not be able to finish his speech. Still commander-in-chief in his last hour, he obsessively followed all the news of the inauguration on the televisions of the presidential plane that landed in Florida before Joe Biden’s swearing-in.
A few hours later, the new president was undoing much of Trump’s legacy in immigration, racism and isolationism with an executive signature in the Oval Office, an annulment that has only just begun and that will continue in the coming days and weeks. A blow for Trump that despite the mockery and apparent joviality he strives to display, according to some of those attending his departure ceremony, he was depressed on the inside and felt fractured.
The new Administration begins to review the legality of the pardons granted by the magnate
In the final hours of his tenure in the White House, Trump produced a wave of clemency actions that benefited more than 140 people, including rap artists, former members of Congress and other allies, such as his former chief strategy officer Steve Bannon.
The pardons, which go beyond the limits of the purpose of clemency and favor friends and allies, are a calculated action of double personal interest, which on the one hand can benefit you in the future and at the same time cannot harm you.
The Biden Administration has begun to review these processes, some of which would not have the necessary legal basis. Due to that doubt about its validity, Trump finally obeyed his team of advisers and did not extend the pardons to his family members or himself, it would be a double-edged sword that would put him in serious legal risk in the future.
Testify against the father
The benefit of the presidential pardon disables the right to abide by the Fifth Amendment that protects from Trump’s business plot and would immediately make them prey to the incessant prosecutors in several states who lead serious investigations against the illicit financial operations of the ‘Trump organization ‘. In that legal scenario, his children would have no choice but to testify against him to save their own skin.
Nor is it clear that preventive pardons like Bannon’s have legal validity since they have never been executed and constitutional law experts are in unprecedented territory. Bannon’s is especially notable, as his fraud trial is in the early stages, months away from setting a trial date. Since Bannon does not yet have a verdict or sentence, nor has he served time in prison, it is unclear if the dismissal of the indictment and potential sentence is legal.
Bannon was detained in August about to board his yacht on charges of misleading thousands of donors to Trump’s campaign to build the border wall, and diverting more than a million dollars to his personal account and that of another US official. Bell. The other defendants in the case were not pardoned, which leaves the door open to new, unprecedented judicial outcomes.
.
