Trump is coming… and this time we’d better be prepared
He has yet to secure the Republican Party nomination and is facing 91 felony charges, but Donald Trump is already well ahead of Joe Biden in the polls. The world must brace itself for the former president’s return to the Oval Office – but let’s not be quite so quick to roll out the red carpet for him, says Peter Westmacott, the UK’s former ambassador to the United States
With characteristic chutzpah, Donald Trump claimed on Sunday night that the fatal attack on US forces in Jordan by pro-Iranian militias – like the Hamas atrocities of 7 October, and even Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine – would never have happened if he had been president.
There is no evidence to suggest that any of this is true. But these attempts by Trump to grab the headlines add to the pressure on Joe Biden to stand up forcefully to aggressors; and the results of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary last week show that a large number of Republican voters still want him to be their candidate and America’s next president.
That is not to say that Trump is any more likely to win the presidential election on Guy Fawkes Night in November. He did not do well with independents last Tuesday, and even some Republicans are uneasy about voting for a candidate who may by then have been convicted of some of the 91 crimes of which he has been accused – including that of inciting an insurrection three years ago which came closer to blowing up his country’s democracy than Guy Fawkes did 400 years earlier.
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