Trump Advances

The climate in which the impeachment process has ended indicates that, if things continue as they have done until now, President Donald Trump has a high probability of being reelected.

Last week was undoubtedly the best week Donald Trump has had since being in office.

He had been impeached on charges he abused his power. This followed the revelation about a conversation during which he put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in Ukraine, in exchange for promising not to freeze the country’s military aid. Following several months of political tension, a Senate majority found Trump not guilty of the impeachment charges brought by the Democrats.

On social media, favorable opinions about the president outweighed the criticism. Those who supported him commented that the U.S. president was brought to trial because his adversaries were unable to defeat him at the ballot box. They showed their support by sharing the Senate members’ acquittal notes. In fact, a surprisingly significant portion of this support came from Latino internet users, many of whom were Mexican.

Those who condemned Trump believe that influence-peddling and corruption lay behind the acquittal. They seemed to be very disappointed by the way the senators voted, arguing that this had set a worrying precedent, as the senators were incapable of fulfilling their role of keeping presidential power in check. Regardless of Sen. Mitt Romney’s support of the president’s removal, social media users showed their annoyance at the fact that the majority of Republican senators had ignored all the evidence that was presented and focused solely on rallying around the president.

Beyond the debate on social media, where Trump is a figure who has always polarized public opinion between those who love him and those who hate him, the climate in which the impeachment process has ended indicates that, if things continue as they have until now, the U.S. president has a high probability of being reelected. This is due to the following factors:

1) The U.S. economy is going well, experiencing its highest growth rate since 2014. In the second trimester, economic growth maintained an annual rate of 4.1% and unemployment is almost the lowest it has been in 18 years;

2) The most recent Gallup poll, conducted during the impeachment trial itself from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29, ranked Trump’s popularity at 49%, which is higher than the 40% average Trump has had since the beginning of his presidency and which means he is at his peak;

3) Trump fulfilled his election campaign promise to terminate NAFTA. He passed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement after making significant amendments with regard to steel and labor, issues which Mexico particularly opposed. The American president tweeted emphatically, “We will finally end our country’s worst trade deal, NAFTA!”

4) The campaign promise that attracted the most attention in 2016 was the proposal to build a wall along the border in order to halt immigration from countries to the south. Furthermore, Trump promised that Mexico would pay for it. Recently, Trump declared that Mexico “is paying for the border wall,” although he did not state how. Many have interpreted this as the result of actions undertaken by the National Guard two weeks ago when approximately 1,000 thousand immigrants from Central American were detained in order to prevent them from entering our territory;

5) The icing on the cake was the disastrous outcome of the Democrat Party caucuses in Iowa. The results were delayed due to technical problems and incongruent data readings over the course of a day that was described as chaotic. This triggered taunts from Trump himself, who tweeted: “The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is Trump;”

6) The direct communication Trump maintains with people through social media as well as his tough, colloquial, familiar and populist style, has established him as a party man who has employed digital tools for the purposes of speed and rising above his opponents.

There are still nine months to go before election day, but, for the moment, the current occupier of the White House is advancing steadily.