Trump and His US Cult

Last week at the Fiserv Forum, home of the Milwaukee Bucks, we witnessed a political religious ceremony that made Donald Trump the Republican presidential nominee but also anointed him the leader of a national cult that considers Trump, a world-class sinner, to be a holy man on a divine mission.

That’s why his life was spared by a matter of centimeters during a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally, and why he now has a clear path back to the White House. Trumpism is a U.S. cult and so the first major impact of the attempted assassination has been on merchandising, with every kind of item featuring Trump pumping his fist in the air after the attack, his ear bleeding, shouting “Fight! Fight!” It could not have turned out any better for Republicans if the shooting had been a set-up.

As for the other team, the Democrats are still not sure if Joe Biden, a veteran politician who represents the “gringo” establishment, has Parkinson’s disease, is senile, has dementia or is suffering from a case of badly treated COVID-19.* Trump’s image, complete with his lucky ear, appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world last Friday with highlights from his speech accepting the Republican Party presidential nomination.

The matter of who wins the U.S. presidential race presents a host of new problems for Mexico and the government that takes office in October, just a month before the U.S. election. Are Mexico’s president-elect and her team prepared for the nightmare looming on the horizon? We had better hope so.

Trump and his cult explain with chilling simplicity several of the United States’ most serious problems. The issue of the border with Mexico is a good example. The U.S. maintains the border is the point of entry for all their problems, starting with drugs and immigrants without documentation who are stealing American jobs. The immigrants are rapists and thieves and on top of that, they are making our streets look ugly. We must not overlook the fact that Republicans have concrete proposals to deploy special forces of their foreign army to Mexico to eliminate the drug lords they see as terrorists.

To solve this problem, the first thing the U.S. will have to do is close down the border wall, the more of it the better. Trump boasts that Mexico paid for the part of the wall he built when he was in office, and that Mexico mobilized its army in response to Trump’s threat to impose additional taxes on all products originating from Mexico. That brings us to the second problem with U.S.-Mexico, the entry of Chinese products. Trump has already denounced the fact that Chinese companies, mostly its automotive industry, are setting up in Mexico to produce cars for the U.S. market. Chinese trade will be a central theme of Trump’s campaign and of his administration if he wins the election. Trump is threatening to blow up the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement if Mexico agrees to allow factories from Asia, Chinese as well as Korean, to establish themselves here.

*Editor’s note: President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race Sunday, July 21, after this article was published.