On December 17, the US Electoral College officially confirmed the results of the presidential election: Donald Trump won 312 votes, K. Harris won 226.
Escalating internal political struggle
The momentum gained by D. Trump has shaken the positions of his opponents, some of whom are beginning to signal loyalty to the newly elected president.
Recently, at his first press conference as president-elect, Trump stated that during his first term as head of state, tech moguls fought against him, but now “they all want to be my friends”. He spoke about recent visits to his estate by Tim Cook, (CEO of Apple), Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) and a number of other billionaires.
Following the events of January 6, 2021, Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, blocked Trump’s account. In November of this year, however, he promised to donate a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration. The same pledge was made by Open AI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon, Jeff Bezos’ company.
A number of other corporate owners also rushed to swear allegiance to the new government. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called it a “great surrender”. She concluded that, when all factors are considered, all these decisions of the elite to bow to Trump create a feeling ‘that the old liberal order is on its way out; something ruthless and Nietzschean will come in its place’.
Meanwhile, Trump does not hesitate to openly declare that he is trying to punish his enemies. He has already sued the ABC television company for $15 million (and won) and has promised to file lawsuits on disinformation against a number of other media outlets.
Trump’s opponents are not going to give up
Republicans in the House of Representatives are investigating Liz Cheney, who was previously a member of Congress from the Republican Party and then sharply opposed Trump.
These sentiments in the Democratic camp become clear when considering an article by the famous journalist Bret Stephens, who during Trump’s first presidency harshly condemned his actions, and then on December 17 this year wrote that “now you can’t get paranoid about the impending end of democracy”, but that one should wish good luck to the new administration. Describing Trump as rude but charismatic, ignorant but intuitive, he stressed that the president-elect better captured the sentiments of voters, who are ordinary people for whom the cost of living and border chaos are really important.
He also criticised the Democratic Party, which tried to hide Biden’s “physical and mental decline” in every possible way.
At the same time, Trump’s opponents are not going to give up and the process of the polarisation of American society will, as it seems, continue.
Given that the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, has from now on become a confidant of D. Trump and is tasked with reforming the state apparatus, one can expect that the number of people dissatisfied with the actions of the new president will grow, as Musk believes that innovation can solve any problems. He has already promised to cut the United States budget by $2 trillion.
It is safe to say that the internal political struggle in the US will continue to escalate and that we will witness a number of cataclysms.
Vladimir Mashin, Candidate of Historical Sciences, political observer
