The press had forgotten almost everything about Trumpian uses in hand handles. There is the “I take you to me”, as if the American president wanted to unlock your elbow – a gesture that can last endless seconds. There is also the classic with both hands, one coming to land on the forearm. This one wants to be friendly, paternalistic. And then, with the president of the European Commission appeared a third version: the one where Trump seizes his interlocutor on the wrist and shakes him, as if he were taking the tension. It is the most offensive of all. That of the sovereign who checks if his opponent still has a pulse. And the most cruel is that she had no more.
Ursula von der Leyen arrived in Scotland, on the green Impeccably mowed of the Turnberry complex, owned by Donald Trump, with its well -ironed language: “Transatlantic partnership”, “common values”, “strengthened dialogue”. The frozen smile, the tone posed. She left with a humiliating agreement. A compromise dictated line by line by the White House and swallowed for lack of better. Nothing to negotiate, all to undergo. What Trump had understood before she even studied: Brussels does not believe in his own strength.
To see too much in Donald Trump an opportunist entangled in scandals, a Used car Salesman -The expression “seller of used cars” is an insult in the United States-a liar, uncultivated, we ended up forgetting the essential: Trump is a politician. And it may be the last, in Western democracies, to really do it. The result is clear: customs duties of 15 % on the majority of European exports, massive commitments to purchase American gas, investments imposed on the soil of the United States … and, opposite, a Europe which saves appearances by welcoming itself to have avoided the worst.
This assumed showdown, this strategic brutality, this efficiency: that is, doing politics. No declarations in committee, reworked in Brussels, in 24 languages. But conflict, will, results. Trump has become a bright example of this old -fashioned policy that, from Treatise to Treaty, from Maastricht to that of Lisbon, abandonment of sovereignty in abandonment of sovereignty, the old continent no longer practices.
Trump has never been elected at Congress. He never sat in a hemicycle, never learned to maneuver in the corridors of the Capitol. His company has never been listed on the stock market. No investment funds to be reassured, no shareholders to seduce. His board of directors was the family. And his decisions were not discussed, they applied.
Trump has rehabilitated executive power
He does not summon advisers in the middle of the night to weigh each word and avoid slicing. This is one of the most significant facts of his second term: Trump has rehabilitated executive power. He doesn’t hide it. He assumes it. He governs, no longer as a manager, but in chief. As of January, he centralized the levers, bypassed the agencies, ousted bureaucratic counterpowers, reduced the autonomy of the great federal administrations and recalled that the presidential function was not a ceremony, but an authority. He broke down with decades of cozy de -unit. And, in this brutal gesture, many voters, including among the self -employed, have seen not an abuse of power, but a return of power.
Trump does the opposite of his two predecessors. Barack Obama and Joe Biden governed European. Prudent, procedures, obsessed with consensus to the Surlace. They never really decided. On Syria, Obama has set a red line to better forget it. Biden was lost in Iranian files, unable to choose between firmness and appeasement. And when they acted, it was in the gentleman. Obama had Holland and Merkel watched while inviting them to dinner. Biden governed by notes and circular, signed in the automatic initials. Trump does not hide anything and knocks with an open face. This may be his real success: make decisions and assume them. What many Westerners still hope, but they only find so -called “illiberal” leaders. Trump does not revolve around the pot. He contrasts. He endorses. This discrepancy, today, is obvious.
In Europe, the chiefs of the executive spend more time comment than to govern. They avoid conflicts, produce compromises, apologize for their authority. They take shelter behind majorities that are not found, bank coalitions, standards at 27. Macron makes pedagogy, Tusk de la Gestion, von der Leyen de la Syntax. But who still poses a line, a course, and keeps them?
While Europe is concerned with image, Trump, for its part, imposes relationships. He is not trying to be loved, he seeks to be feared. And he gets something even more precious: he is taken seriously. Even his fiercest enemies know that he will go to the end. Despite scandals, unpredictability and constant tensions, Trump resists. Oscillating between 40 and 48 %, its approval rate is certainly low, but it displays surprising solidity over several weeks. Even more significant: more than four in five Republicans support its policy – an almost perfect lock. Even if the independent voters turn away a little, its hard core remains imperturbable. It is this strategic stability that distinguishes its leadership: when other chance, Trump holds.
However, the United States is not Russia, or even France. It is a federal country, decentralized, deeply suspicious, almost allergic to the idea of a strong central power. American history is made up of suspicions towards Washington, of constitutional vigilance against any excessive concentration. The memory of the King of England still weighs heavily on the civic imagination. And yet, it is across the Atlantic that a request for authority emerges. Not an ideological authoritarianism, but of assumed power. A request for clarity. Trump, whatever one thinks of him, responds to this desire. He says: This is what I do, that’s for whom I do it, and that’s why. This direct, brutal language sometimes hits the bull’s eye. It gives the executive an identifiable figure. This return of the chief, even in a federal democracy hostile to the personalization of power, says something essential: peoples still want to be governed. And not just administered. They want a firm hand on the rudder.
“Words count, and can have consequences”
Friday, August 1, Trump struck again. This time, from his social network, where he announced that he had ordered the deployment of two American nuclear submarines in “Appropriate areas”. The message is clear, the target too: Moscow. In question, the barely veiled threats of Dmitri Medvedev, former Russian president, now vice-president of the Security Council, which evoked the nuclear system “Dead hand”capable, according to him to retaliate even without command. Trump replied in his own way, tightening his own ultimatum on the ceasefire in Ukraine: from 50 to 10 days, and adding, in an icy tone: “The words count, and can have unforeseen consequences. »»
Bluff? The press shouted on climbing. In the chancelleries, looks turn to Washington. As always. Because behind the provocation, it is still Trump who imposes his tempo.
