At night, the obelisk sparkles in the distance, red and blue, like a semaphore planted on grass. The Washington Monument displays two stars and the number 250. In the souvenir shops, all around the National Mall and up to Pennsylvania Avenue, between the mugs bearing the image of Abraham Lincoln and the red caps Make America Great Againa new item is all the rage: t-shirts stamped with two dates, 1776-2026. Two hundred and fifty years of America. A deadline that obsesses Trump.
The federal capital is already in working order. The government has started the commemorative machine: a task force dedicated presidential office, and sometimes disproportionate projects, such as this triumphal arch which should rise in Arlington, facing the Lincoln Memorial, on the other side of the Potomac, to celebrate the quarter of a millennium of American independence. Because Trump sees this anniversary as much more than a simple national holiday. Since his return to the White House, the Republican has not missed an opportunity to show his visitors the copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging to the right of his office, hidden behind curtains to protect it from the sun.
Trump abhors Western prudence
The media kept more of the button for ordering “Diet Coke” on demand, and made fun of the moldings and gilded trinkets of the Oval Office, forgetting in the process that Trump is viscerally convinced that the United States, under his presidency, is embarking on a new cycle of greatness. A new “Golden Age”as he says. On immigration, on industry, on Iran: Trump readily repeats that he is doing the dirty work, the one that his predecessors, from Clinton to Biden, preferred to dodge. Decisions which weigh on the polls, but which will prevent him, he hopes, from appearing among the ranks of presidents without stature – a prospect which he loathes. Less than three years from leaving the White House, Trump is entering that familiar phase of second terms, the one where we begin to think about the mark we will leave in the history books.
Trump will be 80 in June. It still wears well, but time is taking its toll. Bruises sometimes turn his hands blue… Tasks that he attributes to overconsumption of aspirin, for fear of strokes. His gaze, at times, becomes lost: he is more tired than ten years ago. This simple evidence recalled by the American media irritates him. His former eminence grise, Steve Bannon, may well be pleading for a third term, but Trump knows he is in the home stretch.
Closing the chapters
To achieve the apotheosis of July 4, the symbolic crowning of his public life, he still needs to settle several issues before the summer. The first: customs duties. A centerpiece of its economic doctrine, the system suffered a major setback in February, when the Supreme Court invalidated the legal instrument used by the White House to impose its global taxes. Trump has not given up, however. In a few days, he promised to restart the machine on other legal bases, by means of a new universal tariff, remaining convinced that the trade war remains the central lever for the reindustrialization of the country.
Second file: immigration. The promise of strict border control remains one of the pillars of Trumpism. For the president, it is a question of identity survival for America. On this point, figures and observers converge: the southern border is now hermetic. But the policy of expulsions sometimes encounters local resistance. In Minnesota in particular, federal operations backfired, forcing some ICE agents to fold under pressure. In this tense climate, Trump fired his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, on Thursday, weakened by the political and media management of these operations.
Finally, there remains the international front. In Washington, presidential logic comes down to a formula: “Close the chapters. » All chapters. Trump considers that Iran is precisely one of those issues that American administrations have passed on from mandate to mandate for almost half a century. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, each president has promised to contain Tehran’s ambitions, without any having resolved the issue.
Trump abhors what he perceives as Western prudence, this disguised weakness, typical for him of Europeans. In his eyes, the negotiations, sanctions and successive timetable agreements only benefited the Iranians, who could not believe the American ingenuity. Letting this issue go was tantamount to accepting that one day America would find itself facing a nuclear Iran. If the mullahs’ regime falls: so much the better. If he persists but agrees to renounce nuclear power, Trump will put up with it, as he put up with the fall of Maduro in Venezuela. His altruism stops at the direct interests of his country. He will have restored American credibility without risking an Iraqi-style quagmire.
Race against time
Because Trump is a more readable leader than he seems. Since entering politics in 2015, his instinct has always been to identify symbolic battles which, once won, would restore American sovereignty and power, the two matrices of his doctrine. Yesterday, he also promised to “take care” from Cuba. But another clock is ticking. In less than eight months the midterm elections will take place. In Washington, few Republican strategists have any illusions: the House of Representatives should very easily return to Democratic hands. The priority objective is now to preserve the Senate, where the majority remains fragile. Trump is well aware of this.
Privately, his advisors are already thinking about the “after-midterms”, about this presidency potentially hampered by a hostile Congress, capable of initiating a third impeachment procedure. Trump imagines continuing to govern by decree. The idea of having to deal with Democrats who want to kill him repulses him. We might as well accelerate the Trumpian march on all fronts simultaneously. As if he was playing less against his opponents than against time.
