The words of a dangerous man

The more I think about it, the clearer it seems to me: Donald Trump is, since last week, one of the most dangerous men of our time.

We had already seen how dangerous it could be during his unhappy government, whose criminal negligence probably led to the deaths of thousands of people from covid while the president publicly defended the virtues of drinking disinfectant;

or when he gave more credence to the words of Vladimir Putin than to those of his own intelligence services;

or when he called Zelenski to ask him, in the best mafia style, to help him find evidence against Biden's son in exchange for weapons to defend himself against a potential attack.

We saw it, finally, when he resorted to all imaginable tricks to deny the legitimate results of an election, and later,

It is still not impossible that Trump has to answer for both circumstances: for the attempt to subvert an election and for inciting the January 6 insurrection.

But last week's indictment has changed things irreversibly.

Well, interference with electoral processes—for example, calling the Georgia secretary of state to order him to

more than 11,000 votes—and the incitement to violent insurrection had, for the narcissist in chief, a clear objective: to stay in power.

And I will not be the first to wonder, now that Trump is shadowed by 34 criminal charges, what he will be able to do not to stay in power, but to avoid being criminally convicted.

My answer is that he will be capable of anything, even destroying the democracy that he swore to defend, even setting fire to the streets.

If the four years of his presidency were not enough to reach that conclusion, the hundred minutes of a speech he gave at the beginning of last month must be enough: one hundred minutes that is enough to put fear in anyone's body.

It happened before the CPAC, the Conservative Action Political Conference, which in recent years has become a theme park for deniers, fanatics and conspiracy theorists.

Trump began his delirious monologue as he usually does: by calling the list.

Among other supporters who received the leader's gratitude were Marjorie Taylor-Greene, the congresswoman who believes there is a Democratic child-raping conspiracy, has called the California fires the fault of Jewish laser beams and has confused gazpacho with the Gestapo;

a lawyer who was praised by Trump for knocking a man to the ground who attacked him with a knife (“he's a very strong guy,” Trump praised him with teenage bully admiration);

and former President Jair Bolsonaro.

in front of all of them

Trump spoke of "sinister forces trying to assassinate America" ​​and "turning this country into a socialist dumping ground for criminals, drug addicts, Marxists and radicals."

"Our enemies are desperate to stop us," he said.

"But they're not coming for me," he added, "they're coming for you, and I'm just in the middle."

The rest were the great successes of the alternative reality in which Trump and his family live.

The January 6 attackers were “great, great patriots” rotting in some jail, while “

They roamed the streets free.

The money of George Soros, the favorite demon of far-right conspiracy theorists, financed these “racist” prosecutors who unfairly persecuted Trump.

"Either we win or they win," said the former president.

"And if they win, we will no longer have a country."

And then came this section without waste, which I must transcribe even if it embarrasses me and my ears hurt, and even if the great orators—Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King—who in the past have had the American politics.

“America will be a free country again,” Trump said.

“Now we are not a free country.

We don't have a free press.

We don't have anything free.

In 2016 I declared that I am your voice.

Today I add that I am your warrior, I am your justice.

And for those who have suffered wrongs and betrayals, I am your retribution.

I am your retribution."

One would have to refer to certain totalitarianisms of the last century to find a staged discourse, like this one, on the idea that politics is a war, the opponent is a deadly enemy and elections are a form of revenge: revenge for offenses and the humiliations of the past, regardless of whether they are real or imagined.

Yes, those hundred minutes of March are a true government program;

and that program, based on resentment and victimhood and articulated through a rhetoric of violence, refers to dark moments, at least for those with long memories.

In December of last year, during one of his routine calls for the annulment of the last elections, Trump wrote on his social network: "A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows the end of all rules, regulations and articles,

including those found in the Constitution.”

“Put an end” is my translation of a word that sounds much more terrifying in English:

.

Smash the law, obliterate it, obliterate it: to take that word for what it's worth, and see it alongside the retribution speech, would have to be downright creepy.

The only thing more chilling than this sum of words is the fact that Trump uttered them before he was forced to appear in court, when he was moved only by — yes, you guessed it — tort and betrayal.

He will now have other, much stronger reasons to do what he already did successfully on January 6: use the loyalty that his base has to defend himself against justice.

In this collection of words, we should remember another of Trump's

on his social network, pricelessly baptized with the word "truth":

, is called.

One morning in late March, when the very serious possibility that the Manhattan prosecutor would end up indicting him was already on everyone's lips, Trump wrote that the prosecutor's "false accusations" could lead to "potential death and destruction," and would be “catastrophic” for the country.

"Who would do something like that?" he howled.

"Just a degenerate psychopath who hates America!"

Hours after those threats at dawn, the prosecutor's office received an envelope with white powder and a message followed by 13 exclamation points: "ALVIN: I'M GOING TO KILL YOU."

Trump is not the same figure who a few years ago seemed willing to break all the rules to come to power: now he is a new figure, more extremist and also more desperate, who threatens violence and offers his followers a horizon of revenge.

Revenge against what?

Against everything they hate.

We are well aware that this, reasons to feel hate or people to vent it on, has not been in short supply recently in the United States;

but it is probable that never, since the Civil War, we have been faced with a man so capable of picking up those emotions and managing them at his whim.

And then, as a poem says, have someone pick up the remains.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

is a writer.

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