Trump is building his power at home while global leaders dread his return
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
(CNN) — Donald Trump has won only one 2024 Republican nominating contest. So far. But the ex-president’s political power is growing by the day, propelled by his dominance in national primary polling and the dawning sense that he might be the all-but-inevitable nominee following his resounding win in the Iowa caucuses.
Trump has invigorated an initially lackluster White House bid by leveraging his multiple criminal indictments to create a narrative of political persecution.
His influence is again dictating terms in Washington, where GOP lawmakers dance to his tune on issues like government funding, Ukraine and immigration, and craft legislative positions to boost his campaign.
On the trail, Trump’s remaining primary opponents, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, are gingerly stepping up attacks on him, but they’re pulling their strongest punches over January 6, 2021, and his threat to democracy to avoid angering his supporters. Haley has the best chance to defeat him in an early state when New Hampshire holds its primary on Tuesday, but its electorate isn’t representative of much of the rest of the nominating contests.
And there was a Trump-shaped cloud over the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, as European leaders fretted that their nightmare of a Trump 2.0 may be coming true. Business titans were beginning to process the possibility that in one year and a day, a president who shook up the world could be back in the Oval Office. Kevin Roberts – the president of the Heritage Foundation, which has largely become a policy laboratory for a potential second Trump term – ventured into the well-heeled lions’ den at a Swiss alpine resort Thursday and candidly laid out the hardline vision for a new Trump administration that appeared to irk some in the audience.
Trump’s shadow is increasingly looming over Americans who hear his vow to devote a second administration to “retribution.” Such concerns spiked with Trump’s post on Truth Social Thursday, in which he demanded “complete and total” immunity for presidents “even for events that ‘cross the line.’” It’s a stunning vision of unchecked authority even for an ex-president who is arguing in an appeals court he can’t be prosecuted for trying to overturn an election.
‘Scared as heck’
Trump’s pursuit of a strongman presidency has some Democrats worried. Vice President Kamala Harris confessed this week she was “scared as heck” that Trump could win in November. Ironically, the return of that oppressive unease that characterized his White House years for some of his detractors is what President Joe Biden’s campaign is counting on to carry him to reelection. But given that Trump’s power will rise with every primary vote cast in his favor and the fact he’s running a more professional campaign than he did in 2016 and 2020, Biden perhaps should be careful what he wishes for.
Trump’s enduring weight with Republicans on Capitol Hill has always been unusual for a defeated one-term president and reflected his unbroken bond with GOP base voters. But in the US House of Representatives, especially, Republicans are increasingly mobilizing to push Trump’s political agenda and boost his chance of an election win. On Thursday, CNN’s congressional team reported that senators trying to cut an immigration deal with the White House are running into a problem: Trump.
Republican critics and supporters of the former president say that his desire to deprive Biden of any relief from a border crisis he’s put at the center of his campaign may make it impossible for GOP senators to get behind a bipartisan compromise on the issue. “It makes it harder because there are a lot of people that take their lead directly from him,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who supports Trump’s candidacy.
Trump’s behind-the-scenes influence is also threatening the Biden’s administration’s effort to secure tens of billions of dollars in funding for Ukraine. The ex-president has vowed to end the conflict within 24 hours if he wins a second term — on terms that can only favor Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he admires and who launched an unprovoked invasion of his neighbor nearly two years ago. Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, a co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, told Jim Sciutto on CNN Max on Wednesday that Trump was a hidden hand. “The number one reason Republicans will not come out in favor of a supplemental to support Ukraine is that they don’t want to offend candidate Trump and his supporters,” he said. The aid measure is being held up by the immigration showdown to which it was linked — perhaps unwisely many Democrats now think — by the White House.
Trump’s pressure on Republican lawmakers may also be having an even broader impact. First, the delay in funding for its lifeline is forcing Ukraine to push obsolete equipment into service on the front-lines and to ration ammunition. It also sets up a strategic advantage for Putin, giving him every incentive to continue the war at least until early 2025 when there could be a new American president skeptical of Ukraine aid.
“He thinks time is on his side,” said Michael McFaul, who served as US ambassador to Moscow during the Obama administration. “Who is most joyful about these delays in assistance? Watch Russian TV. These propagandists are on every night talking about how great this is.” McFaul said on a webcast organized by Spirit of America, a non-profit that works alongside US troops and diplomats, that he did not know whether Trump would ultimately help Putin if he were elected again. “But I can tell you without question, that is the hope in Moscow.”
Trump is racking up GOP endorsements
Trump’s increasing domestic power is also being underscored this week by a rush of GOP lawmakers endorsing him before the primary race is effectively over. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who once called Trump a “sniveling coward,” and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who in 2016 mocked his “small hands,” both backed their one-time nemesis this week.
The ex-president’s influence is also evident in GOP efforts to impeach Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. And a group of GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, a firm Trump supporter, and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, who hasn’t hidden his personal distaste for the ex-president, signed onto a brief asking the US Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling removing Trump from the state’s ballot.
The former president’s huge win in Iowa, where he got over 50% of the vote, caused reverberations far away from the chilly midwestern first-in-the-nation state. It has caused particular consternation in Europe after the transatlantic alliance was constantly rattled by Trump during his White House term.
In Davos, which hosts global leaders from the banking and finance industries, think-tankers, and business and political blue chippers each January, the possibility of a Trump redux was on everyone’s mind.
Trump’s visit in 2020, just before the world shut down in the pandemic, to burnish his populist “America First” credentials, is still remembered without fondness in the tony ski resort. During his first term, he berated America’s friends for not paying enough for their own defense, clashed with them repeatedly on trade, trashed the Iran nuclear deal and pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord. That’s likely to be a pale imitation of what awaits if he gets back to the White House.
Before the private jet set reached Switzerland, Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, warned that a second term for Trump would be “clearly a threat” to Europe.
‘It is snide. It’s unacceptable.’
One of the most intriguing invitees in Davos was Heritage’s Roberts, who gave one of the most categorical definitions yet of potential second-term Trumpism.
“The kind of person who will come in to the next conservative administration is going to be governed by one principle, and that is destroying the grasp that political elites and unelected technocrats have over the average person,” he told a session on what a next Republican administration would look like.
Roberts added: “And if I may, I will be candid and say that the agenda that every single member of the administration needs to have is to compile a list of everything that’s ever been proposed at the World Economic Forum, and object to all of them wholesale.”
Later, in a conference call with reporters, Roberts said he detected deep trepidation in Davos at the prospect of a new Trump presidency: “It is a palpable emotion. It is fear. It is snide. It’s unacceptable.” Roberts argued that the global elites who show up to Davos worry both that Trump is dangerous and that he could take away their power.
Not everyone at the forum was panicking. For bankers, the prospect of lower corporate taxes means a Trump second term could have a silver lining. Jamie Dimon, the JPMorgan CEO who sometimes clashed with Trump when he was in office and has urged donors to back Haley, complained that people were underestimating both the policy goals of Trump supporters and some of the achievements of the former president’s turbulent term. “He was kind of right about NATO. He was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked,” Dimon told CNBC.
After months of denial, there’s a growing sense across the Atlantic that though Europeans would prefer Biden, they might get Trump. “It may also be the wake-up call that Europe needs,” BlackRock Vice Chairman Philipp Hildebrand, a former head of the Swiss National Bank, told CNN. “We have to find a way to become more sovereign, in a sense, and less dependent, whether it’s on China or indeed on the United States.” Of Trump he said: “It is a threat that worries people to a great extent, but it can also be perhaps a wake-up call.”
President Emmanuel Macron, who launched a charm offensive that saw Trump invited as guest of honor to the Bastille Day Parade in Paris but then fell out with him, showed characteristic French strategic pragmatism. “American voters will have to decide at the end of the year. I have always had the same philosophy. I take the leaders that the people give me. And I commit to the service of France and its interests,” Macron told reporters at the Élysée Palace on Tuesday.
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