The eighty years of Donald Trump

Donald Trump will turn eighty next the 14th, and this will make him, according to Trumpist propaganda, the oldest man – there is no woman – to have ever held the presidency of the USA (Biden left it at 82, but perhaps he has been canceled). Obviously, it is a fact that is of no interest or relevance to public life, but in the eyes of the interested party, it is a very important and transcendent anniversary. As much or more than the 250th anniversary of the proclamation of the independence of the USA, which will take place just three weeks (minus one day) later, on July 4th, which, as even aliens know, is the Yankee national day. From this coincidence, Trump has decided to create a kind of jumble to see if he can manage to amalgamate the two dates, with a few celebrations that are quite consistent with the character.On the same day, June 14, the White House will host a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) gala, a mixed martial arts championship that in recent years has achieved great popularity among the North American MAGA public and also among MAGA from provinces everywhere, like those who graze around our home. For the occasion, a gigantic cage for fighters named The Claw –The Talon– has been built in the White House gardens, because these fighters, to please their audience, must strut within a cage. Inside Trump's head, this must be equivalent to a gladiatorial fight in the Roman circus in honor of Caesar, which is him.There are more ideas in play: a special issue of $250 bills with Trump's face stamped on them, the printing of passports with Trump's face (again) printed on the first page, or the construction of a seventy-five-meter-high triumphal arch that would eclipse the monument to Abraham Lincoln (which Trump, incidentally, had restored, with instructions to illuminate the pool with an "American flag blue" color). There is also the project to erect in Miami, a reference point for the global turbo-capitalist right, a "presidential library" that, according to Trump, would be his cultural legacy: an immense glass tower topped with his name, with a lobby that would house an Air Force One plane gifted to Trump by the Emir of Qatar and a giant statue of the orange pachyderm. All golden and shiny, of course.Besides constituting a series of imbecilities, Trump's proposals are an usurpation of public space. A bacchanal of nationalist and patriotic exaltation, mixed with the cult of the leader's personality. It can make us laugh or scandalize us, but it is a very clear representation of the type of leadership that so-called emerging right-wingers want to normalize again, much closer to the figure of the despot (benign or not; certainly not enlightened) than to that of the elected president who, as such, represents the citizenry, owes them and submits to their vote. As has always been done in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes: when Elon Musk made the Nazi salute from the tribune, on the day of Trump's investiture, it was not a moment of obfuscation nor a gratuitous act of arrogance.