“We went through hell, unfairly, I didn’t do anything wrong.” This is what the American President Donald Trump said in a White House speech to faithful lords about his acquittal by the Senate in the impeachment process against him.
The American head of state had invited government members, high-ranking Republicans such as majority fraction leader Mitch McConnell and his lawyers to applaud his acquittal in the impeachment process. He again condemned the trial in powerful terms such as a “witch hunt”.
“We have gone through hell, unfairly, I have done nothing wrong, yet deliberately,” said the Republican President. The impeachment procedure against him was “malicious, corrupt.” Or: “It was (people who) leak and liars. This should never occur again to another president,” Trump repeated. They were adding that another president might never have accepted this.
Trump also recalled the “war” he had waged from the start of his presidency in January 2017 and expressed strong praise to people who contributed to his “victory.”
President Trump does not feel like reconciliation with the Democrats after his acquittal in the Senate, and Bart Kerremans, professor of International Studies at the KU Leuven, is not surprised.
Trump will further drive the polarisation between his supporters and opponents in the United States and has every interest in it, says Professor Kerremans. This is partly due to personal hurt feelings, but partly also due to strategy.
That is why Kerremans finds it a blunder that the Top Democratic woman in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi tore up the text of his speech after Trump’s “State of the Union”.
If the Democrats want to win not only the presidential elections but also those for the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate later this year, they must do so with a substantive plan, according to Kerremans. Healthcare and drug prices are an essential theme in this, not the person of Trump himself, he warns.
