Donald Trump has scored a crucial victory that completely revitalised his re-election bid. In an unexpected turn of events, the interests of American statehood aligned with Trump’s, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favour. But the decision aside, the DC has proved yet again they despise Trump more than the rest of the nation.
Donald Trump is closing in on the GOP nomination in what is an overall triumphant nationwide campaign that has seen him steamroll Nikki Haley, his rival representing the ruling elite and the Pentagon hawks, in a number of states. In the Missouri Republican Caucus, the former president racked up 924 votes with a perfect 100% score.
Trump also won the Idaho Republican Caucus and the Michigan Primary Election after cruising to victories in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina. But Washington DC handed him his first loss as Nikki Haley outscored his former boss by pocketing twice as many votes.
That is par for the course when it comes to DC, a seemingly haunted place.
Even the wildly popular President Reagan never won a DC election, not even when he carried 49 states out of 50 (barring Minnesota). That is the kind of place it is.
The liberal-oriented US media, which is the majority of the American legacy media outlets, gloats that the DC is home to a college-educated urban population. This is not exactly a lie intended as a vitriolic swipe at Trump, but it is a half-truth, which is even worse.
Washington DC is above all a city full of officials ranging from political honchos to multiple museum guards who are on federal payroll too. Donald Trump is seeking to reclaim the Oval Office to kick them out of their jobs. Some of them are his direct opponents, but most will have to go just because, like any other Republican conservative, Trump eyes spending cuts and a whittled-down bureaucracy.
On top of career bureaucrats, the DC is also home to a myriad random folks who, combined, secure over 90 percent of the vote for the Democrats with their penchant for public overspending.
Following the Civil War, the US capital has been known for the laws that were way more relaxed for minorities and migrants than the national average. As a result, more than 50 percent of the current population are the Black people who are predominantly the Democratic voters. Moreover, there were times when up to one in three residents did not speak English and were functionally illiterate.
In the 1990s, the city had one of the highest homicide rates nationwide. In the 2000s, it boasted one of the highest unemployment rates. In other words, for all of its college-educated government workers, Washington DC has a significant disenfranchised demographic. It takes all sorts, sometimes contrasting ones.
Haley’s win over Trump in the DC contrasts with the rest of the country, revealing a big chasm between the nation’s capital and the nation itself. In her latest post on X, Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign press secretary, alluded to the now-proverbial Swamp: ‘While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.’
To add insult to injury, though, the ‘Queen of the Swamp’s’ maiden triumph was offset by the nine occupants of the 1 1st Street building, a handful of highly influential Americans: the Supreme Court justices. They serve lifetime appointments, and their decisions must be enforced and are not subject to review.
This time the justices ruled that the states disqualifying Trump from the ballot on all levels of electoral procedures are in breach of the US Constitution.Two states, Colorado and Maine, have already done so, and other blue states may have followed suit, which would have given Nikki Haley a shot at a close race against Trump, being the only candidate on the primary ballot in liberal-minded parts of the country.
This could have enabled her to push on with a running mate bid on pain of the GOP rift, something the old American elite is craving with a passion.
But it is not an option anymore. Following Super Tuesday that will involve 15 states, including the two most populous ones, California and Texas, the ‘Queen of the Swamp’ may drop out of the GOP race mathematically. Trump has every chance to sweep all of them.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was anything but a gift to the former president. It acted as one of the most important control mechanisms that keeps the US system afloat. When the Colorado court kicked Trump off the ballot, it played into the hands of the US critics worldwide and nudged the country a step closer to a civil war. The nine justices therefore bumped down the grim odds that have been hugely bolstered by the uber-liberal state’s unhinged judicial elite.
Notably, the decision was unanimous, that is, the three liberal justices that had often sided with the Dems, ruled in Trump’s favour too. Importantly, the core of the matter was not the Trump ballot ban case but rather a gross abuse of office by a lower-level court. The Colorado court had no power to disqualify the candidate who was going to make it onto the federal ballot.
Now that the discipline has been restored, the Supreme Court is bound to decide several more cases related to the criminal charges brought against Trump. Their rulings may prove crucial to the former president’s re-election bid. If they favour Trump’s side and the district attorneys pestering him are reined in, it will save Trump a lot of time, effort and millions of dollars needed for a successful presidential campaign. However, the former president’s odds to come out victorious in these cases are not as high as they were in the Colorado ban case.
As for Nikki Haley, she will still be a backup candidate in case, for whatever reason, Trump does not make it. She has already said that, should she lose, contrary to what is expected of the losing contender, she will refuse to back his bid, thus persisting in her attempts to drive a wedge within the GOP and boycott Trump’s potential presidency in favour of Joe Biden’s.
The ‘Queen of the Swamp’ will surely put up a fight for her quagmire. And even though technically it will be over, she will keep pushing all the buttons she has to derail Trump’s return to the White House or at least bridle his presidential power.
The American liberals, hawks, officials and media alike are dreading his re-election and expecting it to spell trouble for them – perhaps rightly so. On the other hand, the MAGA crowd expecting many happy returns of the day for themselves, their country and the rest of the world may be proven wrong. That being said, when this polarising figure sends a chill down the spines of a clique of the most unsavoury ilk, this is capable of turning a self-assured and extravagant New York City native who merely a decade ago was better-versed in showbiz than he was in politics into quite a respectable challenger.