Trump has not been recalled (yet)

Trump has not been recalled (yet)

This is how the assistant at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Stevan Nedeljković, explains the decision of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress to recall President Trump, followed by a debate and a vote in the Senate.

"In order to be officially recalled, a two-thirds majority in the Senate needs to vote. Given that the procedure is very complex and requires investigation, hearing before various committees, I do not expect the whole procedure to be completed in a few weeks but in a few months", he explains.

What Democrats want, he argues, has a double grounds.

"Plan A in Congress says: we want to prevent Trump from holding any political office in the future, that is, from being a public servant in the United States, which includes the inability to run in the 2024 presidential election. Such a scenario would mean a two-thirds majority in the Senate impeach Donald Trump, and in the end, in a special vote, a simple majority made it impossible for him to run", Nedeljković explains, adding that at this moment, that seems difficult to achieve.

If Plan A does not pass, he adds, they will go to Plan B, that is, to prevent Trump from reading the entire process of another "impeachment", which has never happened in history, and to discredit him by lowering his political weight. Trump's political power and influence worries both Democrats and Republicans, for various reasons.

"Democrats are afraid that Trump could harm them in the 2024 elections, and even in the 2022 elections, because it turned out that the candidates he supports are doing well in the elections," Nedeljkovic told Tanjug, commenting on the latest events in Washington and the request for Trump's recall.

On the other hand, he points out, Republicans, and especially the more moderate ones, care about their party.

"Many Republicans don't like their party being so radicalized. It still survives on some solid values, but the rhetoric is much more inflammatory than it used to be," Nedeljkovic explains, adding that the party has become much more exclusive than it has been so far. Trump and his movement, as Nedeljkovic explains, have in fact captured the Republican Party and Republicans are looking for a way to solve it most painlessly, and at the same time they are afraid because they know that without Trump supporters they have almost no chance in the 2024 presidential election.

2022 would not go so well. Asked whether it is possible that all this would lead to the formation of the Trump movement or party, which would in fact lead to the abolition of the established two-party system in the United States, Nedeljković said that such a scenario is a nightmare for Republicans.

"Trump had the opportunity to be the winner despite the defeat. If he had stopped on December 15, after the vote of the Electoral Collegium, I am convinced that the Republicans would have two more senators and would win the elections in Georgia," Nedeljkovic claims.

He adds that in that case, Trump would be the leader of probably the most powerful movement in the United States today, "Trumpism", or whatever you call it.

"That is not the case now. That movement has weakened, but it will continue to function within the Republican Party. It still has a great foothold and, as rarely, gathers Republicans from different spectrums. Ultra-conservative Republicans vote for Trump, then libertarians, and on the other very controversial movements Quenon, Proud Boys", explains Nedeljković and points out that he is not sure who within the Republican Party would have so much strength and energy to gather all those people in one place.

On the other hand, he says, Biden managed to motivate more opponents of Trump as voters than those who wholeheartedly and cordially support Joseph Biden. "It was essentially an anti-Trump campaign, and if we look at what is a kind of glue that holds Democrats together - that's an anti-Trump story. When it ends one way or another, the question is what will happen to that unity among Democrats", states Nedeljković.

When it comes to divisions in American society, Nedeljković says that this level of polarization has not been seen since the American Civil War.

At start, he says, it seemed nice when the Balkanization of the United States was mentioned, and now you need to think hard.

Asked how much legitimacy the Biden administration, after everything that happened in the post-election period, would work to reconcile the "two Americas", Nedeljkovic said that the key message of Joseph Biden after winning the election was that they must unite America, but that with this kind of action it will not happen.

"I'm sure that Donald Trump's supporters, and there are many of them, will not respond positively to the actions of Nancy Pelosi, Cortes and other Democrats, and even those like Congresswoman Bush, who accused Trump of racism. It seems to me that these are not good messages, nor messages of unification", Nedeljković said. He adds that Biden probably does not want to send such messages at this moment, but that he is not powerful.

"We are constantly hearing calls for reconciliation from both sides in the United States, but those tones are not completely harmonized because there are no concrete actions in terms of resolving that division, which is deep and has always existed," says Nedeljković, adding that throughout history, American society has been divided into those who want a confederation and those for a federal system, those who want a republic and those who want a monarchy with George Washington.

"Those divisions have always existed. They manifested themselves mostly in the Civil War, but they have lasted to this day. Those divisions will survive, and Biden should insist on reducing tensions. At the moment, that negative energy in the United States is at its peak, and the president as the figure of unification might be able to reduce those tensions, but what I am absolutely sure of is that Biden, no matter how much his intentions may be, will not be able to abolish them", Nedeljkovic claims.