Jean-Luc Hees: “With Trump, America has become a moral and intellectual slum”

Journalist, former France Inter correspondent in Washington in the 1980s and former president of Radio France, Jean-Luc Hees publishes America: the invoice, published by Baker Street. In this new book on the United States, he draws up a disastrous assessment of Donald Trump’s mandate and notes a moral decline in an American society crossed by many questions of identity and increasingly divided. Will new president-elect Joe Biden succeed in reconciling America? “It won’t happen in four years. ”

You sign a book entitled America: the invoice. What is the one left by Donald Trump?

Jean-Luc Hees: Under Donald Trump, America has become a moral and intellectual slum. In 2020, the level of health of the world’s leading power is worthy of the Middle Ages. The precariousness, the security, the racial tensions… All the things that were wrong in this country, he made them worse. Without forgetting the climate! If you love the United States, you love its nature and its grandiose landscapes. It is criminal not to protect that.

And yet, Donald Trump adds 5 million votes to his 2016 score. He has settled in the American political landscape …

It’s undeniable. Like many, I thought 2016 was an accident, a stroke of fatigue from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. In reality, this establishment is sustainable. Half of Americans think he is the ideal man, no matter how rude, bastard, coward, liar, etc. We have already said everything about the character, but will he survive what he created? I have a doubt. It’s one of the bills he leaves. He’s an accident, but not Trumpism or populism, call it what you want. This is all frightening. The good news about this election is that Americans – whether Republican or Democrats – voted en masse. They care about the future of their divided society.

How to explain that Donald Trump has remained so popular, despite his management of the pandemic, despite his character and despite the tensions?

He crystallized around him what had been boiling for years in the United States and which the coronavirus pandemic brought to light. For a large portion of Americans, this virus is just a nuisance. Because of Covid-19, they can’t go golfing anymore, but they get by with it. It is the children of globalization who have worked, they are educated, have a professional network on which to rely and earn enough a living to afford quality health protection and, at the same time, education for their children. . The future for them is not bleak.

And there are the others, those who have no choice but to go to work despite the Covid, otherwise they lose their jobs and their health coverage. These are not just the poor, this situation affects many more social categories than we think. These are the people the “new world” does not protect. They do not have the same chances as the one who can telework, and for them, the virus is indeed fatal. What does Donald Trump tell them? “You are right, work and live! For an American whose concern is to feed his kids, to keep his house, his car and his health insurance, he has passed for a shield. Those who haven’t seen this, and I’m one of them, were living on an old idea of ​​America. He crystallized the anger of these people and gathered them around him. It is a large-scale sect.

That is to say ?

There is imagery around Donald Trump. It’s the only thing he knows how to do. He is not an ideologue or a politician. It is, at best, a « entertainer » who was a Democrat a few years ago! It is not so much an American phenomenon as the problem of our time. We accept everything, including the worst. And social networks add to the unhappiness of the world. When Donald Trump explains that you need to drink a little bleach to get rid of the virus, we all laugh and accept the fact that the leader of the greatest power in the world can say that. No one cares whether it’s true or not. The media are chasing Trump’s lies, but it’s impossible to dismantle five a day for four years. One lie drives out the other and you get used to it. I’m not accusing Trump of being a dictator, but his approach was sometimes similar.

What no one has seen in the United States is the identity problem.

Sect, dictatorship … As you go!

Look what is happening right now: he refuses his defeat. He proudly announced two months ago that he would sow discord, legally speaking. We smiled, we said he was spoofing a little and finally, he does and we accept this reality. Donald Trump is not a politician, he is a trickster tactician, a cunning man. The heavier the string, the more comfortable it is. I am convinced that his secret idol is Benito Mussolini. Besides the physical resemblance, I remember that he quoted it during the 2016 campaign, taking up the famous maxim of the Duce: “Better to live one day like a lion than a hundred years like a sheep.” This is the kind of phrase that pleases the ear and, a few years later, we are disillusioned. I will be told that he was democratically elected. I am not making any comparison, but I will simply remind you that the most civilized country in Europe fell over in the 1930s. We forgot to beware of the stick effects of characters like that.

He also knew how to take the pulse of an America that was no longer listened to.

In the United States, racial problems and precariousness have been there for many years. What no one has seen is the identity problem. The Democratic Party did not see this, preferring to speak to the elites rather than to the “populos”. However, these identity questions were also there, lurking for a long time. We knew long before Donald Trump that Latinos and African Americans would be in the majority in the United States. Things settled down, they infused without anyone talking to those Americans who were scared of these changes, of the evolution of the world. They no longer wanted to be the policemen of the world and also wanted the « great again ».

An identity problem for a nation, oh how proud …

This is the whole American paradox of the time. The supporters of Donald Trump and his opponents are all aware of being an exceptional nation. They are much more patriotic than we French people will ever be. There is a pride in being American and often arrogance, but it all came up against the isolationist policies of Donald Trump. Can we be as great as we say when we’re all alone in our corner? The pride of being American is still there, the American dream is still there, but the company is going through a moral crisis that is very similar to what it experienced during the Vietnam War. A young nation with an old but strong Constitution – only one for the United States and 14 for France in 200 years! – who are looking for their place at home and their role on the international scene. Four years ago, Americans answered the same identity questions that we will ask ourselves in the next election.

Will this be one of Joe Biden’s challenges?

Will Biden’s administration be virtuous and willful enough to jump into this? If the old man has a little marrow, he can get something started, but he’s going to drool over it. America needs to rest. The anxiety level there is very high. It won’t happen in four years, but I believe that’s the message behind Joe Biden’s election as Donald Trump throws the last drops of gasoline he has on the embers he has kept for four. years. Donald Trump’s four-year bill is costly. He made babies. Erdogan admires him. Trump let him do it all and the two consider each other. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil is one of his original creations. Some Eastern European countries do not even hide their admiration for him. He left a world more and more apolar, without really axes of resistance.