Presidential elections in the United States: Donald Trump in the tunnel

FIt’s a first for Lindsey Graham. When he opens session Monday morning in committee room 216 in the Senate office building Hart, he will preside over his first hearing in a nomination process for a constitutional judge. The senator from South Carolina, who chaired the Legal Affairs Committee in early 2019, makes no secret of what that means to him: “We are about to affirm the most qualified Republican woman ever nominated. And I’m very proud of that. “

The fact that he promoted Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court seat in a fast-paced process shortly before the presidential election does not diminish Graham’s pride. Quite the contrary. If you recall what he said in 2016, when he denied Barack Obama the right to fill a Supreme Court vacancy last year during his presidency, you shrug. Graham and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, are pretty confident of the votes in favor of the conservative judge’s approval.

However, the initial howl of triumph has died down. At the moment, it does not appear that the regulation of the successor of the left liberal judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg can put a positive turn on the Republican electoral campaign. Too much has happened since then: Less than a week after his candidate’s appearance at the White House, Donald Trump tested positive for the corona virus – and with him several other participants in the celebration in the rose garden. Two Republican senators have to virtually join the hearing on Monday because they self-quarantined after their Covid diagnosis. The event, which was supposed to document Trump’s historic achievement in appointing three of the nine justices, will now go down in history for another reason: It was a high-profile event.

Shaking my head over the president

Trump’s illness once again made the crisis of the crown the dominant theme of the election campaign. And he also revealed that the president sees the virus less as a threat to Americans than as a threat to his re-election: Because of the way he deals with his illness, he is now garnering greetings from his own party. The patient’s walk with his supporters in front of Walter Reed Hospital, his bizarre show back in the White House, and his insistence on getting back to work in the Oval Office, that’s enough for many Republicans, too. Not surprisingly, his personal physician’s opinion that Trump is no longer showing symptoms and is no longer contagious has little credibility.

The president insisted on returning to the electoral campaign and holding rallies again over the weekend. His people told him that this could not be done on such short notice. But Trump was not deterred from appearing publicly on Saturday. For example, a conservative friend who has been involved in winning over blacks and Hispanics to the Trump movement hosted a jubilee on the South Prairie of the White House. Trump, who had admitted taking steroids late last week, spoke from the balcony to the roughly 500 supporters who had turned up in blue T-shirts and red “Maga” caps. In 18 minutes he sang a short version of his rally speeches: “Go vote!”; “I’m doing great”; “We will defeat the terrible virus in China,” “Blacks and Latinos turned their backs on the left-wing Democrats,” and so on.