Trump's accomplishments vs. crisis of US political system International review by Mikhail Shereshevskiy

His anti-Covid campaign fiasco led to his loss in 2020 elections. He is on trial on multiple charges and faces either 250 or 400 years in prison for various machinations and attempted sedition. He doesn't like representative democracy and sympathises with very undemocratic politicians, as he has admitted. "America is going to hell and only a strong leader like Chinese leader Xi Jinping can save the country," he once said in an interview with Fox News.

He is an opponent of social assistance to the grassroots, an enemy of the medical programme once created by President Obama (it covers almost 100 million poor Americans) and a supporter of Reaganomics - radical tax cuts on wealthy individuals. Finally, far from being a working man himself, though he appeals to white workers for support, he is a multi-millionaire.

Still, Trump's ratings are off the charts. By some reports, he is already ahead of Biden. Why?

Firstly, the problem is Biden himself. He is old, speaks poorly and can barely move, showing signs of dementia. He's 80 years old. What happens if he wins the 2024 election? How will he run the country until 2028? And if it will be not him, but a group of politicians behind him, connected with the former Obama team, then what is the point of voting at all? Here, however, we should add that Trump is 77 years old and such questions are also relevant to this candidate.

Secondly, Biden failed to fulfil his most important promise to the voters. He won the election in 2020 by borrowing from his Democratic rival Bernie Sanders the idea of a gigantic package of public funding for the economy and social programmes, including education, medicine, science and infrastructure. Sanders was proposing a $6 trillion investment. The package was supposed to transform America by setting the stage for a major push in science and education, improve the condition of the poor, and cancel student debt. Biden cut the package to $3.5 trillion and won the election. The Democrats then negotiated a bill to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure modernisation. This was a direct mockery of the voters.

Today in the US, the majority of the population sympathises with the strike of workers in the automotive industry and this is a signal to the authorities - "we are fed up with your attitude towards us, demagogy and deceit". Property inequality in the US is growing, and the situation of the working class is not improving. The white workers' vote for Trump against this background can be understood as a protest.

Third, there is a fundamental problem - disillusionment of the American society with representative democracy and other institutions of the state. According to a study by such a reputable organisation as Gallup, conducted in the summer of 2023, the level of trust in governments in the US and Britain is the lowest among the G7 countries. According to the company, only a third of Britons trust the government of this country. In the US, 31 per cent of citizens rely on the government. In 2020, 46 per cent of US citizens trusted the country's leadership. A sharp decline began a year after the arrival of Joe Biden as head of state.

At the same time, Moises Naim, former head of the World Bank, in his work "The End of Power", cites statistics according to which the decline in public confidence in the system of representative democracy has been a steady trend for decades. A 46 per cent rating means that most people do not trust it. Elections every four years, after which elected deputies and government officials can make whatever decisions they want (in practice, those dictated by the money and influence of the most powerful lobbyist corporations and the most influential agencies), bear little resemblance to democracy. Voters, who do not have large financial assets, have no control mechanism in the form of regular meetings with the right to replace a deputy at any time. Although the US likes to blame other countries for the lack of democracy, the system in America itself is, in the opinion of some, an oligarchy - the rule of a few rich and powerful individuals - according to the classical Greek definition. Some nonetheless think the American system is democratic, but the number of those who think otherwise appears to be growing.

It's no surprise that, despite the criminal cases, or perhaps because of them, many people are not turning their backs on Trump. "He's a crook, a corrupt man, a rebel!" the media associated with the American establishment shout. "No, you're all crooks! Why are you picking on him? If you're picking on him, then he's better than you!" the silent majority, or at least that significant portion of the electorate that supports Trump, responds. The more the mainstream media and courts attack Trump, the higher his ratings go.

Donald Trump might just get locked up. He does not suit not only Democrats but also many Republicans. He is too chaotic and unpredictable in foreign and domestic policy. But the above problems will not disappear anywhere. One way or another, they will influence the US political system and society.