IN Iowa last night, Donald Trump won big, crushing his nearest Republican rivals.
The former president faces multiple criminal charges and stands accused of being an insurrectionist – he might be in jail by the time of the next election – but he still triumphed in the first test of his popularity among republican voters.
APRepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a caucus night party in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024[/caption]
ITVRobert Moore dives into the implications of Trump’s return in a new documentary[/caption]
ITN ProductionsHe met voters across Midwest that are ditching Biden in favour of Trump[/caption]
APPresident Joe Biden is losing Black voters, with 25% now leaning towards Trump, polls suggest[/caption]
ITVMiles Taylor, former national security official, warns Trump’s presidency would lead to civil war[/caption]
Donald Trump easily earned a decisive victory in the Iowa caucus and has polled 51 per cent of the vote.
That’s astonishing.
But something even stranger is happening in the American heartland.
It should send a shiver down the spine of America’s liberal elite.
President Biden’s natural voters are turning away from him in droves.
It opens the door to a Trump return that will cause global turmoil.
After weeks of travelling across the Midwest for new ITV1 documentary Trump: The Return? , we discovered that support for Joe Biden is falling sharply.
Disillusioned Democrats are contemplating a vote for Trump again.
The president’s approval rating has just hit an all-time low of 33 percent.
The dashboard in the White House should be flashing red.
This disapproval for Biden cuts across many groups that Democrats have long assumed are their natural voters.
Biden is in serious danger of losing young and progressive voters.
Many young Americans – whose political identity was forged in the red-hot ferment of the BLM protests – see Biden as a traitor to their cause.
His unconditional support for Israel in the Gaza war appals many of these progressive and woke voters.
In addition, Generation Z voters see a president older than many of their grandparents.
Biden is 81. He looks and sounds increasingly frail, despite the best efforts of his staff and his personal trainer.
Many Americans wonder if Biden can even survive a gruelling presidential campaign, let alone a full second term.
Independent voters are also disillusioned.
Independents voters – those who float in the centre ground of American politics – are furious with the White House over inflation and the cost of living.
Many are getting a shock every time they go to the grocery store.
They too are contemplating defecting to Trump.
Even black voters are getting fed up with the liberal agenda.
On the streets of Chicago, I stumbled on something even more startling.
Many African Americans are turning against Biden.
This is the constituency of voters that won him the 2020 election.
But now these voters are watching illegal migrants arriving in droves in the northern heartlands.
Impoverished and struggling inner-city black communities are competing for resources with migrants from Venezuela and Ecuador.
As a result, African Americans voters are defecting.
In 2020, 92 percent of black voters supported Biden.
Now polls suggest as many as 25 percent may vote for Trump in the key Midwestern states, an historic shift in loyalties.
All of these voter groups – the young, the independents, the black community – are needed by Biden if he is to beat Donald Trump in November.
And yet they are all threatening to stay at home or even vote Republican.
The implication for Democrats is dramatic: The broad voter coalition that brought Obama and Biden to power is in danger of collapse.
But if Democrats are in danger of losing, can Trump actually win?
Donald Trump’s strategy is itself a complete paradox.
You would expect him to be reaching out to these “soft” Democratic voters who are turning their back on BIden. As so often, Trump defies the obvious and the logical.
Trump’s rhetoric is, instead, becoming even more radical and incendiary.
On the campaign trail, he talks of the liberal elite as “vermin.”
He echoes language familiar on the extreme right, suggesting that migrants are tainting the blood of true Americans.
But Trump’s supporters love the narrative that the former president is weaving.
Instead of being intimidated by the four court cases that he faces – and the 91 criminal charges – Trump simply shows contempt for his accusers.
He claims that his political enemies have weaponised the judicial system against him.
This allows the former president to project himself not as a criminal defendant but as a victim and a martyr.
Former Trump official issue dire warning
Fresh off his crushing victory in Iowa overnight, it is more likely than ever to be a Trump-Biden showdown in November, with Trump the slight favourite to win.
That makes many people in Washington not just nervous.
It is generating something closer to panic, and not just among Democrats.
One of Trump’s former advisers tells ITV that his return to power would be a complete catastrophe for the U.S. and the western alliance.
Miles Taylor was a national security official in the Trump first term.
He says that Britain should be ready “to batten down the hatches” at the end of the year if Trump wins.
He believes that assassinations and civil war are possible.
Taylor reveals to ITV that in the first Trump term the former president wanted to set up a group of mercenaries, along the lines of Russia’s Wagner group.
Taylor says that in a second term Trump will surround himself with ultra loyalists and succeed in creating a private army loyal only to the president.
He puts it starkly.
“It’s a very, very grave environment in terms of political violence and civil instability. If he wins the White House again, we’re at risk of the power keg being lit on fire.”
After the Iowa vote, the frozen prairies of the midwest have warmed the hearts of Trump’s army of loyalists.
It leaves America more divided than ever.
Democrats insist that Trump deserves to be behind bars in a federal prison.
Republicans say he should be back in the Oval Office.
And if what I’ve seen over recent months is anything to go by, fasten your seatbelts and prepare for Trump’s return.
Robert Moore’s documentary, Trump: The Return?, is on ITV1 & ITVX tonight at 9pm.
A picture of Trump with his former security official Miles Taylor from the Moore’s documentaryITV
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