New York – Himself as an “immortal” carved in the rock next to the great presidents of history; the nostalgia of Air Force One; a plaque in honor of the Wall on the border with Mexico. It took a loyalist to reveal to the world Donald Trump’s new Oval Office, and all the secret clues it contains about the former president’s strategy to prepare for the revival.
Stephen Miller, considered Trump’s “other black soul” later Steve Bannon, was the inspirer of the Muslim Ban and many measures against immigration. On a visit to Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where Trump moved his residence from New York, Miller had his boss photographed and spread the images on Twitter.
Those photos sparked curiosity, journalists and politicians zoomed in on every detail, in search of messages and symbols, to decipher the state of mind of the president and his intentions. That study is not really secret, indeed, it is the goal of a continuous pilgrimage: parliamentarians or Republican governors continue to seek Trump’s support, large right-wing financiers continue to donate to his cause, and perhaps to his next presidential campaign. But it was Miller who unveiled so many details of that room, located above the Palm Beach Club ballroom.
An attempt to replicate the White House Oval Office that Trump had to leave – very reluctantly, as everyone remembers – on January 20. There are many signs of acute nostalgia: a photo of Air Force One flying over Washington on Independence Day last year; one of the Marine One helicopter flying past Mount Rushmore.
Trump does not hide that he considers himself one of the greatest leaders in American history, on a par with an Abraham Lincoln or a Teddy Roosevelt, and the governor of South Dakota indulged him by giving him a replica of Mount Rushmore where in the famous mountain next to the sculpted faces his also appears from other presidents.
The egomaniac cult of personality is always visible, among the trinkets that decorate the studio there is a mini-bust that always represents him. To temper the narcissism, however, there is an outline of frames with photos of family members: Melania, children, and the legendary father who saved him from bankruptcy. Trump gets photographed browsing through a copy of the Wall Street Journal, the economic-financial newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch with which he has long had a conflictual relationship: it is the Bible of American capitalism, but Trump accuses him of having remained at the service of the “globalist” ideology that has done damage to the country.
Murdoch inflicted on him a worse betrayal than his TV FoxNews he distanced himself from allegations of electoral fraud. A convict presence, hidden behind the phone, is the former president’s favorite drink: Diet Coke. There would be nothing to be ashamed of, except that Trump called for a boycott of Coca Cola because the Atlanta multinational supports Georgia’s Democrats who reject the new electoral rules in the name of African American rights.
For a premonition about the political future, the most emblematic object is a plaque given to Trump by the US Border Patrol, the border police, a thank you for his action in strengthening the control of the southern border, and implicitly an “endorsement” of the Wall with Mexico. This returns to be Trump’s main workhorse, in the face of the surge in arrivals of migrants seeking asylum. The humanitarian crisis at the border has recorded the record of entries for 15 years. Trump accuses Biden of encouraging them by promising an amnesty. He is convinced that on the illegal immigration boom his party can win the mid-term legislative elections, and regain the majority in Congress: the electoral campaign has in fact already begun as we vote in November 2022, in just 19 months.
Would a Republican Congress make Biden a halved president and pave the way for Trump’s reappointment? Certainly the Oval Office bis of Mar-a-Lago will have a long waiting list, a surge in requests for auditions. Trump’s hold on the Grand Old Party hasn’t weakened even after three months of near-silence on social media.
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