I have lived long enough in the Ceaușescu era for the images from President Donald Trump’s speech in front of the American Congress not to evoke a terrible sense of déjà vu.
The Republican part of the American legislature, led by Vice President JD Vance, behaved exactly like the communist nomenclature at the PCR Congresses during late Ceaușescu.
The same servility, the same sectarian spirit, the same contempt for values.
For an hour and 40 minutes, Trump talked about himself, placed himself at the top of the ranking of American presidents, second only to George Washington, threatened, announced, practically territorial annexations, insulted, and trampled on all the principles that have so far defined the benchmark of world democracy.
A spectacle in itself was the sight of DJ Vance, frowning and adulatory, resonating with every nuance of the sovereign's tone, perched on an arc that catapulted him off his seat even once a minute, to mark not only with applause, but with his whole body the total attachment to the cause.
And it's not just about that moment. Just a few hours before this speech, President Trump warned students who would oppose him through unauthorized demonstrations that they would be expelled. Sure, private universities can refuse to take this measure, but at the risk of losing federal funding for research programs.
The man who won the elections by clamoring for the recovery of freedom of expression curtailed by the right to swear and defame, including with lies, anyone, anytime, punches opponents in the mouth using federal funds as blackmail, which he accuses of being politically used so far. The political regime that accuses Europe of violating democratic principles is slipping towards dictatorship at a dizzying speed.
The grotesque spectacle in Washington and the perfect harmony, confirmed by the Kremlin, between the messages of the Trump administration and those of Moscow tend to invalidate all sophisticated geopolitical analyses that explain Donald Trump's strategy in relation to Russia, Ukraine, Europe.
It seems increasingly clear that Vladimir Putin is an authentic model for Donald Trump. Trump wants to be a Putin of America.
A Putin who restricts freedom of expression and represses, for now through the blackmail of funds or eviction from the room, opponents.
A Putin who takes from the world map what he wants, regardless of whether it is called Ukraine or Greenland. A Putin who kicks out anyone who has dared to bother him in any way, be it a prosecutor, federal investigator, or tax official. Musk's major operation is intended to eliminate all the bothersome people from institutions and punish all opponents. It is a massive purge, not a restructuring.
A Putin who has the right to humiliate anyone, anytime by the simple fact that he is more powerful and richer. Who has no obligation to respect any principle or agreement and who allows himself to reinvent history and reality without any reservation, because the one with the machine gun always has the right.
While scolding Europe for its deficit of democracy, Donald Trump and his clique have nothing to say, no eyebrow to raise regarding Vladimir Putin. Zelenski is the dictator, not Putin. Europe is undemocratic, Russia is a democracy.
Donald Trump cultivates Putin not out of sophisticated political calculation, but simply because he likes him, he resonates with him, he is the model he wants to impose on America and the world. Donald Trump does not want to enter the gallery of great Republican presidents of America. He already considers that he has surpassed them all, from the founding fathers.
Donald Trump wants to be the dictator of America. The liberal democratic model confuses and even annoys him. There is already open talk about the possibility of amending the Constitution to tighten a third term or maybe the presidency for life. If not, he already has his Medvedev with a fixed gaze and an arc in his chair ready.
Trump talks about himself in the third person, self-glorifies in every speech, on every occasion, the intoxication of power has evidently taken over his mind.
MAGA is not a creed, a political ideology, it is a sect with all that the sectarian spirit entails, and Trump relies on it to establish dictatorship.
But he has two problems that could prove lethal. On the one hand, it is justice, from which he is beginning to receive blows, including at the level of the Supreme Court dominated by Republicans. The American justice system that has already ruled that Trump is a criminal.
If he dreams of being Putin, Americans are not Russians. They do not have the exercise of blind mystical obedience, they live their freedom and democracy as long as they can remember.
For now, Trump is living his honeymoon. There is both astonishment and reluctance in the face of the steamroller. But the polls are starting to show that it won't last long, and the healthy mechanisms of society will probably be set in motion to stop the Putinization of the USA and to truly make America great again.
This does not mean that Europe has nothing to change, that it has no lessons to learn. The dependence on Russian gas has been costly. The dependence on American defense must also cease, because just as gas fell into the hands of Putin from Moscow and defense fell into the hands of Putin from Washington.
A truly great America means that not everything is for sale, that principles cannot be bought, it means true democracy, loyalty, and respect. A truly great America is the one that defeated the USSR and won the Cold War alongside its allies. The Putinist dictator Trump only makes Russia "great again."