If “the power is exercised, more than it is possessed”, As Michel Foucault saidDonald Trump does not stop showing a growing power through his exercise. And as described by the French thinker, “as a strategy”, in which “its effects of domination” are “attributed” to “some maneuvers, to tactics, to some techniques, to some operations” within the framework of “a network of relations always tense, always in activity”, to “a perpetual battle” rather than to a “contract that operates a assignment, or the conquest that seizes a territory.”
Trump exercises power, battlely and evidences the effects of his domination, on the White House, in Congress, in the Supreme, in world geopolitics and in his permanent presence in the media and social networks. “This power is exerted more than it is, it is not the acquired or preserved 'privilege' of the ruling class, but the joint effect of its strategic positions,” Foucault wrote, who added: “Where there is power, there is resistance.”
The US president is clear: “I think I have more power.” He said it this Thursday night, after the agonized victory, tight, sweaty, but victory after all, in the US Congress. “I could say that I have it,” Trump continued, after he managed to approve his fiscal megaley that makes it easier for him to apply his ultra agenda – recort of taxes to the richest, cut of benefits to the poorest, reinforcement of the fight against migration and more expense in defense.
In this case, it is not only relevant what has happened – the approval of the law – but how, the way in which he has bent the internal answer and in which he has made the House of Representatives with a single comma to the text that the Senate had amended. And everything to be able to sign the law on July 4 at the White House, so that on July 4, the US National Festival, became a celebration of its political project.
The commemoration of the US independence turned into the Trump country project party with the signing of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, That is what is officially called.
“I think we are going to destroy this mandate,” the US president continued: “We have demonstrated some things, and yes, I think there is more weight, more power.”
While the power is exercised, Trump has exhibited it this week in Congress, but also with the inauguration of the Aligator Alcatraz, a field of internment with cages in which to make migrants surrounded by caimanes and pythons. It is the sample of who can normalize the pain of the other, to banalize the idea that a person can be devoured by an animal. And that's why Trump enlightens his eyes imagining a migrant escaping from the internment field, but fails to save himself from the jaws of a caiman. And that is when everyone can see on television how the migrant zigzagging reproduces fleeing, but to which it only grants “1% more likely to escape.” That is, that is when Trump describes the death of a human being from which he is mocking. And that is when Trump shows that he has in his hand the life or death of another person.
Trump's “effects of domination” do not remain in the US executive or the legislative, through which he has just spent sweeping this week. If not also in the judicial one.
The supermayoria that the president of the United States has in the Supreme Court –6 to 3– is giving him wings that has never had another tenant of the White House before: the court have granted Trump one of his most desired wishes – at the margin of the BBB -, and that the federal judges stop blocking their decrees. Until now a federal Massachussets judge could stop the entry into force of an order of the president throughout the country.
From a failure of the Supreme Court last week, federal judges can only block the entry of federal norms in the state in which they are. The decision of the Supreme Court, on the one hand, the ability of the courts to work on the Trump agenda – at the time that it paves the way to the president's political project. And, at the same time, it is a focus of chaos, while there will be the case that a federal disposition of Trump is annulled in some states while in force in others, as will happen with nationality by birth – constitutionality review but blocked by some federal judges.
Trump's exercise is so overwhelming, that he gets Paramount, as a matrix of CBS News, folds before a complaint that had no basis to prosper because he questioned the edition of an interview with Kamala Harris. That is, Trump took the courts how he edited the 60 minutes program an interview, and the owners of the chain, Paramount, have preferred to pay than to go to a trial in which they had many options to win: they have preferred to agree with Trump to keep the pulse.
“We have reached an agreement for about 16 million dollars plus 16 million, or perhaps more, in advertising,” Trump explained this Thursday night: “So there are about 32, perhaps 35 million dollars.”
Along the way, Trump leaves a trail of threats: Elon Musk with losing his public contracts – Moaleja: to have public contracts you have to get along with the president -; to the congressmen and senators who challenge him – rivals plans to unseat them of their seats -; Already other leaders who contradict – from Volodimir Zelenski to Pedro Sánchez, passing through Gustavo Petro or Canadian Mark Carney.
Donald Trump is increasingly conquering power in the US. And demonstrates it, he exercises it without rest.
