With a three-way gambit, Trump is currently winning his second term

Martin Nikolaev

While you read in the media how the US is preparing for a recount of ballots and the stars are magically aligning for Hillary Clinton to become president, Donald Trump, as usual, is doing what his critics least expect - winning his second term before the first has even begun.

Trump knows that first impressions matter, and his actions over the next two months will set the framework through which voters will perceive the next four years. If he can create a positive framework, his term will be (electorally) successful – and vice versa. And a successful term also leads to re-election.

First move

That is why, even before he officially took office, Trump rushed to resolve the situation with the American air conditioning company Carrier, which exports its production to Mexico – a big, visible, significant problem that will provide him with publicity, ratings, trust and image enhancement. After quick negotiations, the company itself announced that it had reached a deal with the newly elected president and will keep about 1,100 jobs in the US – and plans to open several thousand more. Two weeks earlier, Bill Ford, the head of the Ford board, assured Trump that their plant in Kentucky would not move to Mexico. Yesterday, Mondelez, the makers of Oreos, told Fox Business that they are seeking dialogue with the new administration, and Trump transition team spokesman Jason Miller announced on Fox & Friends that more successful agreements with other companies are yet to be announced.

All this is aerobatics in politics – instead of talking with numbers and percentages, Trump talks with names of people and companies that every voter has seen and knows well. This is how he frames all the events of the next 4 years right now – Trump is the president who personally negotiates the revival of industry in the US and every new job is thanks to his leadership. Every next number and percentage during the term will be visualized by people through his deals with Carrier, Ford and probably other companies. In addition, Trump is giving a clear signal to American businessmen that they have a lot to gain if they are with him and a lot to lose if they are not. This huge scissors between the two positions was the billionaire’s trademark during the campaign, when he showered praise on his supporters and devastating criticism on his opponents. Just think about what praise and criticism evolve into when the candidate becomes President.

These actions also hit the progressive base of the Democrats directly – Bernie Sanders’s electorate and some of the minority electorate. Bernie voters have been waiting for years to see a president who will pound the table in front of the directors of international corporations and force them not to export their production abroad. On the other hand, many of the low-skilled workers in American factories are African-Americans and Latinos – traditional Democratic voters. They are groups of people who are of enormous political importance in North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania – the critical states on whose votes his victory this year depended and his re-election to a second term will depend.

Second move

Once in the White House, Trump will make his second move and throw himself onto the foreign policy scene with the ambition to solve some gigantic problem as quickly as possible – whether it will be the war in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the disputes between Pakistan and India, the squabbles between Japan and China, the frozen conflict in Ukraine or all of them together, remains to be seen. In this way, he will once again try to create the framework through which his voters will perceive the coming 4 years – Trump the strong leader and the skilled diplomat, who defends the American interest and restores the US as the world leader from whom everyone takes an example. Being relatively independent of the interests and lobbies of arms manufacturers, Trump has the freedom to achieve such a quick foreign policy victory, trading things that previous presidents could not even hint were on the negotiating table.

Thread move

Trump's third move is to blast his opponents' accusations that he is racist and sexist - and it's also the easiest. The New York tycoon is already filling his cabinet with Americans of color and women, and will likely have more of them than Obama had in his first term.

Trump's three moves will create two things. First, a psychological framework through which any subsequent success in the US will be associated with his personality, and he himself will have a way to marginalize negative events and data, justifying himself with the successes already achieved. Second, voters, commentators and media who do not like him will enter into severe cognitive dissonance. They will either have to admit that they were wrong and that Trump is not a clown who spouts sexism and racism and understands nothing about foreign policy and economics, or they will have to enter into absurd conspiracy theories to reassure themselves that he is. The latter, of course, will marginalize them in society.

If in the next few months Trump manages to brand himself as the man who is visibly saving American industry, resolving impossible foreign policy conflicts, and working in harmony with ministers of all races and genders, then his second term will be won even before Barack Obama has hung the traditional oil portrait for every president in the White House.

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