INTERVIEW
On the other side of the Atlantic, the tension keeps increasing. A week after the homicide in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man asphyxiated by a white police officer, hundreds of thousands of Americans protest against police brutality, racism and social inequality, exacerbated by the Covid crisis -19. Faced with the unrest, President Donald Trump promised on Monday to restore order, threatening to deploy the army to end the violence. Invited Tuesday of Europe 1, the former French ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud estimates that there is "even more troubles than there were in 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King".
"On Monday evening in Washington, combat helicopters flew at low altitude to discourage the demonstrators. The chief of the army staff was in combat uniform on the street, and the American president said he was ready to intervene the army, "he recalls, to illustrate the gravity of the situation.
"Trump is incapable of appeasement"
And according to Gérard Araud, given Donald Trump's handling of the crisis, tensions will persist. "Trump is incapable of appeasement and reconciliation," he assures, "we saw this during the management of the coronavirus crisis, when he was constantly creating controversy, attack the democratic governors. It continues, it splits, it polarizes. " "And the former ambassador to wonder:" Is this his real personality or is it a calculation in the run-up to the presidential election in November "? The billionaire" throws fuel on the fire in the hope to create around him a conservative bloc worried by the troubles, "he notes.
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"Since his election, Donald Trump has never shown any concern for racial issues," said Gérard Araud, who recalls the attitude of the president during the events in Charlottesville, in August 2017, when he "dismissed back to back racists and anti-racists ". After clashes between anti-racist protesters and neo-Nazis in this small town in Virginia, he said he saw good people "on both sides".
"The situation is really explosive"
But what political consequences will these unrest on an unprecedented scale have, in particular on the November elections, where Donald Trump will face Democrat Joe Biden? "It is impossible to guess what this election will be like with 10 or 15 million unemployed people and these events," says Gérard Araud. "If the unrest continues, it is obvious that Trump will be able to call a rally behind him to defend law and order," he said, however, while his Democratic opponent remained handicapped by confinement.
"Everything will depend on whether there are bloody incidents or not," concludes Gérard Araud, noting that there have been "relatively few" so far. But, he adds, "the situation is really explosive".