Iowa: US election year kicks off
Donald Trump has easily won the first Republican caucus in Iowa. Ron DeSantis came in second, lagging behind by around 30 percentage points, closely followed by Nikki Haley. What does this clear victory portend?
Easy wins for Trump
Delfi predicts that Trump will make a clean sweep:
“The ex-president’s victory in Iowa is no surprise. The polls have been predicting it for months. ... DeSantis invested a lot of resources in Iowa, so his second place is also no major surprise. But the large gap between him and Trump shows how much influence the ex-president still wields among Republicans. Trump received more votes in Iowa than DeSantis and Haley combined. ... The next stop in the Republican primaries is New Hampshire next week. Polls show that Trump is the favourite there, too. ... A Trump victory in that state would also be a big step on the road to the nomination.”
Europe must stand on its own two feet
The EU urgently needs to realign its defence policy, warns Club Z:
“According to EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, Donald Trump said in an informal conversation with Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 that ‘if Europe is attacked, we will never come to your aid’. Also that Nato ‘is dead and we will leave Nato’. He is also reported to have said: ‘You owe me 400 billion dollars because you Germans have not paid what you should have paid for defence’. ... If Trump returns to the White House, Europe will not only have to deal with his hatred of the old continent, but will also urgently have to shoulder the entire burden of its own defence.”
A strange symbiosis
For the Aargauer Zeitung, the relationship between Trump and the media is mutually beneficial:
“As in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, this strange symbiosis between the media and the anti-politician Trump is re-emerging. It’s like a mutual obsession. Journalists report on him extensively, often with a warning undertone, while Trump never forgets to unleash his hate tirades against the ‘enemies of the people’ at every appearance. In the end, both benefit, because attention is the most important currency in both the political and media business.”
