Maya Kandel, historian: "I think Trump is really concerned about the mark he will leave on history..."

Published on June 15, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. , updated on June 15, 2025 at 6:02 p.m.

Donald Trump, then a business magnate, with supporters outside the Plaza Hotel in New York City on December 21, 1994. DON EMMERT/AFP

Subscribing allows you to gift articles to your loved ones. And that's not all: you can view and comment on them.

Reading time: 7 min.

Subscriber

Interview In her essay "A First History of Trumpism," the researcher traces the genealogy of the champion of spectacle politics and his movement, from his first obsessions with customs duties to the advent of a reactionary counter-elite in power in the United States.

To go further

Why do Americans continue to vote for Donald Trump despite the excesses, scandals, and open amateurism? Faced with the incomprehension of those around her, historian Maya Kandel, a specialist in US foreign policy and associate researcher at the University of Paris-3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle, decided to write "A First History of Trumpism" published by Gallimard. In it, she provides keys to understanding what constitutes, in her eyes, the " major political phenomenon of the first quarter of the 21st ^century ."

Why did you choose to work on Trumpism rather than on the figure of Trump?

Maya Kandel When Eric Rochant [ creator of the series "Le Bureau des Légendes" , Editor's note] contacted me for this new collection at Gallimard, the idea from the start was to write about Trumpism, even if Trump had not yet won the [November] 2024 elections . The idea was that there was a major political phenomenon there, which went beyond Dona...

Article reserved for subscribers.

Want to read more?

All our articles in full from €1