site.btaHow Bulgarians in Chicago Feel about Trump's Election Victory

Republican Donald Trump won the US presidential election on Tuesday and will be at the helm of his country for the next four years. This is an important development for Bulgaria as a member of NATO and an economic partner of the US. But it is even more important for the tens of thousands of Bulgarians living in Chicago - the largest "Bulgarian" city outside Bulgaria. BTA spoke to two Bulgarian women from Chicago about what they think of the new old president and what they expect from him.

"Much chaos and unpredictability" in the next four years is what Angelina Ilieva, a professor in the Slavic Department at the University of Chicago, expects. She hopes that President-elect Donald Trump does not get a majority in both houses of Congress, which would greatly facilitate his legislative agenda.

For Annamaria Buneva, a longtime Illinois social services worker who worked at a Chicago polling station on Election Day, Trump's return to the White House is a positive thing. "I expect things to get better right away, America will be respected again by the rest of the world, because the last few years under Biden's administration we just became a joke," Buneva said.

Buneva, who is a descendant of Macedonian Bulgarian revolutionary Mara Buneva, believes that Trump will bring an end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, will immediately close the border with Mexico, "which has seen a big mess with illegal immigrants in the last few years," to use her words.

The Bulgarian expects Trump to improve the economy and "impose order and discipline, which is an important basis for dealing with the rising crime."

"Much chaos and unpredictability" is what Angelina Ilieva, a professor in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Chicago, expects to see in the next four years. She hopes President-elect Donald Trump doesn't get a majority in both houses of Congress, which would greatly benefit his legislative agenda.

When asked what his biggest mistakes were during his previous term in office (2016-2021), she said they weren't just mistakes, they were crimes, along with a "willingness to undermine the political system and to disregard the laws." As an example, she mentioned "attempts to influence those who certify election results and not accepting the results" of the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Ilieva does not believe that Trump's tenure had any impact on the Bulgarian community in the US in the period 2016-2021, because Bulgarians "were not targeted" by him. She was answering a question about whether Trump's anti-immigration policies had in any way negatively affected Bulgarians in the US.

Trump has regularly used offensive language against illegal immigrants of certain nationalities, such as Mexicans.

"It's not just about stopping migrants and fencing off one country, because the world is already a whole, and what happens in one country affects others," Ilieva said. If we want to stop migrants, we must somehow help make conditions in the countries where migrants come from, so that they don't want to leave," Ilieva said.

"If I were to try to briefly express the difference in the two value systems offered by the candidates, I would define Kamala Harris' vision for the country as empathy and a desire to allow even the most vulnerable to live with dignity," Ilieva said in a written response to a question after the interview. 

"For me, Trump embodies a world in which money and power alone are the highest value, and in which the law of the jungle prevails. It's a world where rule is by force, and only the fittest are entitled to survive. It embodies an aggression, a desire to humiliate all those who are in any way weaker or different".

On Tuesday, Trump won five of the seven swing  states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia) to pass the threshold of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. He leads in the other two states, Arizona and Nevada, where votes are still being counted.

The Republicans retook control of the US Senate from the Democrats. The majority guarantees that Trump will control at least one chamber of Congress next year. It's unclear whether Republicans will retain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, with results from dozens of districts still unknown.