Trump has already remade America in his own image

While Newly elected President Donald Trump won a second term on Tuesdayhe actually won the race years ago. In retrospect, Trump’s victory makes sense, given the different place the country is now. He has profoundly transformed America into a nation in which half the population who cast a vote will vote for a vote man convicted of multiple crimes, who is a inveterate liar and who is one political ignorance.

Certainly, many people on the left would criticize, often justifiably, Republican political figures of the past. But just a decade ago, it seemed unthinkable that George W. Bush, Paul Ryan, Dick Cheney and others would be cast aside by Republican voters in favor of whatever this is (wild gestures).

America is now a nation in which a man facing multiple felony charges for allegedly trying to overturn a fairly decided presidential election has reached the White House again. We are a nation in which tens of millions of voters seem perfectly comfortable with a man being the judge in his own trials if he returns to the presidency.

We are now a country that no longer has a single party that represents conservatives who favor freedom, lower taxes and less regulation. The Republican Party is simply gobbling up whatever Trump feeds it, if anything includes huge rates that would be passed on disproportionately to America’s middle- and lower-income residents, then so be it. The choice is no longer whether the government should intervene and regulate speech (to see Trump’s attacks on “Big Tech”); the only open question is who should be in charge of the legal system to oversee this government takeover of free speech.

Thanks to Trump, we are now a much cruder, unfriendly country where politicians can call their opponents ‘low IQ’ and ‘retarded‘while their supporters applaud such behavior. We are a nation where a vice presidential candidate can accuse single, childless women ruining America or be caught in one racist lie about legal Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets and simply wave it away without consequence. Even Democrats have begun to adopt Trump’s brusque language — a television ad from progressive Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. ended with a question from a farmer from Baldwin’s opponent: “What the hell is wrong with this guy?”

One of the consequences of Trump’s tenure on the national stage is that the “political scandal” has effectively ceased to exist. In the not-too-distant past, humiliated politicians who found themselves in compromising positions quietly slipped away, hoping to retain some of their dignity.

Not anymore, not where politicians embroiled in scandal are obliged to go ahead and lie about their involvement in unwanted activities. On Tuesday evening, about 40% percent of North Carolina residents cast a gubernatorial vote Lt. Governor Mark Robinsona man who allegedly visited pornographic websites and bragged about his status as a “black Nazi.” (Robinson denies the reports.)

Trump’s “lie and move forward” strategy is the blueprint for other Republicans. Georgia 2022 U.S. Senate Candidate Herschel Walker he once held a loaded gun to his ex-wife’s head and threatened to shoot herallegedly paid for abortions for several girlfriends and had secret children that he had never publicly acknowledged. Yet 49% of voting Georgians voted for him.

For more examples of Trump’s toxic influence, Google “Matt Gaetz,” “Lauren Boebert,” “Marjorie Taylor Greene” and “Laura Loomer.”

Granted, the public has had a low opinion of politicians since the country’s founding, but Trump has destroyed the idea that elected officials actually believed in anything. As she ran against him for the Republican nomination this past year, Trump accused former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley of being ineligible to run for president because of her parents’ Indian upbringing. She often referred to her as “birdbrain” and mocked her husband’s military. employ. Haley hit back, calling Trump too old, too chaotic and too “unhinged” to be president.

Naturally, Haley ultimately supported Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to support his campaign.

The parade of Republicans willing to humiliate themselves by walking back their past criticisms to win Trump’s favor is a long one — see Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and the vice presidential pick of Trump, Sen. JD Vance, R -Ohio, who referred once to the former president as “America’s Hitler.”

Now the game is over. The public is well aware that no one actually has core principles – like houseplants, elected officials simply grow where the light shines. And Trump offers the darkest light in American politics. Things will never be the same again.

Trump has ushered in a new, grotesque version of American politics that may still be in its infancy. He has shown that attention – not the actual improvement of citizens’ lives – is the new currency of the realm, and all his followers will carry on his legacy.

Take newly elected Vice President Vance, who is poised to take over the GOP mantle when Trump’s time is up. He’s already proven himself to be just as disgusting and depraved as Trump, but he still has decades in his public career to push his brand of faux populism onto impressionable MAGA minds.

It’s also worth noting that many of the events led to Trump’s re-election were brought upon themselves by the Democrats. Whether it was an unpopular older president who decided to run for re-election and had to withdraw in favor of an unpopular, younger vice president, or the Democrats’ failure to secure the border, undeserved student loan relief embrace and exaggerate their position on abortion, Americans were ‘unaffected by the performative optimism of the left.

There are presidents who serve two full terms and who have less influence on American public life than Trump had during one term. (Honestly, how different was the country after two terms of Barack Obama?) That already makes him one of the most successful presidents of the past century. And the country may never recover.