On that fateful day in June 2015 that he rode down a gilded escalator into the world of electoral politics, Donald Trump’s critics saw a pastel-faced buffoon destined to melt away after an attention-seeking stint in the political sun.
How wrong they were.
Trump will never truly go away. A closer-than-expected election makes it only that much clearer that defeat is but a prelude to Trump’s next act as a permanent fixture on the American political scene.
It’s not just that his thirst for the stage has allies predicting that he’ll run again in 2024, and that in the meantime, he’ll keep doing rallies and act as the leader of the opposition.
It’s that Trump has already left an indelible mark on the nation he leads, revealing several truths about it in the process.
Voters gathered in cities across the United States to celebrate and decry the election of Joe Biden as president. 4:43
The elements of Trumpism
There have been countless newspaper columns, books and academic studies asking what drove Trumpism: Was it economics? Was it racism? A new nationalism? Nostalgia? The joy of an unpredictable carnival?
It was all of the above.
If several years of talking to his supporters has illustrated anything, it’s that human beings can hold multiple overlapping feelings at once.
Take Chip Paquette, for instance.
In the five years since he rolled down the escalator at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, to announce his presidential bid, Trump transformed U.S. politics. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
Early on in the Trump phenomenon, at a 2016 primary rally in New Hampshire, the retired police officer chuckled at the candidate’s antics, elbowing his seat neighbour as if at a comedy show. He howled with laughter when Trump referred to Sen. Ted Cruz as a “pussy.”
In a conversation with a reporter later, he said he missed the good old days — back when a cop could punch a suspect, without controversy.
He questioned the wisdom of free trade and expressed a desire for more tariffs on imports: “We’re losing jobs,” he said.
Then, finally, he casually brought up something else he liked about Trump: “I like the idea of him banning the Muslims.”
The Trump campaign’s proposed Muslim ban evolved after he took office, becoming a travel ban on mostly Muslim countries. It underwent other iterations, amid legal disputes, and triggered protests from people disgusted that this campaign promise ever saw the light of day in a country with religious freedom stamped into its founding DNA.
Trump smashed enough norms that he’ll be studied by future generations in political-science departments around the world.
Trump drew massive crowds to rallies. And he kept doing it during a pandemic, as here on Oct. 31 in Butler, Penn. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)
He also revealed things about the modern-day U.S. — and some of those lessons hold implications far beyond American territory, touching every nation.
The first is that the U.S. will be a less-predictable partner.
Trump’s policy legacy stretches far beyond U.S.
There’s no guarantee agreements with one U.S. administration will survive a change in government. That unpredictability stretches beyond Trump to past examples such as Bill Clinton’s signing of the Kyoto climate accord and George W. Bush shunning it.
“This egg can’t be unscrambled,” wrote Trump critic and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman last month in a New York Times column titled “Trump Killed the Pax Americana.”
“No matter how good a global citizen America becomes in the next few years, everyone will remember that we’re a country that elected someone like Donald Trump, and could do it again.”
Trump’s tougher attitude to international issues caused tensions with allies but also led to the renegotiation of NAFTA in 2018. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Trump turned the page on a chapter of American history written after the Second World War, in which a young superpower helped build new global institutions in the hope of creating a long-lasting peace.
It’s unclear what the postscript to the postwar era would look like.
Trump did shift attention to a new geopolitical challenge: China. His administration struck a more aggressive posture, and accused China of breaking its promises to the West.
There’s a huge audience for this message.
Passionate devotion equals continuing power
One Republican operative said whether or not he runs for president again, Trump’s policies on China, trade and immigration will have a lingering effect.
“We don’t know what Trump’s role in the party is going to be going forward, [and] is he going to be keeping open the option of perhaps running again in 2024,” said Matt Mackowiak, a party organizer and consultant.
“I do think he’s changed the party in significant ways.”
Trump’s message not only drew record turnout from working-class white Americans, but he also made inroads in his second race among groups that rarely vote Republican.
Trump performed better with Black men, Latino and Asian-American voters this year than he did four years ago.
To be clear, he still won only a small percentage of minority voters. But some were among his staunchest defenders.
Sylvia Menchaca, a Mexican restaurant owner near Phoenix, applauded Trump for putting his country first and wanting immigration limits.
Business owner Sylvia Menchaca, seen here working in her Arizona restaurant, is a huge Trump fan. And she thinks the polls will soon look foolish — again. (CBC News)
She told CBC News she felt sorry for migrant children separated from parents at the border, but, she said, the country needed to get immigration under control.
“I love him,” said Menchaca, who described herself as a religious woman. “Trump is similar to one of the kings in the Bible. Nobody in the Bible is perfect.… But some of them were blessed by God to run a country.”
Nothing would ever rattle her support for him, she said.
In spite of widespread projections for a Joe Biden win, Donald Trump supporters at a pre-planned gathering site in Phoenix, Ariz., Saturday insisted Biden is not the next president and repeated Trump’s unproven allegations of voter fraud. 2:12
Trump sounded real — even when he was lying
One reason Trump engendered uncommon devotion was he didn’t sound like a politician — he sounded real while other politicians relied on scripts and talking points.
Yet his telling-it-like-it-is effect was chronically undermined by one uncomfortable truth: He lied. He lied a lot.
This is different from most politicians who will often exaggerate, and frequently obfuscate, while generally avoiding flat-out lies.
Trump operated on another level.
When it came to spouting untruths, he pivoted from one to another with the same painless strokes reminiscent of his supporter, Bobby Orr, gliding across a hockey rink.
President Donald Trump walks away after speaking at the White House, Thursday, Nov. 5. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Half the country fumed; the other half brushed it off.
He left Americans split on an uncommon range of issues: COVID-19 mask-wearing; Black Lives Matter; voting by mail. They all became litmus tests of political loyalty.
You were with him or against him, right down to the end, when the polarizing question became whether or not you would support his attack on the accuracy of a U.S. election.
Pro-Trump and anti-Trump protesters are gathering and, at times, jeering each other on an Atlanta street in the open-carry state amid projections for a Joe Biden presidency from major networks. 5:41
The polarizer-in-chief
These constant battles divided families, and it’s no exaggeration to say he even had a polarizing effect on mating rituals. Trump fans, and people abhorred by Trump fans, split off into separate dating sites, with names such as Donald Daters and Trump Singles.
One Florida widow said people just simply want to know, before investing time in someone, whether their values are compatible, and she sees Trump support as a test of values.
She was no fan. She said Trump has stoked the country’s divisions and made people angrier, and she didn’t vote for him despite being a Republican.
“Politics used to be a part of your life, but it didn’t consume your life,” said Arlene Macellaro. “But now it seems like the thing to do in my Republican Party is to be angry.”
People in her Florida retirement community tell stories you often hear in the U.S. these days — of old friendships suspended over differences on Trump.
Arlene Macellaro lives in a staunchly Republican retirement city in Florida called The Villages, but says she won’t be voting for Donald Trump this election. 0:31
One final and perhaps most fundamental truth the Trump era exposed is that democracy may be more fragile than assumed — that the rules protecting it may exist primarily on paper but are, in the end, enforced by a civic spirit.
In a bitterly polarized era pitting the blue team versus the red team, old norms were occasionally discarded.
Trump called elections stolen, called for opponents’ arrest, pardoned friends, used federal regulators to punish unfriendly media and ignored the constitutional rules for how to appoint cabinet members.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Thursday that Democrats could ‘try to steal the election from us’ if ‘illegal votes’ cast after election day were counted. There is no evidence that ballots were cast after Nov. 3. 0:40
Ask a foreign government to investigate Joe Biden? It’s what got him impeached. And there were no real-time consequences.
He lost precisely one Republican in the impeachment vote: Mitt Romney, and for that act of alleged betrayal, the former Republican presidential nominee was quickly shunned by party grassroots members.
Trump became the first impeached president to lead his party into another election.
From boosting manufacturing in the United States to building a border wall, Donald Trump made a lot of promises during his first presidential campaign. CBC News’s Paul Hunter checks in on whether he delivered on them. 6:00
He talks, Republicans follow
And had a few votes broken the other way in a few swing states, had he gotten better control over the coronavirus pandemic, he might have won.
Instead, he’ll be gone from the White House in 11 weeks. It’s unclear he’ll ever concede he lost, or ever follow the tradition of extending grace to his successor.
His niece, a psychologist, author and now a critic of him, wrote a book suggesting he has a pathologically delicate ego and lives in terror of not being admired.
He enjoyed the granite-hard support of the conservative base.
It was illustrated by what happened last week when his son, Don Jr., issued a warning to Republicans: if they had any future aspirations to lead the party, they had better start fighting the election result.
The total lack of action from virtually all of the “2024 GOP hopefuls” is pretty amazing. <br><br>They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. <br><br>Don’t worry <a href=”https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@realDonaldTrump</a> will fight & they can watch as usual!
Sen. Lindsey Graham went on Fox News and promised to donate $500,000 US to the president’s legal fund for fighting the result.
No matter what the president does next, he’ll remain a kingmaker in the Republican Party, and those party members will keep courting his support.
If, however, he chooses to run again in a primary four years from now, he’d probably beat them — barring some unforeseen twist, such as legal troubles in New York, his former home state.
So there are no political obituaries this weekend, not even for an election loser. Because you can’t eulogize what’s not dead.
President-elect Joe Biden spoke directly to Americans who didn’t vote for him during his victory address in Wilmington, Del., saying it’s ‘time to listen to each other again’ and to stop treating opponents like enemies. 1:42
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will not be taking advice from Pierre Poilievre after the Conservative leader challenged him to bring down government.
“I say directly to Pierre Poilievre: I’m not going to listen to you,” said Singh on Wednesday, accusing Poilievre of wanting to take away dental-care coverage from Canadians, among other things.
“I’m not going to listen to your advice. You want to destroy people’s lives, I want to build up a brighter future.”
Earlier in the day, Poilievre challenged Singh to commit to voting non-confidence in the government, saying his party will force a vote in the House of Commons “at the earliest possibly opportunity.”
“I’m asking Jagmeet Singh and the NDP to commit unequivocally before Monday’s byelections: will they vote non-confidence to bring down the costly coalition and trigger a carbon tax election, or will Jagmeet Singh sell out Canadians again?” Poilievre said.
“It’s put up or shut up time for the NDP.”
While Singh rejected the idea he would ever listen to Poilievre, he did not say how the NDP would vote on a non-confidence motion.
“I’ve said on any vote, we’re going to look at the vote and we’ll make our decision. I’m not going to say our decision ahead of time,” he said.
Singh’s top adviser said on Tuesday the NDP leader is not particularly eager to trigger an election, even as the Conservatives challenge him to do just that.
Anne McGrath, Singh’s principal secretary, says there will be more volatility in Parliament and the odds of an early election have risen.
“I don’t think he is anxious to launch one, or chomping at the bit to have one, but it can happen,” she said in an interview.
New Democrat MPs are in a second day of meetings in Montreal as they nail down a plan for how to navigate the minority Parliament this fall.
The caucus retreat comes one week after Singh announced the party has left the supply-and-confidence agreement with the governing Liberals.
It’s also taking place in the very city where New Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat on Monday, when voters go to the polls in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun. A second byelection is being held that day in the Winnipeg riding of Elmwood—Transcona, where the NDP is hoping to hold onto a seat the Conservatives are also vying for.
While New Democrats are seeking to distance themselves from the Liberals, they don’t appear ready to trigger a general election.
Singh signalled on Tuesday that he will have more to say Wednesday about the party’s strategy for the upcoming sitting.
He is hoping to convince Canadians that his party can defeat the federal Conservatives, who have been riding high in the polls over the last year.
Singh has attacked Poilievre as someone who would bring back Harper-style cuts to programs that Canadians rely on, including the national dental-care program that was part of the supply-and-confidence agreement.
The Canadian Press has asked Poilievre’s office whether the Conservative leader intends to keep the program in place, if he forms government after the next election.
With the return of Parliament just days away, the NDP is also keeping in mind how other parties will look to capitalize on the new makeup of the House of Commons.
The Bloc Québécois has already indicated that it’s written up a list of demands for the Liberals in exchange for support on votes.
The next federal election must take place by October 2025 at the latest.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante is defending her decision to turn off comments on her social media accounts — with an announcement on social media.
She posted screenshots to X this morning of vulgar names she’s been called on the platform, and says comments on her posts for months have been dominated by insults, to the point that she decided to block them.
Montreal’s Opposition leader and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association have criticized Plante for limiting freedom of expression by restricting comments on her X and Instagram accounts.
They say elected officials who use social media should be willing to hear from constituents on those platforms.
However, Plante says some people may believe there is a fundamental right to call someone offensive names and to normalize violence online, but she disagrees.
Her statement on X is closed to comments.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
