Opinion: America’s moral decline gave us Trump 2.0. Brace for impact (2025)

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In just over a week, Donald Trump will place his hand on a bible and be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.

This will take place in the same spot where protesters, incited by Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, staged a rebellion in an attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power inside the Capitol that day. It all seems unimaginable.

The riot left Americans, and much of the world, shaken. It also led most to believe it was the end of any ambitions Mr. Trump might entertain to run for the presidency again. He was finished as a political force.

How could he not be?

When Mr. Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, it will be the culmination of one of the most audacious political resurrections in American history. Likely, in the history of the world. And much of his comeback strategy centred around getting Americans to question (or forget) what happened on the steps of the Capitol four years ago.

With the help of right-wing mouthpieces, Mr. Trump constructed a much different narrative of what actually took place. The protesters were not vandals and thugs, but patriots and martyrs, and they were provoked by police, not the other way around. Subsequent investigations into the role Mr. Trump played in the attack were led by “a sick group of people” motivated by nothing more than political vengeance. So encouraged was Mr. Trump by the seemingly positive reception his laundered version of events was getting, he began referring to Jan. 6 as a “day of love.” He vowed to pardon those in prison for their role in the riot – “hostages,” in his words – whether they pleaded guilty to their crimes or not.

Mr. Trump built his new version of events not so much on a foundation of “alternative facts” but on a complete bed of lies. Now it’s like none of it happened. He’s erased history. Or maybe the horror of that day has simply faded far enough into the recesses of people’s minds that a future with Mr. Trump as president again didn’t seem as outlandish as it once did – even with all the lawsuits and the 34 felony convictions piled on top. Those were only a problem if you believed the prosecutors and not Mr. Trump, who maintained every legal action taken against him was politically motivated and not based on documented evidence.

It’s been one of the greatest gaslighting campaigns ever undertaken.

Mr. Trump has emerged from the ashes of his previous presidency, and all the setbacks that befell him since, stronger and more emboldened than ever. He continues to lie with impunity because he now knows there are no consequences. The Democrats, meanwhile, appear to still be in a state of shock over what happened in the recent election, too numb to mount even the slightest campaign against the president-elect’s recent lunacies.

He says he’s going to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, by force if necessary. He wants to annex Canada as the 51st state. Once upon a time, a president or president-to-be who said such things would have caused a crisis in the United States. Now these bizarre and scary proclamations produce little more than shrugs. At the moment, America seems prepared to go along with just about anything Mr. Trump says.

It appears a campaign pledge to bring down the price of groceries goes a long way with people.

Mr. Trump felt like he compromised too much in his first term as president, that he was the victim of bad advice from disloyal lieutenants. He’s vowed to listen to his gut more this time around, which apparently includes putting forward nominees for his cabinet that include people who are so deeply flawed they would never be considered for such positions in normal times – but, of course, these aren’t. Fealty to his majesty is now the prime consideration for those hoping to toil in the court of Trump.

America seems ripe for Mr. Trump to wreak absolute havoc. The country is enveloped by an apathy, an ennui, that is unnerving. The fight seems to be gone from people, replaced by an exhausted resignation. The forces of MAGA reign supreme, energized by the sense that this is their time to implement an agenda for a new America, one that is more brutal, nativist and far less tolerant.

The fact that Mr. Trump now has the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, as his No. 1 attack dog is just another example of the extraordinary times in which we live. It all has the feeling of a bus hurtling out of control toward a cliff.

And yet this ride has only just begun.

Opinion: America’s moral decline gave us Trump 2.0. Brace for impact (2025)
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