On July 14th, 1789, the first day of the French Revolution, Louis XVI’s diary entry was the single word: “rien” because he had shot nothing in his daily hunt. Many comparable tipping points have passed almost unnoticed, even by those at the centre of the action. When, for instance, future historians study the Trump era they may well decide that July 19, 2015 was a moment of transition. On that day, speaking about Senator John McCain, Trump said: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” A few days earlier Trump had launched his campaign with racist slurs on Mexicans but somehow his candidacy had survived. Now, surely, he had gone too far. Nobody could mock a war hero and get away with it.
The Republican establishment harrumphed disapproval. Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke of a “lack of respect for those who have served—a disqualifying characteristic to be president.” Governor Chris Christie retorted that: “Senator John McCain is an American hero. Period. Stop.” Sean Spicer, Republican National Committee spokesman tweeted: “There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably.” Delighted at the impending comeuppance, the mainstream news media waited for Trump’s death spiral. Instead, to their astonishment, he grew stronger.
In his account of the 2016 election Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi recalls: “We anticipated Trump assuming the position and commencing the Expected Rituals, beginning with the Abashed Public Apology.” Instead: “Trump not only didn’t apologize, he even denied that he ever said McCain wasn’t a war hero … Reporters freaked out. How could he deny he said it? It’s right there, on video! He said it! But it worked. Trump not only didn’t sink after the McCain incident, he rose in the polls.”
With hindsight this pattern – a transgression then dissembling or outright denial – would turn out to be Trump’s magic formula. It would get him through gaffes, lies, breaches of trust, and lapses of taste and judgement that would have sunk any other candidate, or president. Equally striking was the way his critics surrendered. Christie later managed Trump’s transition team, Spicer would soon lie about crowd size at the inauguration, and much else afterward; and in a strong field, Graham became the most ardent of the president’s sycophants.
Shortly after his acquittal in the Senate hearings on impeachment, President Clinton gave a public apology and spoke about healing a divided nation and getting back to work. Two days ago Trump’s press conference struck a different note. Gloating at the way compliant Republican Senators had defused the “Impeachment hoax” it was déjà vu all over again: a long rambling complaint that critics cleverly hashtagged as Trump’s #PettysburgAddress. “It was evil,” he intoned: “It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars, and this should never ever happen to another president, ever. I don’t know that other presidents would have been able to take it.” The self-pity segued effortlessly into the usual ad hominem insults and hyperbole, all of it cheered loudly by a claque of true believers.
As Trump’s social media campaign for the 2020 election revs into action, digital platforms will soon be awash with provocations like the gif which shows him remaining in office for hundreds of years. Sen. Elizabeth Warren will become “Pocahontas” (or “Pocohontas”) vying with “Crazy Bernie” and “Sleepy Joe” for control of the “radical Democrats.” The “liar and a fraud” otherwise known as Speaker Pelosi will conspire further with her consiglieri “Schifty-Schiff ” and other “Do-Nothing Democrat Savages” in an effort to defeat the will of the people. This is what three years of a Trump presidency have done to political discourse in America. More importantly, newly emboldened by his Republican enablers Trump stands poised to do much greater harms not only to the tone and style of American governance but to its basic functioning. Fittingly, the best epitaph for this shameful period may be a prescient tweet from May 2016: “If we nominate Trump,” wrote Senator Lindsey Graham, “we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”