I suppose you could say that the Trump decade began on June 16, 2015, when Donald and Melania Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency and the birth of MAGA, the “Make America Great Again” movement.
There are, however, a few problems with that start date. For one thing, the Trump decade, which may have started then, did not stop when Trump took an extended vacation from the White House beginning on January 20, 2021. It continued running, like a television set blaring in another room, all through the Biden presidency. And now, in October 2026, the Trump decade has lasted more than a decade. Really, we are talking about the Trump era.
A complicit media assured us that Trump was the reincarnation of Hitler
For another thing, the MAGA movement predates Trump. He took the phrase from Ronald Reagan, pumped it full of rhetorical steroids and married it to the circulating but unorganized passions that animated the Tea Party movement. It was an act of political genius. It was part of what enabled Trump, as Shakespeare said of Julius Caesar, to bestride the world “like a Colossus.”
The real question is whether the Trump phenomenon is an anomaly. Forget about the epiphenomena. The mean tweets. The disobliging nicknames. The open disdain for partisan clowns pretending to be journalists. All that is mere decoration and stage setting. When, during President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to the White House, Trump took him on a tour of presidential portraits, they paused and had a laugh over the picture of an autopen used as a stand-in for a picture of Joe Biden.
That put National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke’s knickers in a little twist. “This is grotesque behavior,” he posted on X. “Joe Biden was an American president. Xi is a communist dictator and the head of a foreign state. Our internal divisions are not fair game in this context.” I think the political commentator Don Surber had the perfect rejoinder on his Substack. “Well, we didn’t used to raid our political opponent’s home and authorize the FBI to use lethal force if necessary, but here we are.”
My take is that Trump charmed Xi into submission, or at least acquiescence. “The supreme art of war,” said Sun Tzu, “is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” On one hand we have Trump making fun of the risible Biden. On the other, we have Biden, or the masters of his autopen, weaponizing state power to harass, indict, fine and possibly imprison Trump. Which of these is more “grotesque”?
A complicit media assured us that Trump was the reincarnation of Hitler. The talking heads of CNN, MSNBC and the rest of what some clever chap called the “Enemedia” kept screaming that in his second term, Trump would “terminate the Constitution,” set up concentration camps throughout the land and imprison or shoot opponents at will. Given the unremitting provocations, the strange thing about the attempted assassinations at Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 and elsewhere was that something of the sort did not happen earlier.
Aristotle tells us that the poet ought to prefer “probable impossibilities” over “improbable possibilities.” In 2016, virtucrats from Nancy Pelosi to George Clooney assured us that a Trump presidency was “impossible.” In November of that year, when the impossible suddenly became the actual, the supremely improbable presidency of Trump precipitated nervous breakdowns throughout the citadels of the Fourth Estate. How many times were we warned about “bombshells” whose detonation would cause the walls to come closing in on the Trump presidency?
And where are we now? As I write, the price of gas is slightly elevated but is still lower than it was in 2022. Ditto inflation. Gas prices will plummet in the coming weeks as Iran’s defeat is processed and makes its way through the emunctory system of the press. According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate just fell to 10.2 percent, the lowest in history. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Fed predicts real growth in the third quarter will wheel in at a blistering 5 to 5.1 percent. The Democrats learned how to pronounce the word “affordability” just when household income reached its highest-ever level. Since January last year, when Trump’s second term began, blue-collar wages are up by between 4 and 5 percent. It’s called “winning.” Trump has always taken seriously the injunction not to hide his light under a bushel. He will not be shy about broadcasting all this good news.
Donald Trump has always taken seriously the injunction not to hide his light under a bushel
After a recent meeting of tech titans at the White House, Elon Musk predicted that SI – the “Super Intelligence” we used to call “AI” – was most likely to produce not just a universal basic income, but universal high income. Almost everywhere one looks, America is pulsing with energy, innovation, prosperity and burgeoning economic growth. Suddenly the $40 trillion federal debt seems challenging, but not insuperable.
What else? The distraction of the war with Iran is now resolving itself in the rearview mirror. America has won, though that news, like light from a distant star, will take a while to penetrate the tenebrous caverns of established opinion. In other good news for the perpetuation of the MAGA movement, the Democrats have apparently decided to double down and embrace their wing of insanity. Down those fetid avenues all one sees are paeans to the transgender apocalypse, unending apotheosis of febrile racial conflagration and sad “queers-for-Palestine” mummery.
At the moment, the polls tell us the midterms will likely bring victory to the Democrats in the House and maybe even the Senate. I think the polls, those camouflaged portals of propaganda, are wrong, but we’ll see. I am confident, in any event, that the Trump decade, far from winding down, is on the brink of its greatest fulfillments.
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