In one sense at least, Donald Trump has proved his detractors wrong. Through his humiliation in the American midterm elections, he has shown that he was right the first time. Staying out of foreign wars is an extremely popular policy among Americans. So, too, was an unashamed policy of keeping fossil fuel prices low, however much greens may squeal. Take those away, though, and Trump becomes an extremely hard sell.
Trump’s only suit then is his success in closing the US’s southern border to illegal migrants. But even then, the President blew his advantage through overreach by ICE officers, which has seen even legal migrants harassed. As one Latino voter in Florida put it the other day, he was solidly behind Trump until his girlfriend, a legal migrant of many years’ standing, was deported to Mexico, in spite of being Cuban and never having lived in Mexico.
Trump has been treated by his own natural supporters with the contempt he deserves
Had Trump left office gracefully in 2021 and retired to the golf course, he would be remembered now as the rudest president of modern times and an isolationist, but one who nevertheless had the balls to address matters which other presidents had failed to do. He would be praised for jolting European countries into putting up more money towards their own defence, for boosting US energy security and for reminding America’s competitors that free trade is a two-way deal: they couldn’t expect low tariffs on exports to the US if they maintained high tariffs themselves.
The President would also be remembered as someone who knew instinctively how to deal with dictators: threaten them, and then flatter them. That was how he calmed down Kim Jong-un: first by telling him that he had a rather bigger nuclear button than he did, then becoming the first US president to pay him a visit. It was all shock therapy, but it worked. In his first term, Trump actually deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which, these days, he seems so aggrieved to have missed out on.
Now, however, all that is gone. Trump is doomed to be remembered as the president who came to power promising to end inflation from day one, but who then drove it upwards through punitive import tariffs and by attacking Iran without, it seems, the slightest consideration of the likely consequences of doing that. Inflation, he rightly seemed to understand, is beloved by debtors but is the enemy of honest, working-class households who are just trying to live and save. When the latter is your political heartland, it is not a good look suddenly to put all that to one side and go around saying ‘I love inflation’.
Trump has been treated by his own natural supporters with the contempt he deserves. It takes a lot for a Republican to lose Kansas, last a Democrat state in the early 1930s. Trump has achieved that.
All this said, it is extremely likely that the Democrats will take the wrong lessons from their victories in the mid-terms. They won’t want to admit that Trump 1.0 got it right. Too many of them will take the message that America wants to take a sharp leftwards turn. They will conclude that voters want more wealth taxes, like the one California wants to impose on its billionaires, that it wants more climate policies, more open migration, a return to DEI policies.
Trump is a gonner. His reputation will never recover. But don’t be surprised if Democrats flunk it in 2028. They are being enticed down a path which will lead them to eternal disappointment.
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