While President-elect Donald Trump won a second term on Tuesday, he actually won the race years ago. In retrospect, Trump’s victory makes sense given what a different place the country now is. He has thoroughly transformed America into a nation in which half the population who casts a ballot will vote for a man who has been convicted of multiple felony counts, who is an inveterate liar and who is a political ignoramus.
Sure, many of those on the left would cast aspersions — often warranted — against Republican political figures of the past. But merely a decade ago, it seemed unthinkable that George W. Bush, Paul Ryan, Dick Cheney and others would be cast aside by Republican voters in favor of whatever this (gestures wildly) is.
We are now a country that no longer has any party representing conservatives who favor freedom, lower taxes and less regulation.
America is now a nation in which a man facing multiple felony counts for allegedly trying to help overturn a fairly decided presidential election has made it to the White House again. We are a nation in which tens of millions of voters seem to be perfectly comfortable with a man being the judge in his own trials when he’s returned to the presidency.
We are now a country that no longer has any party representing conservatives who favor freedom, lower taxes and less regulation. The Republican Party simply gobbles up whatever Trump feeds it, and if it includes massive tariffs that would be disproportionately passed down to America’s middle- and lower-income residents, then so be it. The choice is no longer whether the government should step in and regulate speech (see Trump’s attacks on “Big Tech”); the only open question is who should be in charge of the legal system to oversee this government takeover of free expression.
Because of Trump, we are now a far coarser, unkind country in which politicians can call their opponents “low-IQ” and “retarded” as their supporters cheer such behavior. We are a nation in which a vice presidential candidate can accuse single, childless women of ruining America or be caught in a racist lie about legal Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets and simply wave it away without consequence. Even Democrats have begun to adopt Trump’s brusque language — one television ad run by progressive Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., ended with a farmer asking of Baldwin’s opponent, “What the hell’s wrong with this guy?”
One of the consequences of Trump’s tenure on the national stage is that the “political scandal” has effectively ceased to exist. In the not-too-distant past, humiliated politicians caught in compromising positions would slide quietly away, hoping to retain a shred of their dignity.
Not anymore, not where any politician caught in a scandal is obligated to push forward and lie about their involvement in untoward activity. On Tuesday night, around 40% percent of North Carolina residents cast a gubernatorial ballot for Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a man who allegedly used to visit pornographic websites and brag about his status as a “black Nazi.” (Robinson denies the reporting.)
Trump’s “lie and forge ahead” strategy is the blueprint for other Republicans. Georgia 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker once allegedly held a loaded gun up to his ex-wife’s head and threatened to shoot her, allegedly paid for abortions for multiple girlfriends and had secret children whom he had never publicly acknowledged. Yet 49% of voting-eligible Georgians voted for him.
For further examples of Trump’s toxic influence, feel free to Google “Matt Gaetz,” “Lauren Boebert,” “Marjorie Taylor Greene” and “Laura Loomer.”
In the not-too-distant past, humiliated politicians caught in compromising positions would slide quietly away, hoping to retain a shred of their dignity.
Granted, the public has had a low opinion of politicians since the nation’s founding, but Trump has destroyed the idea that elected officials actually believed in anything. As she ran against him for the Republican nomination over the past year, Trump accused former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley of being ineligible to be president because of her parents’ Indian upbringing, frequently referred to her as “birdbrain” and mocked her husband’s military service. Haley volleyed back, calling Trump too old, too chaotic and too “unhinged” to be president.
Naturally, Haley eventually endorsed Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to support his campaign.
The parade of Republicans willing to humiliate themselves by reversing their prior criticisms to curry favor Trump is long — see Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah and Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, who once referred to the former president as “America’s Hitler.” Now, the game is up. The public is well aware that nobody actually has any core principles — like houseplants, elected officials will simply grow toward wherever the light shines. And Trump provides the darkest light in American politics. Things will never be the same. Trump has ushered in a new, grotesque version of American politics that may still be in its infancy. He has demonstrated that attention — not the actual betterment of citizens’ lives — is the new coin of the realm, and all of his acolytes are going to continue his legacy. Take Vice President-elect Vance, who is set to take over the GOP mantle when Trump’s time is done. He has already proven himself to be just as loathsome and meretricious as Trump is, but he has decades left in his public career to push his brand of faux populism on impressionable MAGA minds. It also bears mentioning that many of the events that led to Trump’s re-election were brought by Democrats on themselves. Whether it was an unpopular elderly president deciding to run again and having to pull out in favor of an unpopular, younger vice president, or the Democrats failing to secure the border, embracing undeserved student loan relief and and overstating their case on abortion, Americans weren’t swayed by the performative optimism pitched by the left. There are presidents who serve out two full terms who have less of an effect on American public life than Trump has had during one. (Honestly, how different was the country after two Barack Obama terms?) That makes him already been one of the most successful presidents of the past century. And the country may never recover.
Christian Schneider
Christian Schneider writes the Anti-Knowledge newsletter. He is a co-host of the podcast "Wasn't That Special: 50 Years of SNL." 
