President-elect Donald Trump has yet another feather he can put in his cap as he’s been named Financial Times’ Person of the Year. This goes along with his recently being named TIME Person of the Year just a week ago. If you cup a hand to your ear, you will likely be able to hear liberals all over the country screaming in agony as the winning for Trump and his supporters keeps on coming. My, my, it’s a wonderful life.
The report notes that when Trump got aboard Air Force One on January 20, 2021, everyone believed it would be the last time he would do so. He was headed for Palm Beach. Not many Republicans showed up at Andrews Air Force Base to see him off. In fact, not long before this, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell referred to him as a “despicable human being.” The owner of Fox News, which had been one of Trump’s biggest supporters, Rupert Murdoch, sent out an email to his employees saying they were to make him a “non-person.”
And then, despite all things being against him, the now president-elect mounted one of the most significant and stunning political comebacks of all-time to win the 2024 presidential election, taking all seven swing states, winning the popular vote, and clearly taking the Electoral College. Amazing.
Trump’s rebound since then is the most dramatic comeback in modern US history — and arguably since the republic’s founding. Only once before, with Grover Cleveland in 1892, has a US president been returned to office for non-consecutive terms. The Financial Times made Trump its “Person of the Year” in 2016. This year Trump is again the FT’s pick because of the remarkable nature of his return to power. It is no longer possible to dismiss Trump as a blip.
At home, Trump 2.0 promises a new era of sweeping deregulation and tax cuts. The president’s vow to personify the Maga base’s appetite for retribution against the liberal elites — universities, the mainstream media and “woke” America in general — heralds a profound shift to the cultural right. Abroad, Trump also vows a new iconoclasm. For the so-called “axis of upheaval” of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Trump’s return could be the opportunity of a generation, although he remains unpredictable. Trump sees the world as a jungle in which the US has been taken for a ride by freeloading allies. The future of Nato is hanging by a thread.
Roger Stone, a longtime supporter of the president-elect and collaborator, said, “We are living in the age of Trump. Historians will look back on 2024 as a change of era like they have for [the election of] 1932, when Roosevelt’s New Deal came in, or for 1968 when Richard Nixon gave birth to the new right.”
The comeback comes as a result of two major factors. One, President Joe Biden revealed the mess that is progressive thought and policy, which hurt Americans deeply. Two, Trump demonstrated that he would be the vaccine for the virus of leftism. He is a man who means what he says and says what he means. Unlike liberals, Trump champions principles that we know for sure work. He upholds values that preserve our liberty and our sanity.
Seems like a pretty easy choice given the alternative.
What will Trump 2.0 mean for the world? At his first inauguration in 2017, Trump spoke of the “American carnage” caused by globalisation and China. During his first term, he also threatened to abandon Nato over “unpaid dues” by some of its European members. This time he brings similar threats but with more teeth. He has also promised to solve the Russian war on Ukraine “within 24 hours”. Though he has appropriated Ronald Reagan’s slogan of “peace through strength”, that gives little guidance to what he will do in practice. His parallel pledge of “America First” covers the opposite end of the geopolitical spectrum.
Love him or hate him, Trump is the most important political figure of our time and as such deserves the accolades he’s received. All of the fear mongering about his incoming administration is going to be proven to be a big nothing burger and I have no doubt people will secretly enjoy every minute he’s in the White House.
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