"The Trump presidency was not an aberration but the culmination of more than three decades in the GOP's evolution." So writes historian Julian Zelizer, seeking to answer the question of "how the 'Party of Lincoln' had become the 'Party of Trump." That also sums up the shared perspective of more than a dozen historians contributing chapters to "The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment."
Trump's presidency "was not some one-off that will automatically result in a course-correction," Zelizer writes, "but a period of deep-seated conflict that profoundly wounded our polity. When his term was done, the Trump presidency cemented some of the biggest fault lines in the nation."
