Trumpism’s most revealing and defining moments – not its most important, nor cruelest, nor most dangerous, nor stupidest, but perhaps its most illuminating – came earlier this autumn. In the course of a few weeks, the US president started showing everyone his plans for a gilded ballroom twice the size of the White House and then began unilaterally ripping down the East Wing to build it. Then, after nationwide protests against his rule, he posted on social media an AI video of himself wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet labeled “King Trump”, which proceeded to bomb American cities and Americans with a graphically vivid load of human poop.
He has done things 10,000 times as bad – the current estimate of deaths from his cuts to USAID is 600,000 and rising, and this week a study predicted his fossil fuel policies would kill another 1.3 million. But nothing as definitional. No other president would have dared – really, no other president would have imagined – unilaterally destroying large sections of the White House in order to erect a Versailles-style party room, with the active collaboration of some of the richest Americans, almost all of whom have business with the government. And no one – not Richard Nixon, not Andrew Jackson, not Warren Harding, not anyone – would have imagined boasting about defecating on the American citizenry. Even the worst American leaders were willing to maintain the notion that they represented all the people; Trump has managed to turn America’s idea of itself entirely upside down. And he has done it with the active consent of an entire political party. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, when asked about the poop video, for once did not bother lying that he had not seen it. Instead he said: “The president uses social media to make the point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media.”
