How Trumpism defeated Trump

The Z Factor

It all ended the way it began. Early in his madcap experiment, Donald Trump said that he was so popular that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Manhattan and not lose voters. Five years later, Trump became the first US president to be impeached twice, after inciting an insurrection at the US Capitol. He is soon likely to be barred from holding public office.

The reversal in fortunes has been swift and sudden. This was supposed to be the age of firebrand populism and Trump had inaugurated it worldwide. Angry right-wingers everywhere cheered him on for deriding the ‘liberal elites’ and giving the ‘silent majority’ a voice. From one country to the next, would-be Trumps popped up, and people even built temples and shrines to honour and celebrate him. How did it all come crashing down so dramatically?

Trump’s undoing was ironically caused by the same thing that fuelled his rise: political incorrectness. Trump’s philosophy was that the populist strongman should do whatever he wants, violating established traditions and protocols and stretching the boundaries of the law. Across the world, the far-right saw this assault on social and political norms as part of the attack on ‘liberal elites.’ Being uncouth and uncivilised was deemed a virtue.

In the end, Trump’s assault on norms degraded quickly. At first, it was okay to be brazenly racist and mock minorities. Then, it became okay to hide tax returns and obstruct justice. And finally, it turned okay to “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell.”

Such political violence, communal rhetoric and unhinged abuse of power is not uncommon in other countries. Many other democracies suffer from it too. We in India know that well. But most presidents and prime ministers couch their rhetoric in conciliatory words after winning an election or ascending to power. When ‘divide and rule’ is deemed necessary, they deploy other people to go out and do the dirty work, such as asking for their political enemies to be shot on the street.

Trump’s mistake was that he acted on his worst instincts personally and implicated himself in the violence that he caused. He enjoyed and craved the spotlight too much. He couldn’t let other rabble-rousers – a Rudy Giuliani or a Lindsay Graham – take centre-stage as they went about setting the fire for him. He had to do it himself -- using his own twitter account to spread misinformation, calling up functionaries in Georgia and elsewhere to browbeat them, and arousing the restless crowd outside the Capitol.

America escaped from Trump’s populist rule more quickly than other democracies captured by populists, because Trump was being Trump. All through his tenure in office, he went from one indefensible blunder to the next, and made it easy for his political opponents to sway centrist swing voters by pinning the blame where it belonged: on him. He didn’t give himself plausible deniability, as other strongman populists tend to do.

American democracy also helped: Trump couldn’t hide himself from tough questions at press conferences, where he often came across as an unhinged megalomaniac. Judges – including even those whom he nominated – refused to kowtow to his commands and often struck down his most controversial orders. The corporate sector also frequently spoke out.

America’s harrowing experience has many lessons for the rest of us – on the need for norms to uphold basic civility, the importance of independent State institutions, and the crucial role played by free speech and a free press. Countries that don’t pay heed will likely be stuck in the quagmire of divisive populism for a lot longer than America did.