Trump: Was His Presidency Due to the Era or Error?
By: William Spivey
Tags: 2016 Election, 2020, Donald Trump, America, Politics

Trump: Was His Presidency Due to the Era or Error?

Library of Congress on Unsplash

Many Americans woke up on Wednesday, November 9, 2016, to find a reality show host and failed casino operator, bankrupt airline operator, the owner of a fraudulent charity, and a well-known deadbeat; had become President of the United States of America. The polls say America will not repeat this experiment, but that is what they indicated before. The question is, how many people that wouldn’t acknowledge in public they’re voting for Trump will do so behind closed doors?

The answer may lie in examining the past election and answering the question of whether he was a man whose time had come, or a unique set of circumstances propelled him to the Presidency. Was it the era or an error?

I won’t take a lot of time making you guess which side I’ll come down on. While several factors came into play to make Trump’s unlikely bid a reality. It was the era that made Trump possible, which says some things about our nation we’d rather not admit.

Good fortune did play a major role. Seventeen candidates entered the race for the Republican nomination, making it hard for anyone to stand out. Jeb Bush had the establishment connections, money, and name recognition that made him the presumed front runner. But what he had in birthright, he lacked in charisma. Republicans tend to pretend to favor Black candidates to demonstrate they’re not racist but never fund their campaigns. Herman Cain found that out in 2012. Ben Carson rated high in polling for a stretch but never had a chance. Ted Cruz was too unlikeable, and fringe candidates like Rand Paul and Carly Fiorina never caught on. Marco Rubio had the potential to be a good candidate, but he was either too brown or inconsistent to catch fire.

If nothing else, Donald Trump was the most flamboyant of the bunch. His propensity for catchy insults and putting everyone else on defense when on the debate stage made him stand out. His relationship with the tabloid media helped, the National Enquirer and other AMI publications regularly published negative stories about whatever opponent needed to be taken out. Trump allegedly picked out the cover photo for the story about Ted Cruz's father being involved in JFK's assassination. Trump’s own negative coverage for paying off porn stars he slept with or a video with him describing his sexual assaults on women and how you can “grab them by the pussy,” didn’t make a dent in his support.

Trump developed a loyal following who didn’t give a damn about his history or morality. The rest of the Republican Party hated Hillary Clinton so much they held their noses and voted for him anyway. With a smaller group of candidates and a focus on the issues. Trump would never have gotten as far as he did, so luck did play a part, but it was the era that propelled him to victory.

America had just gone through two terms under its first Black President, Barack Obama. Despite all the contrived controversies they tried to undermine him with; Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the tan suit, his administration had no indictments, less than normal turnover, and generally acted like a Presidential administration was supposed to. Barack Obama was President for the whole country. If I had a complaint, he sometimes negotiated against himself, making concessions to the other side that never intended to be fair to him. Mitch McConnell said his primary goal was to ensure Barack Obama was a one-term President. He failed at that but did manage to hold up the nominations of hundreds of Judicial nominees and one Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

Our nation's face was a Black man for eight years, and a good portion of the country couldn’t stand it. Likely, Trump could never have become President except for following Obama. He represents the whitelash to Obama’s presence. The only steady theme during Trump’s presidency was to try to undo everything Barack Obama did.

Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, was on paper the most qualified person ever to run for President. For those who needed no substantial reason to hate her, Trump’s constant harping about her emails and calling her a criminal was enough to oppose her. Trump himself doesn’t use email, but his family members, including Ivanka and Jared, have abused email protocols, and the entire administration flaunts the Hatch and Logan Acts with impudence. A part of the nation was unready or unwilling to support a woman for president. They, too, joined Trump’s basket of deplorables, as Hillary described them.

Much has been talked about how Obama built a coalition in making his two successful runs for the presidency. Trump had a coalition as well, those that hated we ever had a Black President (racists), xenophobes; some willing to eliminate immigration from anywhere except Europe (still racists), white nationalists (racists), Neo-Nazi’s (racists), misogynists (sexist), and the pragmatists who saw an advantage to a Trump presidency and were able to overlook the racism and sexism.

Trump could never have become President in any other era; the question is, are we still living in that era? Through the myriad scandals involving Trump and his administration, his base support has barely wavered. He has called our soldiers “suckers and losers,” he regularly uses racist slurs like “Pocahontas” and refers to the homes of Black and brown people as “shithole countries.” His charity organization has been ruled a fraud, broken up, and forced to pay a $25 million fine. His company is under investigation by the State of New York. He isn’t facing federal charges because the Justice Department believes a sitting President can’t be indicted. He has unexplained ties to Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, and others. We know Russia helped him win in 2016 and is trying to help him again. Trump ignored a deadly virus that may kill over 300,000 Americans before the next President is sworn in. Yet his base (racists, sexists, and pragmatists) is mostly there.

The one thing that may cause them to turn on Trump is the label he wants to assign to everyone else. . . loser. Trump caught COVID-19 himself, and it super-spreading the disease at his rallies. He is becoming increasingly frenetic, and his total lack of policy regarding the coronavirus or anything else is exposed. He has no closing message as to why he should be re-elected; all he has is hate.

Should he win again, it won’t be error or luck. The message will be that we still live in an era where isms are more important than anything else when selecting a President. That would be a damn shame.