A Decade Like No Other
Even if you are not a student of history, you know that there are moments and periods of time, whether they are good or bad, that stand out like no other and make lasting impacts on our nation. Moments like a man landing on the moon for the first time, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the 9/11 terror attacks are moments that changed the country, along with periods like The Great Depression, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement, all come to mind. But in recent history, there is another moment that can be added to that list. Whether you think it was a moment for good or bad, it’s hard to deny its impact.
Monday marked 10 years since Donald Trump came down the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce he was running for President of the United States. Before Trump, non-politicians had thrown their hats in the ring. Many of them had noteworthy ideas worth listening to. But because they were not lifelong creatures of the Washington beltway, they didn’t stand a chance. When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, their idea of public office was that those who wanted to run did so, got elected, served a term or two, and went home to live under the laws they enacted. The other idea was that anyone, be they farmer or wealthy businessman, had an equal chance at becoming the President. They were judged on their ideas for the country and nothing else. Needless to say, both ideas no longer happen. But Donald Trump stood at least the second idea on its head.
Over the years, he toyed with the idea of running. He even told Oprah Winfrey during an appearance on her show in 1988 that, “if it [the country] got so bad, I wouldn’t want to rule it out totally.” Then came 2016. Anyone who has been a regular viewer of the Fox News Channel has seen the collection of feckless liberals howl with laughter at the thought of Trump running, much less being elected President. Then came the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in, we were told. Why, exactly, was she a shoo-in? Oh, that’s right, it was her turn. Every poll had her up right until the election. But a funny thing happened on the way to election night 2016. Donald Trump won and became the 45th President of the United States, and for liberals, it has been their worst nightmare realized, one long Fourth of July celebration and military parade all rolled into one. Who can forget the collective primal scream a few days after the election? Some of those people have been the face of so many social media memes that they should be demanding checks.
The media is never kind to Republican Presidents. But no Trump supporter in the country had any idea what the next ten years would be like. Trump hatred went well beyond the childish shenanigans of the media. What we would learn in later years was that there was an entire apparatus with the sole purpose of not just taking Donald Trump out of the White House but destroying his life and the lives of his family as well. When you look back now, it’s kind of hard to keep up with the timeline. There was the claim that Trump had called neo-Nazis “fine people.” There was the Russia collusion hoax, the fake dossier commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. And that was just the beginning of his first term. It went from the seriousness of two impeachments, to the downright silly and inane of the media claiming Trump told Americans at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to inject themselves with bleach, to a claim that during a visit to Japan, while feeding fish with the late Japanese prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that he overfed them, to the ongoing claim that he never condemned white supremacy. It was a four-year-long nonstop game of “gotcha” for the media.
When Donald Trump announced that he would run for a second term, Democrats and the media were horrified to see that nearly all of Trump’s support from his first term was still solidly in place, and that he had even more support. That’s when things got silly, bordering on serious. Donald Trump was indicted four times in four Democrat jurisdictions, totaling nearly 90 felony charges that, if convicted on all of them, could result in a total of 700 years in prison.
Things got deadly serious on July 13, 2024. During a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as Trump pointed to an immigration chart, something he had not done before at a rally, a lone gunman came within millimeters of assassinating him. The bullet grazed his ear and killed one of his supporters. Two months later, another lone gunman hid in the bushes outside of his Florida golf course. Had a super vigilant Secret Service agent not seen the barrel of his rifle well, November could have had a very different outcome.
In just ten short years, Donald Trump has changed the face, not only of the Republican party, but American politics. Republicans have gone from a party of war-mongering neocons who were satisfied with “losing with dignity,” to unapologetically “America First.” He has ripped what was left of the mask off the mainstream media, exposing their massive bias and collusion with the Democrat party. And as for the Democrat party, there is no other way to describe it, Donald Trump has broken them. Trump has three and a half more years to go in his second term. Republicans can’t wait to see what happens next, and Democrats, if their party even survives, may need heart monitors.