Donald J Trump: The Tip Of The Black Iceberg
What the last four years can teach us about the very near future
With Joseph R Biden Jr and Kamala Harris formally becoming the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect respectively, it is with a sigh of relief for half the country that Donald J Trump will soon be a former President rather than the current President. Over the last four years, we have seen divisiveness and harsh rhetoric coming from within the walls of the White House, from the President's own Twitter feed, and through media outlets such as Fox News and OAN. With the President soon to be pushed into retirement, will Trumpism go with him?
Trumpism, a type of right-wing ideology, is often associated with nationalistic answers to complex political, economic, and social problems. It attempts to mobilize the white disenfranchised of the growing social inequality with a strongly stated opposition to the established political establishment of both the Republican and Democratic Party. Trumpism began with Donald Trump during his 2016 Presidential campaign but it is not likely to end with him. Many of his staunch supporters in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate have taken hard lines to support the President’s policy decisions whatever they may be since he began his tenure began in January 2017.
Many of these same supporters have won their reelection bids during the 2020 election while Trump appears to be on his way out. As with any former President, they often remain as the leading figures in their party such was the case with former President Barack Obama who remains one of the most popular and well-known figures in the Democratic Party. This raises many concerns from both moderate Republicans and Democrats as well as the left as a whole about how much of a role the soon to be former President will play in shaping the political stances of the Republican party as the country already shifts towards the 2024 Presidential election cycle.
Many of the same figures who ran in 2016 are expected to run again to clinch the Republican nomination with leading figures such as Vice President Mike Pence and even speculation that Donald Trump may run a third time in order to have a second term as President. If he were to win, he would only be the second President in United States history to serve two non-consecutive terms. With this speculation swirling, it is hard to imagine that the turbulence and hard-line stances that Trump has taken will shift in four short years.
Whether Trump runs or not, the question remains whether other Republicans who throw their hat into the ring will parrot what Trump has been pushing during his entire first term. His American First policy is more like an America Only policy with harsh rhetoric against our opponents and even harsher rhetoric against our allies. Only time will tell us who President-Elect Biden will be facing in 2024 — if he decides to run for a second term which he has already stated he wouldn’t do — or any other democratic hopeful who wishes to continue work on what President Biden will have accomplished by that time.
