Trumpism After Trump
This anti-P.C. sentiment, so vital to Trump’s brand, is often minimized on the left as simple intolerance. But the longing for less-muzzled debates is to many on the right what campaign finance is to many on the left: the issue we must solve to be able to solve any other issue.
This is how Trumpism might outlast Trump — by gelling this anxiety and longing into a movement, by giving a new permission to question who is American, by redrawing the borders of respectable debate.
.. It was the morning after Trump’s statement on Muslims, and Joe Scarborough, the conservative host, was musing that we were living in our own American version of Germany circa 1933. One by one, the denizens of the round table lambasted Trump.
Then Trump called in.
.. On Thursday, I tuned in again. By now, the hosts’ outrage had become a desire to compromise with Trump: What if we just increased surveillance of immigrants? (“It’s going to have to be nonstop surveillance,” Scarborough said.) What if we shut down immigration from war-torn countries like Syria, rather than from a religion? “What’s the middle ground?” Scarborough asked.
Forty-eight hours earlier: Germany, 1933. Now: where can we meet in the middle?