The Real Trump Legacy

Here’s an off the cuff commentary on how he revealed the troubling underbelly of American politics.

Another week and another first for Donald J. Trump. No doubt, this is one he’d be willing to pass on—the first criminal trial of a former US president. Just the latest in a series of ‘firsts’ in American politics these days as Trump’s enemies exploit the destruction of our legal norms in their unrelenting zeal to destroy him.

But like all things in Trump world, it reveals more about his enemies than it does the 45th president.

For decades, pollsters have been telling us the electorate yearned for a third way, a nonpartisan who wasn’t wedded to either party and would represent the vast middle. Along comes the brash, imperfect real estate developer who had worked with both sides of the aisle in ‘the art of a deal.’ The media elite loved it, especially the most salacious exploits of the prowling Manhattan mogul.

Right up until presidential candidate Trump embraced a reformulated version of America First that turned out to be a direct threat to those global media empires. You know, the ones who profitably ran all those Big Pharma ads while ‘reporting’ on COVID. It wasn’t long before the crude tapes and ‘hush money’ stories started rolling in.