Ten years gone

Ten years ago today, Donald Trump announced he was running for president.

At the time, this was treated as essentially a joke and a publicity stunt by practically everyone. I went and checked the LGM archives, and not only is Trump’s announcement not mentioned, his candidacy then goes essentially undiscussed for the rest of the summer, despite every poll at the time showing him leading the Republican field. (This post is an exception).

Now at the time this was a perfectly reasonable response. Polls that early in a campaign cycle are often little more than name recognition tests, and the number of Americans who knew who Donald Trump was in the summer of 2015 was much larger than such luminaries as Scott Walker or Chris Christie. Still . . .

I just re-read Trump’s announcement. Everybody remembers the bit about Mexican rapists swarming over the border, “and some I assume are fine people,” but what’s striking in retrospect is the absolute obsession with trade deficits as a sign of national weakness, and the horribly unfair tariffs imposed by those sneaky Chinese and Japanese (did you know you can’t find a single Chevy SUV in Tokyo?). The trade deficit nonsense just dominates the speech, which makes it all the more striking that the Republican country club money men kept all that particular brand of Trump craziness more or less in check during his first term.

Anyway, this thread is an opportunity to discuss your personal experiences after living ten years in Trumpland.