The Aftermath: Trump’s Victory Sparks Media Outrage and National Introspection

What a difference a week makes.

Last week, I reiterated the prediction I had been making since at least July: the polls were wrong. Kamala Harris was going to lose, and Donald Trump would win by a landslide. His campaign, I said, would be like George Patton’s Third Army racing across France in 1944.

All that elicited a certain amount of scoffing, of varying degrees of politeness, from the commentariat and assorted grumblers.  The actual results of the election—the biggest victory since Reagan’s blowout in 1984—seem to have precipitated the “national mental health crisis” that Mark Halperin forecast in October. As James Piereson has noted, the response of many commentators has been to blame the voters.  How could they vote for a man they had identified as evil, an incipient dictator, a fascist, the reincarnation of Hitler who would trample on the Constitution, etc.?

Thus we have The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, who declared that Trump’s election “is a disastrous revelation about what the United States really is, as opposed to the country that so many hoped that it could be.” The people are sorry they could not rise to your level of smugness, Sue!

Peter “Mr. Moralism” Wehner weighed in with a similar threnody: “This election was a CAT scan on the American people,” he wrote, “and as difficult as it is to say, as hard as it is to name, what it revealed, at least in part, is a frightening affinity for a man of borderless corruption. Donald Trump is no longer an aberration; he is normative.” How could we have disappointed you, Pete?

And then there is the genius loci of NeverTrump agitation, William Kristol, the former conservative. Writing at The Bulwark, Kristol thundered that “The American people have made a disastrous choice. And they have done so decisively, and with their eyes wide open. . . . After everything . . . the American people liked what they saw [in Trump]. At a minimum, they were willing to accept what they saw.” Oh, those awful American people.

One of the most amusing, if inadvertently amusing, eructations came from The New York Times, which put together a histrionic video in which a series of discredited Timesmen (and Timeswomen) somberly hold forth about how “extreme” and nasty the next Trump administration is likely to be: dictatorship, camps for ideological enemies, economic recession, etc., etc. As one commentator observed, it’s as if “Jonestown had recorded a final video.”

There was a fair amount of that infantilized insanity wherever the fetid pools of wokeness oozed.  Thus we had Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, incubator of future diplomats and policymakers, advising their tender charges that “Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises,” “Milk and Cookies,” and “Legos and Coloring” were on offer to offset the trauma of Trump’s victory.

In some ways, it was reminiscent of the angst and anguish that followed Trump’s victory in 2016.  There were, however, some important differences. For one thing, Trump’s victory was so decisive that large swaths of the left were paralyzed.  On CNN, Scott Jennings, long a rare voice of sanity on that strange network, matter of factly pointed out that Biden-Harris chugged along touting its “normality” for about six months in 2021.  Then came the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, in which 13 Marines were slaughtered and the Taliban was instantly turned into the best-equipped terrorist organization in the world.

Biden, Jennings pointed out, never recovered.  Indeed, the Afghanistan debâcle was only the first in a seemingly endless series of missteps that culminated, first, in his being forced out of his presidential campaign in July and, then, in the rout of last Tuesday’s election. Jennings spoke calmly and responded to Pete Dominick’s untethered sputtering with grace and humor. “Donald is a child,” said Dominick. He called veterans “suckers and losers” (no, he didn’t). Trump “hates veterans.” I understand that you’re “emotional,” replied Jennings with a smile. No wonder people are talking about Scott Jennings as a possible press secretary for Trump.  He fields the requisite command of the facts, rhetorical nimbleness, and good humor to excel at the job.

But, again, the differences between Trump’s embryonic second term and his first are more striking than the similarities.  One senses that the hysterics are half-hearted this time, that they are mostly going through the motions. You can sense the soul-searching, the incipient shift in The Narrative taking place.  Donald Trump has been President-Elect for less than a week. But here are some of the things that have happened:  The stock market has soared by more than 2000 points.  As Charlie Kirk reports, the EU says it wants to buy American natural gas to avoid Trump’s tariffs. Putin says he will sell Russian oil in US dollars. Hamas is calling for peace. Zelenskyy held a private phone call with President Trump and Elon Musk. Mexico broke up a migrant caravan heading for America. Bill Ackman points out that “Qatar has notified Hamas officials staying in the country that they are no longer welcome and must immediately make preparations to depart.” Trump himself made a rousing and well-reasoned speech on the importance of free speech. He appointed Susie Wiles, who helped run his campaign, as his cheif of staff, the first woman to hold that important position. And on and on.

“Nature,” said Ackman, “is healing.” I think he is right.  We are on the threshold of a political and social counter-revolution.  For those despondent over the results of the election, I can recommend something that Vivek Ramaswamy advised in a dinner talk I attended last night.  People who are “aghast,” “terrified,” and “disconsolate” at the prospect of a second Trump presidency should indulge in this consoling expedient.  Write down on a piece of paper the top half dozen things you believe Trump will do that you think will be terrible for the country.  Put the list in a bottle and seal the bottle.  Come back in four years when Trump is about to leave office and look at the list.  I’ll wager that none of the things you feared will have come to pass.