“What’s Past Is Prologue”
The above line, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, explains as well as anything Donald Trump’s recent election-day triumph. Trump was not supposed to win last month, just as he was not supposed to win eight years earlier.
When Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his first presidential bid, the media did not view him as a viable candidate, despite his wealth and name recognition. The New York Times dutifully covered his “improbable quest for the Republican nomination,” as did other media, but also observed that his remarks that day “were unlikely to allay suspicions that he is entering the race mainly to appear in debates and win attention from the media.”
Trump did get plenty of attention from the media, but most of it was highly negative — and the attacks were directed not only at Trump and his “America First” mantra, but also at the movement he christened “Make America Great Again.” The politicos piled on too, such as when Hillary Clinton, his Democratic challenger in 2016, infamously claimed that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call a basket of deplorables…. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” By that time the “improbable” candidate had already won the Republican nomination; he went on to win the presidency, as well.
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