Trump’s year in office proven destructive.
On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, a total of 77 million Americans voted to re-elect Donald Trump for a second term as president. This decision came after witnessing his failed coup, his conviction in a criminal trial related to the Stormy Daniels case, and his campaign filled with hate speech, in which he made it clear that he intended to use his power to take revenge on his “enemies.”
As the world held its breath, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán celebrated the Republicans’ victory with a prediction: “History is accelerating, and a chapter is closing. The world will change faster than we think.”
This chapter was marked by the belief that the United States, as the world’s oldest liberal democracy, had triumphed over the authoritarian impulses of a minority in the 2020 election. However, Joe Biden’s presidency was merely a temporary interruption. The reactionary forces that propelled Trump were deeper and more virulent than many moderates had anticipated. In this new chapter of history, American democracy may no longer exist; a path to tyranny has been opened, one that was previously blocked by a robust system of institutional checks and balances.
The speed with which the Trump administration has dismantled these checks and balances has surpassed even the most pessimistic predictions. Traditional Washington politics has been replaced by a White House focused on fulfilling the desires of its occupants.
Trump’s tweets are acted upon by zealous ministers, bolstered by an army of lawyers and a mass of public opinion that supports them on social media. This environment has led to arbitrary tariffs that destabilize the global economy, the military being deployed on the streets to suppress invented security crises, critical media outlets being silenced, congressional funds being diverted, universities facing blackmail, and immigrants being harassed and deported based solely on racism and xenophobia. Words like “unprecedented” and “unimaginable” have lost their significance.