The Truly Alarming Mr. Trump

Why the 45th president must not become the 47th

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks aa campaign rally on October 12, 2024 in Coachella, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

When an editor at Persuasion (you should subscribe!) approached me about writing a pre-election essay about the myriad dangers Donald Trump poses to the United States and the world, I reacted at first with a sigh of exhaustion. I’ve been writing pieces like that for nine years. You can find several dozens of them at The Week and here at Notes from the Middleground. But the more I thought about it, the more the project made sense. Over the past year, I’ve mostly presumed Trump’s awfulness rather than worked to establish it. With the neck-and-neck 2024 election less than three weeks away, I think it’s a very good idea for me to lay out why voters should not approach November 5 with any level of ambivalence. This essay, cross-posted at Persuasion, is the fruit of my efforts. May this be the last time I need to write a piece like this.

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Donald J. Trump has stood at the center of American political life for more than nine years now, thrilling some, disgusting many others, but transfixing nearly all of us for much of that time. How is it possible that a louche Manhattan real estate mogul, tabloid celebrity, and reality-show television star launched a successful hostile takeover of one of the two major parties in the most powerful nation on earth, managed to get himself elected president, served out a single chaotic term, attempted a hapless self-coup to keep himself in office after losing his bid for re-election, became a convicted felon and faced numerous additional charges in several different jurisdictions, and then returned to run for president for a third time, all the while keeping himself within a couple of points of his opponent?

We’re all familiar with the story. But it’s worth rehearsing in these stark terms because the fact is that human beings can get used to just about anything, given sufficient time for acclimation. Even the prospect of Trump returning to the White House to become president once again.