June 16, 2023
It’s been 8 years to the day since one of the most momentous moments in American history. Eight years ago, just about to the hour I think, Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president.
America has, quite literally, never been the same. He remade American politics, American media, American foreign policy, American culture, American life. He did it so dramatically it’s sometimes hard to imagine what things were like before.
Almost no one saw it coming. Nobody in 2015 was thinking “Oh, the Republican party is ripe to be blown up by an outsider.” The discussion in early 2015 was about how STRONG the GOP field was, with Cruz, and Rubio, and Rand Paul, and Scott Walker.
The Republican Party of old was shattered, ripped apart by voters angry at being conned again and again on immigration, and angry at the party’s fixation on foreign wars that only benefited contractors and foreigners.
He destroyed the golden calves of the conservative movement too, straw men we'd held up as orthodoxy that were actually holding our party and our country back.
It’s not all good changes, to be sure. I think it’s undeniable that the reaction to Trump’s campaign and presidency drastically accelerated the radicalization of the Democrat Party. They are vastly more pro-open borders, pro-abortion, pro-trans, pro-crime. Trump caused a dam to break, where about 30% of the country just raced as hard left as they possibly could. Blue state life is vastly more unlivable as a result, and you can see it in the state migration patterns.
But what's perhaps most incredible, we don't know how this story ends. We're still in the middle of it. Two impeachments, two indictments, probably two more coming, and two presidents later, we’re at it again.
Whatever you think of Trump, 8 years ago, everything changed, and sometimes it's important to stop and take a pause to examine the past to better assess the future.