The Strongman Presidency. A decade of Trumpism in the United States.

Abstract

From the dizzying illiberal rupture of the first year of Trump's second term, this article examines the historical circumstances that enabled Trump to reach the presidency in 2016 and the major milestones that have shaped Trumpism in this decade. Since 1990, changes in American society—including increased inequality, mass immigration and demographic shifts, national political polarization, and the transformation of the media landscape—explain the appeal of Trump's nativism populism to many "losers" of globalization after the Great Recession of 2008. The dominance and transformation of the Republican Party into MAGA, the "big lie" as a conversion of the frontal challenge to democratic institutions into a cohesive narrative of democratic defense against Democratic "election fraud," the subsequent expansion of MAGA's electoral support within the "coalition of the uneducated," the discrediting of the Democratic Party, and the cultural backlash of the anti-woke movement are some of the milestones behind the consolidation of an anti-democratic force like Trumpism. This occurred in the face of a majority of voters who, in a society made even more unequal by COVID-19, consider that the American political system is broken from several decades.