I suppose you could say that the Trump decade began on June 16, 2015, when Donald and Melania Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency and the birth of MAGA, the “Make America Great Again” movement.

There are, however, a few problems with that start date. For one thing, the Trump decade, which may have started then, did not stop when Trump took an extended vacation from the White House beginning on January 20, 2021. It continued running, like a television set blaring in another room, all through the Biden presidency. And now, in October 2026, the Trump decade has lasted more than a decade. Really, we are talking about the Trump era.

A complicit media assured us that Trump was the reincarnation of Hitler

A complicit media assured us that Trump was the reincarnation of Hitler

For another thing, the MAGA movement predates Trump. He took the phrase from Ronald Reagan, pumped it full of rhetorical steroids and married it to the circulating but unorganized passions that animated the Tea Party movement. It was an act of political genius. It was part of what enabled Trump, as Shakespeare said of Julius Caesar, to bestride the world “like a Colossus.”

The real question is whether the Trump phenomenon is an anomaly. Forget about the epiphenomena. The mean tweets. The disobliging nicknames. The open disdain for partisan clowns pretending to be journalists.  All that is mere decoration and stage setting. When, during President Xi Jinping’s recent visit to the White House, Trump took him on a tour of........

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