In the early hours of Wednesday, November 6 an earthquake shook US and global politics. And let's be clear, it was not a severe tremor, it was an earthquake of great magnitude. Donald Trump has become the only person other than Grover Cleveland (president 1885–89 and 1893–97) to serve non-consecutive presidential terms in the US.
However, the nature of the person who has achieved this modern triumph makes it more than just a constitutional oddity. This is not just something for the footnotes in a future book on US political, cultural and constitutional history. This is because – whatever one feels about the man in question – Trump and the MAGA movement are a phenomenon of striking character and huge significance.
And let there be no mistake, opinions will differ sharply. Even the mass of court cases built up against Trump will be assessed as either long-delayed justice catching up with the man or as a political witch hunt orchestrated by Democrats who have weaponised the justice system against him. As with everything connected with Trump, there is never one simple narrative. The plot lines are many, various and contradictory. Finding one's way through them is never easy.
As the dust begins to settle a bit (and there's a long way to go before the changed landscape becomes clear) we can begin to reflect a little on why this election result is so significant. We can also begin to tentatively suggest some of the possible future implications of this event. For, if this is a 'political earthquake,' we can expect the 'aftershocks' to continue for some time. Indeed, the whole US political landscape may have become an active 'earthquake' zone. The Trump phenomenon vividly reminds us of the fault lines in modern US – and global – politics and culture. We live in historic times.
First, let's remind ourselves why this is all so striking and controversial. Trump frequently deploys angry and inflammatory language in a deeply polarised nation; he courts controversy and belittles opponents; he is a convicted felon; he refused to accept the result of the 2020 presidential election and attempted to overturn it; his increasingly heated rhetoric preceded the unprecedented invasion of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021; and he was inches away from an assassin's bullet in the summer of 2024.
Now he is on the cusp of returning to power. And this has occurred less than four years since the apparent nadir of his political fortunes in the aftermath of January 6, when, for a moment, it appeared as if the Republican Party might move on from the Trump years and reinstate a more familiar kind of US conservative politics. But those days of familiar politics are over. Indeed, one could argue convincingly that the GOP (the 'Grand Old Party' as the Republican Party is frequently called) no longer exists. Now it has been replaced by something crafted by Trump and his supporters in the MAGA movement. Had one written this as the plot to a political thriller it would have been returned from the editor with the advice to tone it down and make it more believable. But here life imitates art, even if it is art of a very discordant and disturbing kind.
Which raises the rather obvious question of why this has occurred. The most obvious answer is that US society in the age of globalisation has experienced rapid changes (accompanied by outsourcing of jobs to countries such as Mexico, China and elsewhere) that has left huge numbers of the population adrift in bewilderingly unfamiliar and threatening situations. Old jobs and economic 'certainties' no longer exist. The 'American Dream,' which promised continued opportunities and improving living standards has apparently faltered. Citizens in a 'Rust Belt' town, situated in a 'Flyover State', feel that their aspirations are frustrated, while considering themselves marginalised by political elites who (allegedly) look down on them.
While this has occurred, deep divisions in the nation, which have roots in the troubled years of the Vietnam War, have become wider and deeper in the era of modern culture wars. A deep unease has become even more conflicted. Within this situation, the racial tensions of a nation whose slave-owning past continues to haunt it in modern racial divisions and inequalities, adds another painful component to the national scene. At the same time, changing patterns of life associated with aspects of modernity have left those with a traditional faith and cultural outlook feeling increasingly ignored. Among the groups and labels which characterise modern society, they feel that their 'group,' their 'label,' their identity is shunned, mocked or dismissed. Finally, the turbulent nature of the world in the 2020s has unleashed unprecedented levels of migration, asylum seeking and undocumented incomers which has unsettled US society as it has societies across the western world.
This has occurred as the explosion of online sources of information (and disinformation) is proving to be as radical and threatening towards the old 'information order' as the invention of printing in the 15th century was. Regarding that earlier historic phenomenon, it is worth noting that the explosion of the 16th-century Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the 'Wars of Religion,' and the start of the 'Great Witch hunts' all occurred in the context of a new way to easily disseminate information and polemics. We live in another – now digital – information revolution. Parallels should not be ignored.
It is with this situation that Trump and the MAGA movement have engaged. Whether one reads this as the genuine empathetic connection with the dispossessed, ignored and anxious (in order to revitalise their hopes and communities), or the skilful and cynical fanning and manipulation of feelings of fear and dissatisfaction (for the ultimate benefit of ambitious new leaders and the furtherance of their financial goals), what is undeniable is that a new cultural phenomenon has occurred. We are living through it.
Harris and the Democrats lost for many reasons. The granular analysis will include: failure to address the crisis at the southern border in a timely and resolute fashion; inability to recognise that a recovering economy was undermined by inflation; Biden's refusal to stand down until forced to; promotion of a vice-president who did not enjoy national name recognition or the validation that comes from winning in the party's primary process; active celebration of many groups and identities but a failure to engage with more traditional faith and demographic groups; active promotion of 'culture war' issues (of sex and gender) which left many outside this feeling disorientated; the assumption that female commitment to reproductive freedom would translate into votes, regardless of other factors which dictate voting decisions.
In contrast, Trump was highly skilful in speaking to (some would add amplifying) these concerns. At the same time his name-recognition meant that millions of voters simply 'priced-in' the wilder Trump excesses as part of the 'deal' on offer (and dismissed the threatening rhetoric as mere 'Trumpist' noise) because he spoke to their anxieties about immigration and inflation in ways that Harris failed to do. January 6 and the alleged threats to US democratic norms were overshadowed by the concerns (and allegations) regarding 'undocumented migrants' and prices at the supermarket and gas station. Only time will tell if a real threat to US democracy was allowed in, while these concerns were holding the headlines.
Many US evangelicals have hailed Trump as a modern Cyrus, a leader doing the will of God, even if not of the household of faith (some claim he is a member); even if rough around the edges. In a nation with a deep sense of its claimed exceptionalism the nature of MAGA claims do not jar as they do beyond the US. And in conservative Christian communities sceptical about climate change, with strong views on abortion, with very fixed views on the Middle East, and a growing antipathy towards globalisation and global politics, Trump promises to deliver.
The question is: does Trump represent that 'Cyrus' figure, or does he act as a mirror to a broken society while exaggerating its brokenness? Readers will have their own opinions. Time will tell. But even then, the nature of the Trump phenomenon suggests there will still be no agreement concerning what he represents. It's going to be an interesting few years.
Martyn Whittock is a historian and a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. The author, or co-author, of fifty-six books, his work covers a wide range of historical and theological themes. In addition, as a commentator and columnist, he has written for several print and online news platforms and been interviewed on TV and radio news and discussion programmes exploring the interaction of faith and politics. These have included being interviewed on news platforms concerning the religious dimension to current US politics, Christianity and the Crown in the UK, and the war in Ukraine. His most recent books include: The Secret History of Soviet Russia's Police State (2020), Daughters of Eve (2021), Jesus the Unauthorized Biography (2021), The End Times, Again? (2021), The Story of the Cross (2021), Apocalyptic Politics (2022), and American Vikings (2023). His interest in the 17th-century Puritans and their continuing impact on the modern world, especially in the USA, is explored in: When God was King: Rebels & Radicals of the Civil War & Mayflower Generation (2018), Mayflower Lives (2019) and Trump and the Puritans (2020).
