Breaking the Decade-Long Trump Fever

November 7, 2026

Saturday, November 7, 2026

Breaking the Decade-Long Trump Fever

The President’s unique brand of lurid authoritarianism has finally lost appeal, and he has lost the plot.

The New Yorker: Daily, Saturday, November 7, 2026

Two generations ago, in the fall of 1974, President Gerald Ford and the Republican Party approached the midterm elections with considerable dread. That August, Richard Nixon had learned that he could no longer outrun his crimes in the White House. One tape recording in particular, the so-called smoking gun, proved that he had conspired with his aide H. R. Haldeman to obstruct the investigation into the Watergate break-in. The Republican elders Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Hugh Scott told Nixon that impeachment in the House of Representatives was now certain, and conviction in the Senate likely. Nixon resigned, handing over his office to Vice-President Ford. A month later, Ford issued Proclamation 4311, pardoning Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed as President. Watergate, Ford said, had been “an American tragedy, in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”

Until then, despite a dreadful economy, Ford had enjoyed approval ratings as high as seventy per cent. But the Nixon pardon was political poison, for both Ford and the G.O.P. His popularity plummeted by more than twenty points. And, in the midterms, the Democrats gained forty-nine seats in the House and four seats in the Senate. The incoming class of rookie Democrats—among them Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, John Glenn, and Patrick Leahy—became known as the “Watergate babies.”

This week, some commentators, having exhausted the usual marine metaphors for midterm blowouts (a “blue wave” quickly became a “blue tsunami”), scurried to find historical points of comparison for the astonishing nationwide triumph of the Democratic Party. More than a few settled on the post-pardon midterms of 1974.

In sheer magnitude, this week’s Democratic victory—a sweeping repudiation, above all, of Donald Trump and the low, dishonest decade he has defined—makes the post-Watergate humbling seem modest. Both houses of Congress flipped, giving Democrats a substantial majority in each. The new Senate Majority Leader needn’t worry if, say, John Fetterman strolls across party lines. Nine of the ten most populous states will have Democratic governors. For those already anticipating the Presidential race in 2028, it’s significant that all the traditional battleground states (which Trump won just two years ago) have elected Democratic governors.

The Party scored in unlikely places, particularly in the Midwest and the South. Texas, the second most populous state in the Union and reliably red for a generation, will have a Democratic senator (James Talarico), governor (Gina Hinojosa), and state House. Kansas—seriously, Kansas—elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in ninety-four years. Democrats also chalked up amazing wins in both Carolinas. The geographic shift was as pronounced as the demographic one. After moving toward Trump in 2024, many Latinos swung Democratic; so did many young white men. (Thanks for rethinking things, Joe Rogan!) And Black voters came out for Democratic candidates in huge numbers.

The diversity of “firsts” was heartening. The first Muslim in the Senate: Abdul El-Sayed, of Michigan. The first Black female governor: Keisha Lance Bottoms, in Georgia. The first Latino governors to be elected in Texas (Hinojosa) and California (Xavier Becerra). New Mexico will have the first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland), and Minnesota will send the first Native American woman ever to the Senate (Peggy Flanagan).

Even the near-misses were stunners. In ruby-red Florida, a Black democratic socialist named Angie Nixon almost became a senator. (And maybe she would have won had she gotten more funding, or had she been three jots less far to the left—hard to know.) This all happened after years in which the President and the Vice-President have deployed racist epithets, jokes, and myths. (“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs! . . . They’re eating the cats!”) Laura Loomer, a court bigot for the Administration, made the Trumpian ideology clear when she wrote on X, “America was always intended to be a majority White country. Not a cesspool for third world minorities. America was founded as a Christian country. Not a Muslim country.” The midterms dealt that foul idea its greatest blow since Barack Obama’s ascent to the Presidency, in 2008.

The scale of the victory left no room for Trump to contrive a conspiracy theory and challenge the outcome. On Election Night, he was, by his perverse standards, gracious. He blamed Fox News for the Republican losses, “by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition.” Separately, he claimed, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” #Classic.

The results were driven by the most urgent economic concerns of the voters: the spike in fuel prices, which followed the misbegotten tariffs and the war in Iran; the high cost of groceries, housing, and health care; and, for some, anxiety about data centers, artificial intelligence, and what all this portends for employment. But what is so striking about Trump’s second term is that he entered office intent, it now seems, on flaunting his cynicism, his greed, and his scorn for the American people. It was as if he actually meant to squander his support as quickly as possible. How else to explain the heedlessness of his behavior in office? On Day One, he gave pride of place at the Inauguration to a lineup of moguls who had agreed to bow to his power and his ego. They regularly traipsed to the White House, delivering gaudy house gifts and large donations to his pet projects. They smiled weakly as they were compelled to listen to his moronic rants and admire the latest ungapatchka embellishment of the gilded Oval Office.

They spent tens of millions of dollars on his wife’s documentary about how taxing it is to endure the attentions of the help and how lonely it is to shuttle from one place to the next in limousines and private planes. As in any tin-pot autocracy, this was the price of doing business. Trump’s populism was always a fraud. Now he plainly didn’t care who knew. At a “jungle-themed” Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, costumed guests enjoyed seafood delicacies and a caviar bar. There was a caged zebra. Circus performers dangled from the ceiling. “Rich people, they spend nine hours getting ready,” the President merrily remarked of his pals. He was dressed in his usual blue suit. “I had ten minutes, so I came as Donald Trump.”

Trump has shown contempt for the law, as he hollowed out the Department of Justice and ordered federal agents to menace American cities from New York to Minneapolis to Los Angeles. He has shown contempt for culture and education, as he threatened and defunded one invaluable institution after another. He has shown contempt for competence, by stocking his Administration with preposterous, often odious, fourth-raters: Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller (incredibly, the new chief of staff), the Son-in-Law, the Ubiquitous One with the portable printer.

Continue/Read Original Source: Breaking the Decade-Long Trump Fever