Donald Trump’s branding and the choice ahead

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Love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s words and actions are dividing Americans like no other in politics. But how did it get like this, where the man many didn’t expect to reach the White House became a president who was derided as “illegitimate” and then twice impeached before leaving office, and now faces charges criminal in Manhattan?

Let’s take a look back at Trump’s branding since he became a presidential candidate in 2015.

That year, the Huffington Post announced that it would cover Trump’s remarks not as politics, but as entertainment. In the article, Arianna Huffington quotes a tweet by Jeffrey Goldberg, in response to the proposed “Muslim ban,” saying, “Donald Trump is an actual threat to national security. He gives jihadists ammunition for their campaign to demonize the US.” This will set the tone that Trump will be an illegitimate president.

In 2016, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) made this statement: “Throughout the 2016 presidential election, President Trump not only refused to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin but was friendly and accommodating in his remarks.” He went on to argue, “President Trump has also surrounded himself with people [14 were identified] who did business with and sympathized with Russia.”

In a New York Times editorial in December 2016, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt wrote, “The election of Donald J. Trump raises a question few Americans have thought to ask: Is our democracy at risk? Except with the possible exception of the Civil War, American democracy has never collapsed; indeed, no democracy has been as rich or as established as America’s. But past stability is no democracy’s guarantee of future survival.”

A study of news coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in the Oval Office found that “80 percent of media coverage of President Trump in the first 100 days of his administration was negative.” Retired Harvard professor Marvin Kalb writes about Trump’s attacks on the media: “The dictators of the twentieth century — notably, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao — all denounced their critics, especially the press, as ‘the enemy of the people.’

And so, a dangerous narrative has developed around Trump. On the one hand, his candidacy is a joke that should be relegated to the pages of a newspaper’s entertainment section; on the other hand, he may be as dangerous as Hitler, Mao and Stalin and must be stopped, and his supporters dispersed, by any means available. CNN noted that Joe Biden will define his 2020 campaign in these terms, “The current president has shrouded America in darkness for too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.”

In a 2021 assessment of the Trump presidency, Pew Research pointed out that “Twitter has permanently banned him from its platform. [and] in his final days in office, Trump became the first president to be impeached twice.” The report went on to mention, “Trump’s overall approval rating has never exceeded 50 percent and has fallen to a low of just 29 percent in his final weeks in office, shortly after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol.” However, Trump still managed 74.2 million votes for re-election. Trump lost the election , but refused to go away.This created a problem for those who want “business as usual” in our country’s politics.

On September 1, 2022, President Biden addressed the nation from the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, saying this about Trump and his “Make America Great Again” supporters: “It’s in our hands, yours and yours. me, to stop the attack on American democracy. I believe America is at an inflection point, one of those moments that defines the shape of everything that comes after. Did he declare war on the MAGA Republicans?

Just days after Biden’s speech, a Reuters/Ipsos poll reported that “58 percent of respondents to a two-day poll — including one in four Republicans — said the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement ‘ of Trump threatens America’s democratic foundations.” The poll also found that “60 percent of Republicans do not think Trump’s MAGA movement represents the majority of the party.”

Last summer, Darnell West wrote for Brookings, “I argue that there are several systemic threats to the future of democracy, such as copycat candidates, legal coups, a toxic information ecosystem, the decline of authoritarian institutions, and the pervasiveness of anti-majoritarianism in our political system. Trump represents an existential threat to our current system.”

The result of all this? Trump has created a wide lane in which to expand government overreach. In 2019, FBI agents, wearing tactical gear, raided the home of Trump ally Roger Stone with little blowback. Then, on August 8, 2022, FBI agents, also wearing tactical gear, raided Trump’s home, the Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida. The Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol complex on Jan. 6, 2021, were labeled insurrections. Hundreds were rounded up and imprisoned; only two GOP members of Congress initially raised concerns about due process. In September 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray released a statement stating, “Since the spring of 2020 — so, over the last 16, 18 months or so — we’ve doubled our domestic terrorism caseload, from about a thousand to 2,700 investigations.”

When Trump’s indictment was announced, the New York Times reported, “[It] raised the prospect of an explosive opposition from Mr. Trump, who often uses his legal troubles to incite the anger of die-hard supporters.” The message of fear continues. An IPSOS poll, conducted in late March, found that “three in five Americans worry about political persecution against people in their community (61 percent), and 65 percent worry about acts of violence against people in their community because of their belief in politics. .” Are Americans starting to see an uncomfortable pattern?

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Trump is a unique figure in American politics — initially hated by many because he upset the status quo. Of course, politicians destroy each other, but this feels different. Anti-Trumpism has taken on an almost religious fervor that has branded his supporters as heretics who need to be banished from political discourse. This is a dangerous thing that an election cannot fix.

The choice in 2024 will not be “more Trump” or “more anti-Trump,” but rather, how can we protect our system from the excesses of the past nine years on both sides of the political spectrum?

Dennis M. Powell, the founder and president of Massey Powell, is an issues and crisis management consultant and the author of the forthcoming book, “Leading from the Top: Presidential Lessons in Issues Management. “

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