Scott Lucas: Trump loaded the gun, but America fired it. Will we recover from the injury?

We will now have days of navel-gazing by much of the US media, writes Scott Lucas

Supporters cheer as results come in for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday. Photo: AP/Jeff Roberson

In January 2021, America dodged a bullet.

On November 5, 2024, it put the gun to its head and pulled the trigger.

We will now have days of navel-gazing by much of the US media. There will be ponderings of why perceptions of the economy were the prevailing issue. There will be mining of data to document how Donald Trump won over a large share of Hispanic voters. 

There will be, somewhat unfairly, castigation of Kamala Harris and her campaign in a race which with hindsight she may have had little chance of winning.

But the fundamental is that a man convicted of 34 felony counts and facing trials on 50 others will be the next US president. A man found guilty of defamation in connection with sexual assault. A man whose company was found culpable for fraud and paid a rector fine in New York State. A man who has derided and degraded women, Hispanics, Blacks, the disabled, and the military.

A man who says he will use the military against “enemies within” and act like a dictator on Day 1. A man whose former senior staff say he is a “fascist”. A man who attempted a coup in January 2021 and — legally this time — will reclaim power.

The media will talk about how people perceived that they are worse off from inflation. Photo: AP/Evan Vucci

The media will reiterate again and again that the economy was the primary issue for many Americans. They will talk about how people perceived that they are worse off from inflation.

Few if any of those outlets will interrogate the reality. They will not note the post-covid shock, with compromised supply chains and the Biden Administration’s effort to bring the US out of recession.

They may not note that inflation, having been 9%, is now 2.4%. Or that US GDP is growing at 3.5%, a rate that would make many developed countries envious. Or that unemployment is at its lowest level since the late 1960s. 

Or that the US Administration had passed some of the most significant legislation since the 1960s, from the coronavirus relief to the Infrastructure Act to the CHIPS Act to the slimmed-down version of "Build Back Better".

The media will cite the success of Trump’s rhetoric on “millions” of migrants. They will not cite the 77% drop in undocumented migration across the US-Mexico border this year. They may not mention that it was Trump who sabotaged the bipartisan bill on border security in early 2024.

A man who has derided and degraded women, Hispanics, Blacks, the disabled, and the military is now President of the United States. Photo: AP/Susan Walsh

Doing so, they will likely glide over the assault on women’s rights, including reproductive rights. Climate change will get no mention. The risk to ObamaCare and even Medicare will pass by.

This will happen because this is what did happen during the campaign. Consideration of Harris’s policies was scant, replaced by declarations that she was “vague” or a recycling of Trump’s insults.

When attention was paid, it was often through “both sides-ing”, with Harris’s proposals set alongside a sanitized version of Trump’s incoherence.

Could the accelerated Harris campaign have done better? Absolutely — no effort is without its faults, and there were albatrosses such as the refusal to limit military aid to Israel.

But this was not a case of policies being flawed. It was of those plans and aspirations being put in the memory hole by Trump’s rants. When the calendar turned from August to September, the energy of the campaign was drained as the media’s narrative swung from Kamala Is Brat to Kamala Is Stalled. 

When she overwhelmed Trump in the first debate, the press noted her ascent for 48 hours. Then Trump’s team blocked him from further debates, and everyone started wondering if Haitian immigrants really eat cats and dogs.

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There was a moment when the journalists seemed to be shaken out of their stupor. Both the former White House Chief of Staff, retired General John Kelly, and the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, pinned the fascist label on Trump. 

The Madison Square Garden rally featured the foulest of racial taunts, ethnic slurs, and misogyny. Trump stumbled, fumbled, and ranted through his final rallies.

But then it was the final days, perhaps in more senses than one, and they were back to polls and soundbites and how excitedly close Election Night would be.

Consideration of Harris’s policies was scant by the media, replaced by declarations that she was “vague” or a recycling of Trump’s insults. Photo: AP/Ben Curtis

So now we reap what has been sown. A man who has “protected women, whether they like it or not” by verbally and physically assaulting them. 

A man who trades in bitterness and pejorative to belittle those of a different color, ethnicity, or social status. A man who adheres to no law but stews for vengeance. A man who accepts no responsibility and assumes no accountability.

He loaded the gun. But it was a collective effort to fire it.

The question before us now is whether there will be a collective effort to recover from the injury? Or whether it is too late?

• Scott Lucas is Professor of International Politics at the Clinton Institute, University College Dublin; Professor Emeritus of International Politics at the University of Birmingham; and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView