Ezra Klein in the New York Times reminds us that Trump did not win by a large margin. In fact, he won by 1.5 points in the popular vote. He writes about the "new vibes" Trump is bringing to Washington.
I won’t make any claims about the future, but the present feels decidedly male. Trump’s campaign in 2024 was gaudily masculine. Hulk Hogan and Dana White, the chief executive of U.F.C., spoke on the night of Trump’s speech at the Republican convention. The campaign fanned out to the podcasters young men listened to and embraced crypto culture. It connected to a larger anger building among men — a sense that there was no recognized masculinity aside from toxic masculinity, that there wasn’t much room for them in that female future.
David French in the New York Times writes about the new vibes too, only he begins with this description of Trump:
I’m growing increasingly amused by the overreaction to Donald Trump’s election.
I’m not talking about genuine concerns over Trump’s authoritarianism, incompetence and malice. His conduct during his first term gave Americans ample cause for alarm. He may well be the most unstable and dangerous person our nation has ever elected as president.
I’m talking about something else. As we watch chief executive after chief executive pay homage to Trump and MAGA, with Apple, Meta, Amazon and OpenAI making identical $1 million donations to Trump’s inauguration, either through their chief executives or their corporate accounts, there is a sense that his election signals some sort of sweeping ideological “vibe shift,” a triumph of right-wing populism over all its foes.
I don't have much to say about Trump. I really have excised him from my consciousness. But I do care about policy changes, so I'll be covering those. Especially as applied to Mexico and Latin America. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State is a horrible choice, and Rubio has selected former U.S. Mexican Ambassador (and lawyer) Christopher Landau to be his Deputy Secretary. He was a guest on a Baker Institute podcast last month. Here's a transcript of what he had to say about the outlook for Mexico in 2025.
