Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• The men who want to stop women voting• The US is becoming impossible to live in• I told Trump over dinner he didn’t have my loyalty – it sealed my fate• This is how the world will look after Trump• Sin City has lost its shine. It shows how far America has fallen• The influencer who turned on Maga – claiming it has a dark secret• Inside America’s most loyal Trump town – where people still think he’s ‘a good man’
A few years ago, in the course of discussing various global calamities over brunch, a prominent British journalist-historian asked me which phenomenon I thought had inflicted the greater damage — Brexit on his country or Donald Trump on mine. He chose Brexit, noting that it had markedly diminished the United Kingdom’s wealth and influence.
Our conversation took place in the wake of Trump’s first term as president, and indeed his destructive instincts had been somewhat curbed by several guard-rails, notably the establishmentarian aides that he had appointed. Now, though, a year-and-a-half into his White House reprise, surrounded by yes-men and abetted by a slavish Congress, Trump (my British friend agrees) has far eclipsed Brexit as the more deeply destructive force.
