President Donald Trump, what happened?
When Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States of America, it was already already well expected that he was not going to be a traditional president because of his highly untraditional campaign. He regularly created controversy and initially had little to no party support. Now being over a year in no particular order, what do people think happened?
Meme Theory
Some believe the source of Trump’s victory was his focused Social Media campaign and use of memes, not just the funny pictures but, as defined by Merriam-Webster, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”
During the election, Trump used the slogan “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”, which was originally from Reagan’s campaign. This was easy to remember and was easily recognizable. Put that on a hat and you get the MAGA cap. Think about it, when you see someone with a red hat, what is your first though what’s on it? The hat become a symbol of his campaign. Even a few days ago, November 5th, the Prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, gave Trump hats that said “MAKE ALLIANCE EVEN GREATER” as a gift.
Donald Trump did not create all of his memes, look at the now notorious alt-right symbol, Pepe the Frog. Until the 2016 election, Pepe the Frog was just known as a sad frog but like many memes, it grew far beyond it’s original purpose. There seemed like there was a Pepe for everything. Eventually, he went from Sad Pepe to Anti-Semitic Pepe. While Pepe was going through this transition, Donald Trump did not hesitate to take part and his supporters loved it.
He also memeifed his attacks on his political opponents with nicknames. You still hear the terms “Little Marco”, “Lying Ted”, and “Crooked Hillary” all of the time. Rather than arguing ethics, experience, or really anything else. Donald Trump made slogans for people’s persona that voters would remember.
Now another way people look at it is Donald Trump made himself the meme. Before his campaign he was on TV shows, in movies, and even had his name of sky scrapers. Then when the election came around and when he started to have more outrageous comments and actions. Donald Trump got free media coverage because how could you not run a story on how a presidential candidate made fun of a disabled man?
In the end, we got Donald Trump as the Republican nominee and eventually as the President of the United States. By this theory, we elected a living meme to the highest political office in the world.
The DNC’s Treatment of Progressives
Of course, Donald Trump can’t take all the credit for his victory. We have to look at the utter failure of the Democratic Party. Progressive from all over came to the support of the populist democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, but during the primaries they left feeling cheated. While Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote, she had more than ninety percent of the super delegates, which were decided by the DNC not the voters.
Then wikileaks came out showing that Hillary was fed questions before the debates and given unreleased information about the Sander Campaign. Recently Brazile, a former vice chair at the DNC, has came out confirming some of these leaks along with bringing additional information to light.
Jordan Charito wrote in an article published by CNBC:
In her book, Brazile, the former DNC interim vice chair who fed questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in advance of a 2016 Democratic Primary town hall, explained how she uncovered the joint fundraising agreement struck between the Clinton campaign and the DNC in August, 2015 — before any caucuses, primaries, or debates — that not only allowed the Clinton campaign to essentially funnel money designated for state parties and the DNC back into its own coffers, but gave it stunning control over staffing, strategy, and finances at the “neutral” DNC.
There ended up being a major distaste for both candidates. So much so that many people voted third party or wrote in ‘Bernie Sanders’. The Berniecrats did not unite with the rest of the democrats. They were divided.
All of this made people feel that they had the choice of ‘the lesser of two evils.’
Russian Influence
It is now factually know that Russia did influence the election through online advertising, but we do not know how much of an affect it had nor do we know if the Trump campaign had any direct ties to the scheme.
This is an extremely complex and still developing story but we also know that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, had a meeting an individual with ties to the Kremlin along with Paul Manafort, who has recently been charged for money laundering during the special counsel investigation. We know from released emails that the individual supposedly had dirt on Clinton and that Donald Trump Jr. was interesting in getting this information. Rick Gates has for work with political officials in Ukraine.
If something that comes out during Manafort and Gates trials that would connect Donald Trump to Russia, we would have had over a year with an unlawful president and more to come. Luckily for American democracy, ignorance is bliss and we have not been cheated until evidence arises directly tying an elected official with a foreign power.
We have one year to the next congressional election and three more for the Senate and Presidency. We can only hope that the next election will give us some confidence about the state of our nation.
