If you’re old enough to vote in the United States, then you’re old enough to remember a time when Americans of all political stripes liked Donald Trump. A public figure for most of his adult life, a businessman with a taste for luxury, and a showman who embodied the “American dream,” Trump appeared in television shows and movies because people enjoyed seeing him. For decades, he was an American icon with universal name recognition, a global brand, and even a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Then he moved into the political arena, and everything changed. Actors, musicians, and politicians who had once jumped at the chance to be photographed with him pretended they had never met. Writers and entertainers who had always praised him for his generosity began calling him filthy names. Television networks that had made boatloads of money from his goodwill with the public started slandering him as a “wannabe dictator,” a “Nazi,” and a “threat to democracy.”
What happened? Donald Trump dared to challenge the political status quo. By publicly questioning the economic and foreign policy decisions of the Establishment Class in Washington, D.C., he became an existential threat to a system that has long worked against the interests of the American people.
