Cohen: The ‘normalization’ of Donald Trump bodes ill for America

When Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he promised “a return to normalcy.” After the vanity, vulgarity, malice and unpredictability of Donald Trump, Biden represented, in form and substance, a conventional presidency.

In other words, his leadership would reflect experience, sacrifice, moderation and a commitment to consensus, all things the country used to want in a president, regardless of party. Call it president status quo ante, leadership before Trump.

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For the most part, Biden has delivered. He’s tried to work with congressional Republicans — successfully on rebuilding infrastructure, unsuccessfully on the border. He’s appointed talented judges and senior administrators, as diverse as the country itself. He’s respected the military, Muslims and women. He’s folksy, avuncular, modest and conciliatory.

There is that, as well as a sound legislative record, an effective response to the COVID pandemic, a return to international leadership and a surging economy with inflation falling.

Still, people are discontented. If polls are correct (unreliable as they are this early) voters prefer Trump and his travelling carnival of chaos. They blame Biden for just about everything.

To many Americans, Trump isn’t scary anymore. They recall a good economy until COVID derailed it. They like a president who kept out of war and got tough with China. For this, they applaud.

Call this is the normalization of Donald Trump.

It suggests that, well, he wasn’t so bad. To them, Trump was a centrist. They don’t associate him with radical shifts of policy. To essayist Matthew Schmitz, Trump was less “an ideological warrior than a flexible-minded businessman who favors negotiation and compromise.”

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In fact, Trump was no moderate on immigration, gun control, the environment and Obamacare, which he wanted to repeal. He wasn’t a moderate on abortion, constructing a Supreme Court to make it illegal. He wasn’t a moderate in his opposition to NATO, from which he wants to withdraw; his support for Vladimir Putin; his affection for dictators; his commitment to protectionism.

Yet we see, more broadly, a sense of resignation, as in, “Well, we can live with this guy.” Apparently Wall Street isn’t opposed to Trump. Didn’t those tax cuts benefit plutocrats disproportionately, and wasn’t his stock market wonderful, too?

Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, reflected this acceptance of Trump in remarks at Davos last month. “Take a step back, be honest,” he said, arguing that Trump “was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”

This is the woolly-minded, sycophantic voice of Corporate America. In the dead of winter, numbed by the alpine air, Dimon brought Donald Trump, the Abominable Showman, in the from cold.

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Some facts. Under Trump, the economy lost 2.9 million jobs, the federal debt went from $14 trillion U.S. to $21 trillion, illegal immigration increased. No matter.

And a second term would be worse. Vengeful, dictatorial and virtually unaccountable, Trump could do whatever he wants. Who knows what unreconstructed conservatives, ideologues, nativists and others could do (as they did with the Supreme Court) in a malevolent administration with a second chance?

This is what a self-interested elite does when it sees someone, anyone, whose election may be in its interest. In 1933 Germany, corporate interests were fine to have Hitler in power. They thought they could control him.

Dimon and others think Trump is acceptable now, so rather than denouncing him as a threat to democracy, which they should, they shrug. Inspiring an insurrection, trying to steal an election, found liable for sexual abuse, surrounding himself with losers, grifters and incompetents doesn’t move them. Oh, let Donald be Donald.

It may be the courts — which found this week he is not immune to prosecution for his actions as president — that stop him with a criminal conviction in one of his trials. For now, though, Trump is burying his past. All misdeeds, malfeasance and mistakes are forgiven or forgotten, and in the world without memory, he is just another politician seeking a comeback.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, a commentator and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

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