Farewell, Mr. Trump
3 min readJan 21, 2021
As of noon Eastern yesterday, Donald Trump is no longer the President of the United States. There's always a weird feeling whenever the leader of your country changes, especially after a few years of headlines, quotes, and opinions being hammered into your head, but this time around the changing of the guard seems much harder to get used to. "Return to normalcy" is the phrase a lot of people will surely use, and I'd be tempted to use it too if I felt that 'normalcy' was a much better alternative than the paranoid chaos of the Trump administration. Besides, even with a career politician back in the Oval Office, nothing looks normal about the federal government or the people that comprise it, at least not compared to this time four or five years ago. I suppose the reason why Inauguration Day is so unusual this time around is because it feels like the end of an entirely different story than was intended for outgoing Presidents.
Typically, when somebody becomes President of the United States, it is the logical conclusion to a decades-long legal resume, during which time they rose through the ranks from lawyer to state congressman to representative to senator, and so on. When looking at Donald Trump's life, however, his presidency seems more like a period of weirdness, a step away from an accomplished career in business, entertainment and real estate into an incredibly turbulent and ultimately short-lived stint as an amateur politician. And yet this late-stage political misadventure will ultimately become the most widely known, studied, and discussed chapter of Trump's life, much more so than what he was previously already world-famous for. No longer will people think "businessman" or "The Apprentice" when they hear Donald Trump's name. Instead, the first things that come to mind will be his iron-fisted immigration policies; his promotion of conspiracy theories and falsehoods; his hostility towards all but the most loyal members of his Cabinet, Congress, and the press; his two impeachments, including one brought about after he encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol; his botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and the cult of personality that manifested around him because of his unorthodox roots and approach. Maybe they might come to think of his successes with foreign policy and the economy, but these are greatly overshadowed by the long list of controversies that defined his term in the White House.
What, then, will become of Donald John Trump in the years after his presidency? His political tenure is much too important to be treated as just a footnote of his business career, but many Americans may also be interested in quickly forgetting about the national traumas he unleashed and/or exacerbated. It seems as though a doomed fate awaits Donald Trump's legacy, a fate not unlike those you read about in Ancient Greek tragedies... but maybe American academics and historians will find it in their hearts to forgive the former President of his many mistakes. I suppose it all depends on how he acts after leaving the White House; will he be remorseful, regretful, or otherwise haunted by his presidency, or will he continue to defend himself all the way to the grave? I want to watch Donald Trump's post-presidential life very closely, for it will offer much-needed insight into how a man with no political experience thinks and acts when he thrusts himself into the national spotlight and steps out of it a completely changed human being.
I think I will personally miss the chaotic pizzazz that underlined the Trump administration. It may not have been pretty, tidy, or formal in any way, but from an entertainment standpoint, it was incredibly rich and fun to watch, even if stressful as all hell. I know saying that downplays the all-too-real scars that Trump inflicted on the less fortunate people of America, and those should definitely not be ignored, but I believe the next few years will allow time for those scars to heal, even if it happens under the boot of another career politician in Joe Biden.
Farewell, Mr. Trump, whatever you were.