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Imagining 2030 Series

Looking Back at President Trump

Peter Apps is Reuters global defence correspondent. He is currently on sabbatical as executive director of
the Project for Study of the 21st Century (PS21).

It is a truth universally acknowledged that time flies faster as you get older. Even now in 2030, however,
it's hard to comprehend that it's already more than a decade since President Donald Trump -- by far the
most idiosyncratic president in recent American history -- left the White House following his first, only
and still phenomenally divisive term in office.

!With hindsight, historians and political scientists say his narrow victory in 2016 should not have been as

unexpected as it seemed at the time. Trump wasn't just taking advantage of the inevitable turn of the
political cycle after eight years of Obama, he was also riding a much broader trend of anti-establishment
feeling. He had been the Republican front runner for more than half a year before even that party's
establishment accepted what he was.

!The Democrats, for their part, try to avoid talking about the 2016 election. The increasingly brutal fight
between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders ran all the way to the convention, sapping enthusiasm on
both sides. When it came to the general election, the turnout just wasn't there.

!For the rest of the world, the wave of shock and popular ridicule verging on revulsion that greeted the

Trump victory was almost the polar opposite of the reaction to Obama's eight years earlier. The new
president found it almost impossible to get an invitation to any other capital at all. Indeed, it looked as if a
half a dozen or more liberal global leaders would boycott his first G20, but in the end most of them
ultimately made it.

!After his first never-to-be-forgotten major foreign trip to Japan, Trump largely avoided other ventures
abroad.
!Whether Trump himself ever expected to win is still hotly debated. Only after the election did he begin to
show any serious efforts towards considering who would receive some of the top presidential
appointments. Again, the ideological balance of his White House sometimes seemed to shift wildly
unpredictably. Initially, there was widespread speculation he would appoint neoconservative John Bolton
as his Secretary of State -- indeed, the former Bush-era ambassador still clearly believes he had been
offered the job.

!Then, much to everyone's surprise, came the announcement that Trump had asked John Kerry to remain

for another two years. Kerry lasted barely 3 months, resigning in a hugely public spectacle after what he
called the "most egregiously racist speech by the president too far.

!By the end of the first year, both critics and supporters were describing the Trump presidency "as much

spectacle as substance", although there was considerable disagreement on whether or not that was a good
thing.

!The man himself, some insiders complained, never showed much enthusiasm for governing. "We already
have a wall to keep Mexicans out," he announced in his first major post-inauguration comments on
migration. "All we need to do is electrify it. And I mean really electrify it." The comments prompted
outrage -- but nothing had actually been done before the 2018 midterms which were swept by the
Democrats, who took control of both the House and Senate and made it even more difficult for the White
House to push what agenda it had forward.

!The same was true of his talk of banning Muslims from entering the U.S. Barriers to entry for those with

joint Iranian nationality or recent travel experience to conflict affected countries were already on the rise
before Trump's unexpected victory. They would be tightened, albeit less widely than many had expected.

!The optics of Trump rhetoric in the Middle East were predictably catastrophic. The expected propaganda
victory for the jihadists, however, was less than many had feared -- in part because his perceived
xenophobia received such a rigorous response from so many other quarters. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in particular was so irritated by the U.S. president, he chose to ignore the issues of
Iran altogether in his 2017 UN General Assembly address, instead castigating Trump for using rhetoric
against Muslims that the Israeli leader compared to that of the Nazis.

!On the economic front, Trump was noticeably less controversial. It was noted, however, that his

administration appeared unusually focused on what would normally have been perceived as relatively
minor real estate-related legislation.

!Compared to 2016, however, his 2020 campaign seemed lacking in energy and some wondered whether
he really wanted the role. That was, inevitably, widespread speculation Hillary Clinton might run again,
but she ultimately chose not to.

!As we move into 2030, however, the 83-year-old Clinton is now finally back residing in the White House
-- but now, of course, as the mother of the president.