The Trumpian epoch seems like an eternity, but it is now entering its final chapter. During the final two years of his reign, with Republicans clearly losing ground across the US, The Donald will be far weaker and likely even more disconnected from reality.

Even conservatives seem to be tiring of Trump’s lunacy, while some defenders, like the estimable Victor Davis Hanson, are already picking through the political chaos to find some meaning in the Trump era. Looking back at more than a decade dominated by Trump, there are clear successes, many failures and some truly ugly moments.

As in the Biden years, popular belief in democracy continues to erode. But it would be mistaken to follow the line taken by outlets like the Nation and the New York Times that Trump has killed the old constitutional republic. After all, many Democrats increasingly want to do this themselves, as they increasingly look to the autocracies of the Third World for their vision of America’s future.

You have to start with the basic fact that Trump was never popular – even in 2024, his candidacy was not widely welcomed. His approval rating rarely approached 50 per cent and now is lucky to break 40 per cent. He may have had fantasies of being a dictator, but his control of the GOP-led Congress was never absolute, and the courts – not just at lower levels, but also the Supreme Court, too – have restrained some of his repeated assaults on the Constitution.

The good

But was Trump’s reign all in vain? He can claim some real accomplishments, notably freeing the American economy from some regulatory shackles. US tech dominance is pervasive and has won him some converts in the tech world. To be sure, an inevitable bust in AI will weaken the speculative tech and venture-fund sector, but there has also been a modest but promising manufacturing revival.

Trump’s thuggish rhetoric has clearly left America more despised than ever, less popular than China. But America is also even more dominant economically than before his first term, particularly compared with declining Europe and Japan. Whoever follows Trump will likely have a good economic hand to play – hopefully more skilfully – though the looming debt problem is something neither party has tried to solve since the days of Bill Clinton.

In historic terms, Trump’s biggest impact may have been to accelerate the ascendancy of those parts of the country that supported him – Florida, Texas and parts of the Midwest. Even if the GOP is wiped out in 2026 and loses the White House two years later, the economic geography of America has changed, with the relentless rise of red America’s population and economic might.

Political power based in red states, as well as exurban, small-town and rural areas, will be greater by the time he leaves. These also tend to have far higher birth rates than the Democrats’ deep-blue cities. Middle Americans – Texans, Southerners, Plains residents, Utahans – increasingly constitute the country’s last bastions of family values. Radicals and progressives may do best in New York’s leftist strongholds, San Francisco, Seattle or Los Angeles, but these are far less likely to reproduce themselves.

This shift in geography and population also plays to another Trump achievement: changing the trajectory of American media. His crude attempts to curb his critics through executive action have been rightly kicked to the kerb, but his efforts helped boost populist revulsion towards the decidedly ‘progressive’ New York-Washington-Hollywood-Silicon Valley axis. The ideological monopoly of the increasingly discredited mainstream media, with reporters following the party line on such things as Russiagate and Covid-19, remains, but is now challenged by newbies like the Free Press, the Daily Wire, CBS Paramount, Joe Rogan and a host of independent publishers.

Hollywood is under assault from places like Fort Worth, Austin and Atlanta, where new studios are being built. The steady diet of wokeness will continue, as epitomised by the Academy Award winner One Battle After Another, something of a paean to violent left-wing terrorism. But we now see the rise of alternatives, such as Taylor Sheridan’s Landman, and a return to quasi-patriotic films like Top Gun.

Finally, Trump’s assaults on the university establishment have taken a toll on self-satisfied and robotically progressive institutions. The elite universities, notably the Ivy League, have been taken down a notch, as has the once-brilliant University of California, while students and talented faculty increasingly head to schools in the less ideologically homogeneous South.

The bad

After that, the record gets shakier. Trump’s record on controlling the border should stand as a great accomplishment, one welcomed by most Americans, including Latinos. But his appointment of posturing bimbo Kristi Noem to run the deportation campaign has ended up alienating many Americans, particularly in immigrant-rich communities. Trump’s dunderheadedness has squandered an opportunity to transform the historically white-dominated GOP.

On the international front, Trump also correctly advocated for American businesses and workers, but did so in such a crude way that many traditional ‘partners’, notably Canada and the EU, have been reluctant to back the US’s efforts against the lunatic Islamic Republic of Iran. His constant braggadocio and outrageous claims of success in the war have been followed by a failed peace effort brokered by a clearly outmatched JD Vance. Vance’s deluded belief that the Iranian version of the SS, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is a rational actor has provided an opening for Trump’s enemies, both in the establishment media and on the far right. It has also intensified the growing anti-Semitism that flourishes among a small faction once part of his coalition.

Perhaps most critically, Trump, particularly in his second term, seems to have lost his feel for the pulse of the country. Amid an inflationary economy first engineered by his even more inept predecessor, Joe Biden, he has focused instead on his own self-defeating search for revenge against anyone and everyone, including within his own party. He has not yet plumbed the depths of unpopularity achieved by Britain’s Keir Starmer or France’s Emmanuel Macron, but he is hardly a unifying figure.

The ugly

Now you get to who this man is and always has been. His narcissism knows no bounds, as evidenced by his desire to put his name on anything that isn’t nailed down. The insane insistence on building a White House ballroom does not play well with Americans struggling to pay their bills. His egomania resembles that of the Emperor Nero, who wanted to rename Rome Neropolis. What’s next: renaming DC as Trumpopolis? Americans are instinctive anti-monarchists, and Trump’s vainglorious extravagance is out of sync with his supposedly populist movement.

Many of his most ludicrous renamings – Gulf of America, Lake America and New America (once known as New Mexico) – will evaporate the moment the Democrats regain the White House. Once out of the way, the institutions that dominated the Obama and Biden years – radical non-profits and much of the tech oligarchy – will be quick to renounce their bromance with The Donald. Expect the denizens of wokedom, now in remission, to again be able to assert their cancerous ideas on DEI, Net Zero, transgenderism and anti-colonialist ideology.

Worse yet, the Democrats will seek to replace Trumpian retribution with their own. Even the usually sane James Carville has proposed that collaborators with Donald Trump’s administration be publicly shamed, suggesting they have their heads ‘shaved, dressed in orange pyjamas, and [spat] on’. Inquisitorial government will continue, and perhaps worsen, as promised by House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in what the left establishment darkly calls ‘deMAGAfication’.

Then there is pervasive corruption. Trump, particularly in his second term, seems determined to enrich his family and friends, particularly by appealing to the royal autocrats of the Middle East. Conservatives rightly made a big deal about Hunter Biden’s grifting off his father, but compared with Trump, Inc., he’s a minor leaguer. Eric Trump’s ‘advisory deal’ with a Florida drone-defence firm no more reflects his expertise than what Hunter Biden could offer Ukrainian energy oligarchs.

In addition, Trump’s shameless use of a presidential jet donated by Qatar – a consistent supporter of terrorism – is a bad look. Instead of making America great again, he just seems greedy and tilted towards big business, looking more like a Marxist caricature of a grossly bloated nabob.

But perhaps the worst aspect of Trump lies in his political legacy for his own party. After widening the GOP base to Latinos, black men and young people, he has now managed to alienate them. More critically, he has tanked among generally centrist and absolutely critical independents, falling from 43 to a miserable 26 per cent. Ceding the centre, the Republicans seem focused on narrowing their base to hardcore conservatives and resentful reactionaries.

By expelling dissenters in the primaries, Trump has cut off many of those politicians who could appeal to people beyond the MAGA base. Trump insists on making the election about him, not the wisest strategy given his poor popularity numbers. And he has left the party stuck with a successor in the thin-skinned and far-from-inspiring JD Vance.

Vance’s determination to have, as one writer put it, ‘no enemies on the right’, and his refusal to break with the conspiratorial nutcase, Tucker Carlson, will not broaden the GOP’s appeal. His seeming embrace of the nativist notion of ‘heritage Americans’ – people with ties to the early republic – seems a particularly daft strategy given 30 per cent of them are African Americans who are unlikely to ever vote for Vance.

This is certainly not a strategy that will work in future. Today’s list of the top 15 surnames in the US includes Garcia, Hernandez, Rodriguez, Martinez and Gonzales. None of these were common in 1790. And although Christianity may no longer be losing ground, Vance’s appeals to Christian nationalism also seem likely to alienate more Americans.

There is a potential escape hatch for the Trump legacy, and it comes from the Democrats. Trump has helped accelerate the Democrats’ rapid descent into mindless extremism, marked by declining registration and unpopularity with even their own voters.

The positions of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – which include nationalising key industries, defunding the Pentagon, abolishing the Senate and other constitutional constraints on Congressional power, as well as opening the border and downplaying the threat posed by Islamic terrorism – even make Trump’s rants against ‘commies’ sound reasonable. The DSA threatens to eat the Democrats through better organisation and more enthusiasm. Even the chameleon Gavin Newsom considers such DSA views ‘mainstream’; one doesn’t know whether to feel sorry for the socialists or the party. But it’s not a viable strategy when, according to recent surveys, Americans overall prefer capitalism to socialism by roughly four to one.

Donald Trump’s legacy lies not so much in a record of great accomplishment, but in his success in transforming American politics in ways that make sanity itself an endangered species. Yet, thankfully, America remains far more than its politicians. Our national greatness stems not from Washington but from our efforts to achieve prosperity, with feats of entrepreneurial venturing and the elixir of successful ethnic mixing. These assets cannot be destroyed by the awfulness of our political class, including Trump and those who now yearn to replace him.