The Trump Show Is Ending. The Machinery Behind It Is Not.
A diminished Trump does not mean a recovering democracy. We first have to admit what collapsed.
To watch President Donald Trump in 2026 is to witness a man in stark decline. The Trump of 2015 was an energetic and boisterous force for right-wing populism, savaging his opponents with glee and nastiness. The reality TV king could reduce a person into a caricature with a single word. Who can forget his crude “Pocahontas” epithet against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, designed to both denigrate her as a fraud and delight his racist supporters?
Trump’s first administration was a barrage of TV-ready chaos. Attacks on journalists, morning tweets that upended global relations, lengthy press conferences designed as cage matches, and ugly episodes that Trump would treat as though we were living through a TV miniseries. Unsatisfied to leave the COVID-19 pandemic as the crescendo of a grim first term, Trump went out with a bang, staging an insurrection that pushed American democracy past the brink.
The presidency of Joe Biden was rendered in the American consciousness as little more than an underwhelming season with a bad guest star in the ongoing Trump show. The affectless, hollow leader appeared to be wasting away in front of our eyes as his administration armed a genocide committed by Israel that came to define his entire tenure, alongside the horrific collapse of national abortion rights. The best parts of Biden’s legacy could be quickly undone by a conservative Congress.
Trump laid waste to the diminished Biden, whose faculties seemed so far behind the former president’s own that the American public was ready to re-elect an openly unhinged leader rather than entrust itself to a figure who looked ready to collapse at a stiff breeze. That the would-be “transitional” President Biden refused to exit stage left until the last possible moment only made America resent him more, seeing his character as less distinct from Trump’s than they were led to believe.
Dispensing with replacement Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris would prove easy work, especially after an assassination attempt that created not only the most iconic image of Trump ever captured, but among the most iconic images in the history of American presidents. A bloodied Trump stands triumphant after dodging a would-be fatal bullet, where his response was a confrontational “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The race was over. Trump transitioned from insurrectionist to fearless leader.
Time to start the next season.
Something was immediately off, and the emerging second Trump administration wasn’t the product Americans believed they were buying. This new President Trump seemed diminished. His boisterous rallies wound down. His energy level dropped as he struggled to stay awake in meetings. His ever-ready vocal projection was replaced by a sort of whisper-speak that demonstrated nothing of the authority Americans were accustomed to seeing from the president.
Worst of all for Trump, the myth of an unbreakable base has begun to crack. Trump was never wildly popular with the American public, but could rely on a base with such fanatic devotion that some would describe it as a cult. To them, Trump was a religious figure. Without the magic of performance he’d mastered for decades, the con was obvious.
Trump was not a real isolationist, but a militarist willing to sell restraint while pursuing regime-change war. Trump wasn’t going to end Israel’s genocide, but continue to arm the rogue state. Trump wasn’t going to push prices down, and couldn’t be bothered to take the affordability crisis seriously because it had no impact on him. The political act he performed to win the presidency was now exposed as artifice.
Talk about a dreaded Trump third term was replaced as even the president himself seemed too tired to keep up the charade. Stalwart former defenders from media mogul Tucker Carlson to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene turned viciously on Trump, making the American Right clear it had been swindled. Carlson went so far as to apologize for misleading the public. (A likely cynical move to advance his own ambitions.)
The Trump show we’ve watched for over a decade is reaching the final act, but there is no relief in sight.
American democracy remains in freefall as each branch of government continues to erode. Trump’s lackeys continue to push on every restraint remaining in the now competitive-authoritarian U.S. system. Oligarchy has run so amok that Americans can’t even conduct local-level democracy without outside money seeking to poison the bench that leads to federal office. Opportunistic politicians across the spectrum take advantage as faith in the two-party system spirals into freefall.
The average American has little ability to influence their own government, as extreme partisan gerrymandering locks in party control of Congress and politicians answer to dark money interests that spend more than everyday Americans ever could. Americans have become tangential to their own government.
We may be reaching the finale of the Trump show, but we’ve passed another finale, whether or not we realize it: the end of the democratic era.
The U.S. is no longer a liberal democracy, and it was only so for a brief period of time during the 20th and 21st centuries. That doesn’t mean we can’t write a brand new chapter of democracy, but we must begin by acknowledging the former’s close.
President Donald Trump didn’t destroy democracy, even if that narrative is most convenient. He pried open the holes we’d been ignoring for decades. He sped up a process already in place. Former President Biden did the same, albeit to a lesser degree, as did President Barack Obama before. As did President George W. Bush. Executive power expanded presidency over presidency in ways big and small.
The American story of democratic decline represents a system failure beyond the reaches of any political party, even if one party sprints down the road to fascism while the other walks more slowly.
Our new chapter could be one of American fascism. But it could also be a chapter of renewal, whereby an engaged population wrests control of its government and rebuilds a better politics.
The Trump show may be ending, but the machinery behind it is only getting stronger. If Americans want a democratic future, they will have to build one sturdier than the fragile foundation both parties pretended not to see collapsing beneath them.