America’s long national nightmare is almost over. President Joe Biden will leave office (and politics) forever at noon on Monday when Donald Trump is sworn in for a second term. The vibes are different this time. Trump is more popular than ever. The incumbent geezer is despised. What’s left of the #Resistance is exhausted and exhausting. Fair-weather fans have fled in droves. The pussy marchers and the boycotters are decimated; corporations and celebrities no longer cowed into submission. One gets the sense that some of Trump’s former opponents might be feeling a little embarrassed by their behavior over the past eight years, as they should be. There’s hope for change again.
There’s also been some performative shrieking—among Democratic politicians and the journalists who support them—about the fact that big-name corporations and their CEOs are writing huge checks to Trump’s inaugural fund, just as many of them wrote huge checks to Barack Obama and other Democrats over the years, just without all the shrieking. But these powerful individuals are no longer afraid of the anti-Trump resistance; some are even calling out the rank hypocrisy.
“Funny, they never sent me one of these for contributing to [D]emocrats,” wrote Open AI CEO Sam Altman in response to a letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) demanding that he and other tech executives explain the “rationale” behind their donations. Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta (formerly Facebook), and Microsoft were among the firms who contributed $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund either directly or through personal donations from their CEOs.
“The stigma of a Trump donation, which was out there to some degree eight years ago, is no longer there,” said longtime Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard in an interview with Politico. The inaugural fund and its affiliated super PAC could haul in as much as $250 million, or about $1 billion less than the Kamala Harris campaign raised (and spent) during the campaign.
Gone too is the stigma of appearing on stage with Trump. Before the ceremony was moved indoors due to cold weather, tech leaders such as Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Apple CEO Tim Cook had accepted invitations to join Trump on the dais during his inauguration. Shou Chew, CEO of the Chinese spyware platform Tik Tok, was also invited as the future of the controversial app hangs in the balance. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said wealthy executives would be attending as “supplicants,” an acknowledgment of “surrender” after Trump “broke the oligarchs.”
In 2017, several mainstream musical artists—Elton John, Garth Brook, and Kiss, among others—reflexively turned down offers to perform at Trump’s inauguration festivities. Not this time. Country music legend Carrie Underwood, who will sing “America the Beautiful” at the swearing-in ceremony, said she was honored to be invited “at a time when we must all come together in the spirit of unity and looking to the future.” Other mainstream acts, including Rascal Flats and Gavin DeGraw, are also scheduled to perform. So are the Village People, despite endorsing Kamala Harris and threatening Trump with legal action to stop playing their hit songs “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.”
Victor Willis, the last surviving member of the original group, defended the decision in a message to disgruntled fans. “We believe music is to be performed without regard to politics,” he wrote on Facebook. “Our song Y.M.C.A. is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost.” At a pre-inauguration rally on Sunday night, Trump joined the band on stage and showed off his iconic dance moves.
The new vibes have permeated the cultural landscape. Saturday Night Live opened its pre-inauguration episode with a sketch making fun of Rachel Maddow and MSNBC for their obsessive and overwrought Trump coverage. Time magazine’s latest cover features Trump looking formidable as ever while defiantly clearing off the Resolute Desk alongside the words, “He’s Back.” Several notable sports figures, including boxing legend Mike Tyson, NHL player Evander Kane, and former NFL star Antonio Brown, were also expected to attend the inauguration.
The so-called Women’s March, meanwhile, was a rather pathetic and poorly attended affair after attracting more than a million people in 2017. Organizers estimated that this year’s protest, rebranded as the People’s March, would draw 50,000. It almost certainly drew fewer attendees—the Washington Post reported that “thousands marched” without disclosing a more precise figure.
“The time to express outrage in that way has passed,” said Vanessa Wruble, who helped organize the original march and spoke to Politico by phone “from the animal sanctuary she now operates in Joshua Tree, California, where a double yellow-headed Amazon parrot named Hot Pants squawked in the background.”
Most Americans are just as eager to tone down the anti-Trump hysteria and give the new president a chance to govern. According to a CBS News poll released over the weekend, 60 percent of Americans said they are feeling optimistic about the next four years with Trump as president. Democrats, meanwhile, are in disarray. The Pelosis and Bidens are feuding like a couple of middle-school girls. Just 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the party, down from 49 percent in 2021, according to another pre-inauguration poll from CNN.
The massive swing reflects the public’s immense frustration at being lied to for years about the state of Biden’s cognitive health. The extent of the cover up is finally starting to come to light now that Biden is (almost) out of office for good. A New York Times report published Friday revealed how Biden’s inner circle “recognized his frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged” and went to considerable lengths to conceal his decline from the public.
Trump returns to White House stronger than ever, with more allies than ever. America is on the verge of being fun again. The joy is back in town.
