How Did America Get Trump? Trumpism and What Comes Next. Friday's Edition.
The Long Chain: American Populism. Series 30 #3
In mid-June 2026, the national polls all pointed one way. Only about 36 percent of Americans approved of Trump, and 58 percent disapproved. Democrats led by about seven points on which party should control Congress. Trump’s movement controlled the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, yet most of the country had turned against it.
How does a movement that just won the presidency, Congress, and the courts lose the public this fast, and what happens next? The answer is the last set of links in the chain of traditional, Embedded America culture, trying to hold on to a way of life that no longer exists. Wednesday’s Edition ended in 2001, when the anger of traditional, Embedded, white Americans at a country taking on new values and growing less white had been organized into a political machine. The missing piece was a leader.
