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Trump took his father’s modest low-rent real-estate empire and turned it into one of the most iconic brands on earth. He built a tower at the center of the world and put his name on it. He succeeded at real estate and then transitioned into media, to the point that the name “Donald Trump” was synonymous with the 80s. (American Psycho, Back to the Future, the Wikipedia Page “Donald Trump in Music”, “You’re Fired!”).
After all that Trump ran for President, of the United States, president, with no political experience, and achieved the most shocking underdog victory maybe ever in American history. He then made in 2024 the greatest comeback in American political history since Nixon. And is probably the most consequential President since Nixon, if not since FDR.
“Replacement Level CEO”? Look at the objective facts of this man. Fred Trump owning some apartment buildings in Queens did not put Donald Trump on a guaranteed collision course with Michael Jackson and Mohammed Ali.
I sometimes feel as though the perception of TDS and “the MAGA cult” has created this third strain middle wave Trump revisionism that has to somehow desacralize him into being just some guy. Well, let’s not exaggerate, we have to be reasonable and acknowledge Trump’s flaws, he’s just a man after all… In some sense the TDS people have a more accurate view of Trump’s importance. “Replacement Level”? Trump is a Great Man of History. Acknowledging that doesn’t preclude us from discussing his failures in the same way we can acknowledge that Napoleon gave too much preference to his family or that Washington was actually mediocre at tactics. But Trump is undeniably a great man. And we’re fascinated by him.
Is that the same as James Bond? Trump is certainly a character that represents a huge domineering vision of the future. Maybe that vision doesn’t speak to you specifically, but it has completely changed the arc of American right-wing politics. Trump inspired hundreds of millions of people with a new vision for success. Maybe that’s not the same as James Bond, maybe the media category is a separate field and Jason Bourne and Liam Neeson are all derivatives and we still haven’t moved on from Sherlock Holmes. The sex(-less) appeal is all in video games now and Mario and Pikachu aren’t ideas of the Renaissance Man.
But in the real world the 2020s are full of colorful men-of-action, the fascination of the Tech CEO, scrying not the CCP but Xi Jinping, “Putin’s War,” the rise of the streamer and “content creators” personalized individuated “influencer” brands. The 90s was more obsessed with the corporate archetype than we are now (The Matrix, Fight Club, Work From Home didn’t exist, what happened to all the boy bands?).
After all James Bond is just a media image, he doesn’t exist, he is one archetype bubbling up through the collective unconscious by whatever arbitrary and random process that happens. He says more about the 50s than the 90s. But there are lots of figures like Trump who speak to the 2020s and they don’t point to a culture lacking in ambition.
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