Watching Trump at the White House podium yesterday, I saw another of his late-period, fat Elvis moments. He wasn’t just scrambling to recover the political power he lost last Tuesday. He both gasping for literal air and grasping for the thing that put him in front of us in the first place: his pop cultural power.
If there was ever a proof case for the idea that politics is downstream of culture, it’s Donald Trump. His ubiquity as a reality TV star showed up in focus groups as early as 2015, when a clear correlation emerged between viewers of The Apprentice and the false belief that Trump was fabulously rich, a business genius, an irresistible seducer of women, a role model for men, a walking, talking, money-making, hottie-banging demigod.
That show is over.