Trump went missing from the campaign trail last week because he contracted COVID-19 and was put into Walter Reed hospital. But Trump the populist has been missing a lot longer.
Donald Trump in 2016 ran against the Washington consensus on globalization and military engagement. In Hillary Clinton he had the perfect foil. Just as Boris Johnson would a few years later in the United Kingdom, Donald Trump broke down the electoral wall of support for his opponents by winning heavily in areas that had been hammered by globalization. This crumbling wall was the bill come due for parties on the left that had embraced globalization as an economic creed and “cosmopolitanism” as their moral ethos. Filmmaker Michael Moore memorably described Trump’s success in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as his win in the “Brexit states.”
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