Like him or loathe him, Trump’s going nowhere

He’s winning. President Trump is growing stronger and, slowly-but-surely, the country feels like it’s being reshaped in his image.

The potency of the opposition is waning as the American people gradually become desensitised to this new normal.

Seemingly each day presents a new outrage to confront, each insult or action more shocking than the last. It’s exhausting, bewildering and makes you want to switch off. But you can’t. He’s everywhere and so are the millions of people who believe in him with an almost religious fervour.

Polls say 42 per cent of Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing. That’s among the historic lows at this point of a presidency, but it still stuns me.

Just a couple of weeks removed from a Trump policy of wilfully separating children from parents at the southern border and placing them in cages, only 53 per cent of people here disapprove of his job performance.

How and why? It’s actually pretty simple. Trump voters see him carrying through his election promises to put America First. Those pledges included an extreme approach to border security, a discriminative immigration policy and fierce protection of the right to bear arms.

He’s also presenting a tough stance on trade to protect American workers and industry. Not only with rivals like China, but America’s closest allies in Canada and Europe.

Also, and this is key, Trump is close to confirming a second Supreme Court judge during within weeks. These are lifetime appointments, effectively ensuring a conservative leaning 5-4 majority in the nation’s top court for a generation.

The court will decide upon issues hugely significant to all Americans; divisive constitutional matters like abortion, equal rights for same sex couples, press freedom and gun reform.

This is big time legacy stuff. Even if Trump were to fail in his re-election bid in 2020 (I’m convinced he’ll win again, for what it’s worth), these picks will help shape the country’s future for decades. Trump has made repealing abortion rights a priority when selecting the judges. This alone is enough for many religious conservatives to overlook his questionable moral compass and casual relationship with the truth.

His supporters take pride in a rapidly growing economy and low unemployment. Critics point out 75 straight months of job growth under Obama’s leadership and say Trump simply inherited a robust, growing economy. His tax reforms were a major legislative win, but less than a third of Americans are seeing more money in their pay packets. His landmark North Korean summit was hailed as Nobel Peace Prize-worthy; others called it a photo op.

Divided

Indeed, the nation is uncomfortably divided right now because zero middle ground between people who love and hate Trump. So let’s look at what is upsetting the latter camp so much.

The recent child separations at the southern border were perhaps the nadir. But at various times during his tenure he’s referred to people in white supremacist groups as “very fine people,” to African nations as “s***hole countries” derided immigrants as “animals” and American football players as “sons of bitches” for refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest over social injustice.

From social strife we move to global matters. A climate change denier, Trump pulled the US out of the Paris agreement, and installed a coal industry lobbyist to run the nation’s Environmental Protection Agency. He has withdrawn from the internationally ratified Iran nuclear deal, taken the US out of the UN Human Rights Council and threatens to attack NATO at a summit just before he arrives in Britain.

Those who oppose Trump still hope the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election will lead impeachment and his removal from office before 2020. Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues to probe whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russia and whether he obstructed justice when firing former FBI director James Comey.

Trump denies wrongdoing and constantly seeks to discredit the probe as a ‘biased witch hunt’ (despite it yielding 23 indictments and five guilty pleas in one year).

That has been swallowed by fervent supporters and peddled by supportive media outlets. Trump has dented faith in journalistic institutions like The New York Times and The Washington Post, deriding them as ‘Fake News’ for reporting that has aided investigators. The free press, Trump says, is the “enemy of the people”.

The cumulative goal of the smear campaign is to ensure that, even if Mueller probe returns damning findings, Trump escapes censure. It would all depend on whether the Republican-controlled Congress would dare act and risk alienating the fanatical Trump base. Few are holding their breath.

Hopes that principled conservatives in ‘The Party of Lincoln and Reagan’ would push back against Trump seem laughable now. The Republican Party effectively belongs to Trump and the Democrats are proving limp in opposition.

Amid all of this political turmoil there’s a quote from The Lord of the Rings that always reminds me of my home in Shropshire: “Life goes on in the Shire, very much as it has this past age.”