The World Is Getting Used to Trump
The calm, even optimistic, global reaction to his second presidency speaks to how the world has not only shifted its expectations of the US, but also become more Trumpy.
Will the second date go better?
Photographer: Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images EuropeWhen Donald Trump first won the presidency, the world had a bit of a freak-out. The French ambassador to the US melted down on social media. Germany’s Angela Merkel fretted that Washington was abandoning the international system it had built. The global elites of Davos lauded China’s Xi Jinping when he promised, risibly, to be the defender of an open, cooperative world.
Now, Trump is back, and he certainly hasn’t mellowed. Yet this time, much of the world is more calmly, even optimistically, awaiting his second term. That moderated reaction speaks volumes about how the world’s expectations of America have changed over the past eight years — and how the world itself has gotten more Trumpy.