“It’s only four years,” groaned a senior British official — shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. The thought process was clear. America’s allies had to hold their breath for the duration of the second Trump presidency. Eventually, the old America would return.
A year later and the mood has shifted dramatically. In his now famous Davos speech, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, asserted: “We know the old order is not coming back.” That take is increasingly common. The new conventional wisdom is that the Trump presidency is not a temporary aberration. On the contrary, Trump represents profound forces in America that will not disappear when he leaves the White House. There will be no going back to the status quo ante — either in the international arena or in the US itself.
But, like any conventional wisdom, this new view deserves scrutiny. As Trump’s behaviour becomes more and more indefensible, both at home and abroad, a genuine backlash is finally under way. That backlash could gather force — and eventually culminate in a wholesale repudiation of the Maga movement.