Trump wipes the smile off Obama’s face
By
Hugo Gurdon
December 18, 2024 8:00 am
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President-elect Donald Trump’s most striking characteristics today are clarity, confidence, and calm. This is extraordinary in a man renowned for chaos, confusion, and the thin-skinned hurling of demeaning insults. But it is a truth that needs to be acknowledged and accounted for to understand what we are witnessing as Trump prepares to resume the presidency.
His press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 16 revealed a man almost preternaturally at ease with himself, his mission, his domestic support, and his acceptance abroad. His tone was measured, even somewhat humble, despite some bragging. When he dismissed questions, as he justifiably did once or twice, it was not done angrily or in a way that looked petty but with an assurance that widened the gap between himself and his erstwhile adversaries.
The press asked questions almost deferentially, showing respect for his office and a quietude rooted in the magnitude of his political triumph and mandate. The spectacle was a stunning contrast with the media maelstrom of his first term, when the likes of CNN’s Jim Acosta, posing vainly as a modern-Danton or people’s tribune, treated Trump as though he were axiomatically as illegitimate a president as Hillary Clinton and others bitterly claimed.
But as the days and weeks of the current presidential transition pass by, the significance of the stunning electoral outcome on Nov. 5 is settling on Trump, the nation, and the rest of the world.
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