This week, a video circulated on social media showing former U.S. President Donald Trump speaking at a public event, including a clip of him attacking Chris Christie, former New Jersey Governor and Republican rival seeking the party’s nomination for the 2024 election, in uncivil terms. Mr. Trump responded to an audience member who allegedly described Mr. Christie as a “fat pig” and commented on his appetite as well as amplified the abusive phrase several times. In doing so, the 45th President has once again dragged the bar for civility in an election campaign down to the nadir that it was at in 2016 and again in 2020 — both elections that Mr. Trump led for his party.
While the past eight years of Mr. Trump the President and presidential candidate have witnessed his multipronged attacks on his political opponents, minorities of all hues, women, and even other nations — famously alluding to Mexicans as drug dealers, criminals, and rapists — the true death of civility in the modern era of American politics began during the term of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
In a sense, the very presence of Mr. Obama, the country’s first ever non-white President, in the White House seemed to trigger an avalanche of resentment from White America, an unfortunate spectacle to which I had a ringside view while I was posted there as a Foreign Correspondent.
