A magazine reporter assigned to cover Donald Trump's pre-inauguration "victory rally" had an intrusive thought that plagued him throughout the event.
Asawin Suebsaeng, a senior political reporter for Rolling Stone, attended the twice-impeached convicted felon president's rally Sunday at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., and he found that he kept involuntarily scribbling “this is hell, we live in hell, I’m in Hell” over and over.
"The jubilant Village People aside, this is a scenario that we were raised and taught in our schools to believe was not practically or legally possible in our time," Suebsaeng wrote. "This is, we were assured at school, something that occurs in Europe, especially in bygone decades of empire, world wars, and global cold war. Maybe it’s something that unfolds during the democratic backsliding of Latin American nations, particularly the poorer ones. The Middle East. The Philippines. Other places we can’t locate on a map without cheating or a hint, and in countries and regions we can barely deign to pronounce correctly."
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"Not here," he added. "At least that’s what we were told again, and again, and again, and then again."
Given what Trump did in his final year in office during his first term, Suebsaeng wrote, a second term should have been unimaginable.
"Openly working to steal a presidential election you lost and then causing American civilians to die in the process was once considered universally, permanently disqualifying in modern America," Suebsaeng wrote. "Now? What can you do but laugh. It’s clear to everyone willing to honestly examine the thought that the American ideal came with a massive and unspoken asterisk. From now until the end of time, we will never not be the country that allowed the host of Celebrity Apprentice to bring us to the brink of democratic and constitutional hemorrhage."
Trump and his team boasts that he mounted the “greatest political comeback” in American history, a claim that disgusts Suebsaeng.
"They are not entirely wrong — though there is a casual depravity to talking about it, like it’s part of a Friends-replacement TV show that Trump used to star on, instead of the abomination that it is," Suebsaeng wrote. "But no matter how venal or fascistic Trump is, he was never the sole author of this violent tragicomedy that we’ve endured for a decade, and will continue to endure for years. One morally vacant aristocrat could not have accomplished today on his own."
Trump's comeback is the result of a collapse and failure by every major institution, the reporter wrote.
"This is all happening because everyone — every one — who was supposed to protect the American people from this failed in the most miserable, unforgivable ways," Suebsaeng wrote. "It was a catastrophic top-to-bottom failure that many millions of people at home and abroad will be living with, now and long after Trump is no longer leader of a nominally free world. Every institution you may have believed had value revealed itself to be for-sale or out-to-lunch."
