Amid the welter of anguished analysis and punditry engulfing the airwaves after Donald Trump’s US election triumph, one simple sentence resonates. “This is not normal,” the University College Dublin professor Scott Lucas says on Newstalk Breakfast (weekdays) as he tries to articulate his despair at the direction his native country has taken, again.
Asked by Ciara Kelly, one of the programme’s hosts, to be specific, Lucas talks about the United States’ “trauma” over the past 25 years, and laments the rise of misinformation, before settling on his final answer: “What is not normal is the Trumpist period.”
One doesn’t necessarily have to share Lucas’s political outlook to agree with the thrust of his pithy assessment: these look like the interesting times threatened by the apocryphal Chinese curse.
Still, even with bizarre spectacles such as Trump inviting the martial-arts boss Dana White to speak during a typically meandering victory speech, some people endeavour to appear phlegmatic. The former taoiseach Bertie Ahern tells Kelly he’s “not surprised” by the former US president winning a second term, decrying the inaccurate predictions of the “opinion networks”: “Probably as usual they were all wrong. I don’t know why we bother doing them,” he sagely opines.
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In fairness, Ahern is alert to the disruptive potential of the result, particularly as the US Republican Party gains control of Congress. But while worried by some of the president-elect’s inflammatory language, he seeks consolation from Trump’s previous term of office. “He never does what he says. Most of it is just bluster,” Ahern says, unconvincingly. (Joe Duffy, speaking later on Liveline, on RTÉ Radio 1, expresses the same tentative hope, albeit more wryly: “He didn’t exactly campaign in poetry, but he’ll have to govern in prose.”)
What really concerns Ahern is the impact of Trump’s isolationist policies on the Irish economy. “We have to be selfish,” the former leader says, adding that he would be talking to Trump’s advisers “if I was in the position where I used to be”. Ahern sounds slightly wistful as he utters this phrase, though there have been more unlikely comebacks.
Even supporters of Trump acknowledge it’s a discombobulating period. “In the months ahead, hopefully things will calm down for the country,” the former Republican official Tom Del Beccaro tells Kelly. Despite his party’s win, Del Beccaro is in considered mood, observing that the defeated Kamala Harris was stuck with a “tough hand”.
Similarly, when talking to Audrey Carville on Morning Ireland (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays), Patrick Mara, the chairman of the Washington, DC, Republican Party, attempts to strike an optimistic note, suggesting that, while Trump speaks in hyperbole, “at the end of the day he will focus on jobs and the economy, and the border”. Hearing this, one is almost tempted to hope that, despite Trump’s threats and insults on the election trail, it will soon be business as usual.
Any such notions are quickly dispelled, however, by Kieran Cuddihy’s vox pop outside Trump Tower on The Hard Shoulder (Newstalk, weekdays). Broadcasting from New York City for much of the week, Cuddihy speaks to jubilant Trump supporters gathered outside his eponymous skyscraper, garnering opinions that run from the unpredictable to the batty and the borderline racist.
He first meets a man with a placard bearing the tasteful slogan “Kamala, you dumb b*tch”. Despite his sign’s profane sentiments, Cuddihy’s interviewee isn’t totally belligerent. In fact, he says he voted Trump because he could end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine – “We definitely want peace” – while adding that, as a person of black and Hispanic heritage, he didn’t previously vote Republican. If nothing else, it’s a crude example of the ostensible annexation of some traditional left-wing positions by right-wing movements, a trend that the author Naomi Klein has dubbed “diagonalist”.
Cuddihy also speaks to an exuberantly jolly supporter, knowingly calling himself “James Connolly”, who has also made the journey across the political divide. Between renditions of When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and shouts of “IRA all the way!”, James says he was a Trotskyist before becoming a Trumpist. “Today is liberation day,” he exults, his voice uncannily resembling Bill Murray’s stoned groundskeeper in the golf comedy movie Caddyshack. (Nothing but highbrow cultural references in this column.)
But, again, any temptation to see Trump’s win through a benign lens evaporates when Cuddihy hears from Colleen, who grows ever more exercised as she explains why a woman shouldn’t be president, complains about illegal immigrants and displays tenuous racial sensitivity with her exasperation at “this colour sh*t”. One can only imagine her mood if Trump had lost.
Cuddihy maintains an air of amused curiosity and animated engagement throughout these encounters, and indeed for his entire time in New York. Despite the convulsions around him, the host is clearly enjoying himself, so much so that Taoiseach Simon Harris’s announcement of a general election is almost treated as an afterthought.
Cuddihy sounds more animated discussing the decline of political centrism with the celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz – whose apocalyptic depiction of progressives rather eclipses his professed moderation – as well as with the Irish-born author Colum McCann, who’s far more thoughtful on the issue. Even as he repudiates Trump, McCann vigorously defends the right to hold contradictory opinions, joyfully quoting Walt Whitman’s American epic Leaves of Grass: “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
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It’s an oddly apposite line for explaining Trump’s electoral success, despite the conspicuous lack of poetic spirit ruefully noted by Duffy. Pundits across the airwaves agree that the Republican candidate attracted votes from diverse demographic groups once seen as natural Democratic constituencies.
The conservative radio host Jeff Kuhner is bullish when talking to Cuddihy about Trump – “He’s going to restore the American dream,” he crows; “it’s going to be 12 years of Maga rule” – but has a point about Trumpist dark populism drawing increased support across racial and socioeconomic lines. “We’re witnessing a new political coalition being born,” Kuhner claims, though whether women will be welcome in this movement isn’t discussed.
Either way, Cuddihy captures a snapshot of the febrile, fearful atmosphere gripping the United States as Trump prepares to rule once more. Time will tell if it’s an aberration or the new normal.
Moment of the Week
On Tuesday Ray D’Arcy (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) is in congratulatory mood as he namechecks the Irish music acts Kneecap, CMAT and Fontaines DC: “They’ve all been listed on the BBC Radio 2 prestigious Artists of the Year list.” (It’s actually Radio 6, but who’s counting?) Looking over the rest of the artists on the list, he notices one name in particular. “Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds stick out,” D’Arcy says. “All of the others, I don’t have their dates of birth in front of me, but I would imagine they’re all under 30 or thereabouts, whereas Nick Cave is 67.” Nearly right. He might have checked those dates: another listed artist, Kim Gordon, formerly of the US underground rock icons Sonic Youth, is 71. But, again, who’s counting?
[ Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon: ‘The word ‘icon’ is a little uncomfortable’Opens in new window ]
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