The second time’s a charm for President-elect Trump — at least when it comes to an election win getting him the establishment recognition he has always sought.
Trump has received a display of homage at home and abroad since winning November’s contest over Vice President Harris. It’s the kind of public pomp that eluded him after his shock victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The nature of this acclaim is eliciting an unusual level of glee from Trump — a man who biographers say has never quite left behind the outer-borough imprint of his upbringing in Queens, N.Y., where his family’s wealth was never enough to buy him full entrée into the Manhattan cultural elite.
The accolades and invites have come thick and fast this time.
Trump was invited to France last weekend at the behest of President Emmanuel Macron. The main occasion was a ceremony marking the reopening of the ornate Notre Dame Cathedral.
The trip also included a meeting between Trump, Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the French president’s official residence, the Élysée Palace.
Macron told Trump it was a “great honor for the French people” to welcome the president-elect.
According to the Associated Press, “an actual red carpet was rolled out for Trump as Macron bestowed the kind of full diplomatic welcome that France offers sitting American presidents, complete with trumpets blaring and members of the Republican Guard in full uniform.”
While in Paris, Trump also met with Britain’s Prince William.
Their meeting lasted 40 minutes, during which the pair “discussed a range of global issues but focused on the importance of the UK/U.S. special relationship,” according to the BBC.
Trump also seemed to be lining up a more unusual — and controversial — manifestation of global acclaim when it emerged he had invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Xi looks set to decline. But CNN has reported that Trump’s team has also approached other leaders to join the festivities.
The names mentioned are cut from similar right-wing-populist cloth to Trump, including Italian premier Giorgia Meloni and Argentinian President Javier Milei.
But it isn’t just on the world stage where Trump is getting to enjoy the garlands of a newly-elected president in a more uncomplicated fashion than was the case eight years ago.
On Thursday, Trump rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange — an accolade that, somewhat surprisingly, he had never previously enjoyed during his decades as a New York-based property developer.
A beaming Trump announced this was “a tremendous honor.” The occasion was also intended to mark him being named as Person of the Year by Time magazine.
The magazine’s editors are always eager to emphasize that the title is intended to recognize the person who has had the greatest impact during the year, whether positive or negative. Infamously, Adolf Hitler was accorded the title — which was then ‘Man of the Year’ — in 1938.
But Trump didn’t let such caveats bother him, especially since this was his second time being named by the magazine. He was also Person of the Year in 2016. But it was “better this time,” he said.
As if all that were not enough, Trump is the object of affection of some business magnates with whom he has previously had rocky relationships.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos set off a media firestorm when it was announced just before the election that the Washington Post, of which Bezos is also the owner, would not endorse any candidate.
That was seen by many liberals as a preemptive bending of the knee by Bezos. Soon after the election, Bezos followed up by declaring that he was “optimistic” about a second Trump term.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who Trump had once threatened to jail if he ever returned to power, journeyed to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with the president-elect late last month. This week, it emerged that Meta will give $1 million to help fund Trump’s inauguration celebrations.
Elon Musk, reportedly the world’s richest man, was never a Trump enemy. But Musk has ascended to a new level, spending well over $100 million to help Trump get elected.
Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, will head Trump’s efforts to cut down on purportedly wasteful spending once the new administration is sworn in.
Trump appears to be enjoying the acclaim so much in part because it is taking place against a backdrop where criticism is relatively muted — at least by the standards of the past decade.
Liberals seem more dispirited than energized by Trump’s victory this time around — perhaps because his election win was not that much of a shock, nor shadowed by the allegations of foreign interference that swirled in 2016.
There are, to be sure, plenty of Americans both enraged and fearful about his coming presidency.
But the generally damp mood among the anti-Trump “resistance” suggests there will not be street protests of the scale seen in the massive Women’s March that took place the day after his 2017 inauguration.
There will, for sure, be controversies and tribulations soon to come.
But for now, Trump is more than happy to bask in the admiration of a domestic and global establishment that is seeking his favor.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
