TikTok, It's Trump Time
The grotesque social media site is a potent vision of what lies ahead as the American Experiment faces a defining test of its strength
Noon (ET) January 20, 2025
Donald John Trump is the TikTok of American politics – trashy, powerful, and addictive.
Like the social media platform, Trump has coarsened life on Mr. Musk’s current planet, downgraded discourse, and made the meaningless meaningful.
Yet this self-obsessed hustler from Queens, this liar, chiseler, conspiracist, and traitor to the Constitution in a few short minutes will be sworn in as America’s 47th President. This Draft dodger and denigrator of wounded warriors, who with fake solemnity laid a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, will again be Commander-in-Chief.
You’ve got to give the blonde devil his, though. He pulled off the most improbable comeback in U.S. political history, and he is arguably more famous today than anyone who has ever lived save for Muhammad and Jesus.
Trump has triumphed. No way to sweeten a drink that is so bitter for so many. But democracy, it has been said ad nauseum, is messy. An optimist could argue that Trump is like one of the tyrants of Ancient Greece, brought in to fix a system gone or going off track.
Not all of his instincts are wrong. Taking seriously the threat from China, streamlining a ridiculously wasteful federal government, and steering clear of foreign adventures are not crazy ideas. But before Trump has once again plopped behind the Resolute desk, he has undercut such goals by surrounding himself with rich guys beholden to China (as he himself used to be) such as Musk and mega-donor Jeff Yass, whose firm has a 15% stake in TikTok parent ByteDance. By appointing the erratic billionaire Musk and millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, a venture capitalist with a questionable track record, as waste czars. By musing about taking Greenland by force.
Trump is not a small “d” democrat. That was clear on January 6, 2021. He aspires to be the center of a Putin-style oligarchy in which all the billionaires bow down and land grabs are destiny. This aspiration has bubbled (or babbled) to the surface with his aforementioned designs on Greenland and his musings about annexing Canada.
On Inauguration Day, we find ourselves on the edge of uncertainty, and who knows where Trump will take us.
God save America.