In the United States, Trump’s diversionary theatrics and early failures in Congress kept off the front pages a bonfire of social and environmental regulations as well as a purge of liberal judges from the federal bench that continued in the background with little resistance and that promised to play out for decades. When thwarted by Congress, Trump resorted to executive orders and emergency powers, as had presidents before him, though with a radical, institution-shaking appeal in justification “to the people” rarely heard since the New Deal. Internationally, the unconservative revisionism of the hard right was evident in Trump’s questioning or pulling back from previous American commitments— the Iran nuclear deal, world climate accords, the Western alliance itself. Rather than standing up for liberal democracy and universal values, he praised authoritarians: China’s Xi, Russia’s Putin, Saudi princes, the Philippines’ Duterte. Rather than follow every administration, Democrat or Republic, since 1945 and align Americanism, Westernism, and universalism in an avowedly virtuous trinity, the Trump right detached Americanism as justified and defendable on its own.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "In the United States, Trump’s diversionary theatrics and early failures in Congress kept off the front pages a bonfire of social and environmental regulations as well as a purge of liberal judges from the federal bench that continued in the background with little resistance and that promised to play out for decades. When thwarted by Congress, Trump resorted to executive orders and emergency powers, as had presidents before him, though with a radical, institution-shaking appeal in justification “to the people” rarely heard since the New Deal. Internationally, the unconservative revisionism of the hard right was evident in Trump’s questioning or pulling back from previous American commitments— the Iran nuclear deal, world climate accords, the Western alliance itself. Rather than standing up for liberal democracy and universal values, he praised authoritarians: China’s Xi, Russia’s Putin, Saudi princes, the Philippines’ Duterte. Rather than follow every administration, Democrat or Republic, since 1945 and align Americanism, Westernism, and universalism in an avowedly virtuous trinity, the Trump right detached Americanism as justified and defendable on its own." in the context of "Edmund Fawcett, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition (2020), p. 348" to mean that wisdom is timeless.