Pulitzer Prize winning historian Jon Meacham says Trump’s takeover of the Party of Reagan has no precedent in American history: “Donald Trump has managed to hijack an entire political party, and the pilots are asking why no one is on their side. The passengers are cheering for the guy who took over the plane.”

Meacham believes Trump’s hostile political takeover is unlike any other uprising in the past century. Henry Wallace, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Ralph Nader all launched failed insurgency bids from within their own parties, but those bids collapsed before they evolved into outside independent campaigns.

Trump’s takeover bid is different not only because he is succeeding, but also because the former Hillary Clinton supporter has swooped in from the outside and taken over America’s conservative party much like corporate raider Carl Icahn seized control of TWA in the mid-80s, stripped it of its assets and remade the airline in his own image.