One suspects that Trump himself does not realize how far he has drifted from the original source of his appeal as someone who is not connected to a reigning power structure and may lie and even cheat but does not traffic in the usual political B.S. Now Trump is trying to create his own power structure. And, even if one accepts that in his self-delusion Trump really does believe the election was somehow rigged against him, he also says lots of other things that he self-evidently doesn’t believe.

There is little doubt that Trump genuinely believes that the United States has no interest in being at odds with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and no business getting enmeshed in the Ukraine conflict. But now that Russian atrocities in Ukraine make that view broadly unpopular, Trump does what any conventional politician would do — pretend that his view is something else, and ludicrously assert that as president he would be much more confrontational with Putin than the Biden administration, including threatening the launch of nuclear weapons…

But so far isn’t actually that far — and history has a way of catching up. In December 2020, I wrote a column noting that Trump belongs to a long line of politicians who have used appeals similar to his to rise to prominence. At the malevolent end this includes figures like Joseph McCarthy and George Wallace; at the benign end it includes figures like Ross Perot. All of them struck themes similar to the ones that vaulted Trump to power — that America is facing decline because of the duplicity and cravenness of political elites, arguments often laced with xenophobia. All of them for a time vaulted to prominence as the tribune of ordinary Americans disgusted with conventional politics. All of them tried comebacks once their period of peak power waned. None of them succeeded. Trump is unique in that he rode his populist appeal all the way to the presidency. He’s already surprised me with how much relevance he continues to hold. But nothing in history suggests that he can retain this influence all the way to 2024.