Donald Trump is enjoying something he has never experienced: a presidential honeymoon. The period of harmony began at 5:34 a.m. on November 6, when the AP called the election, and has continued through early December. Trump is more popular than ever, voters are more confident about the future, and the president’s opponents have been, at least temporarily, stunned into silence and paralysis. The moment offers the president-elect an opportunity for a successful start to his second term. That was not the case last time.

Trump was on defense almost immediately after the 2016 election. Despite winning handily in the Electoral College, he had lost the popular vote, opening paths for Democrats and the media to question his legitimacy. The Democrats blamed Hillary Clinton’s defeat on Russian meddling and social media misinformation. Resistance was the order of the day.

Nor did Trump’s résumé, personality, and affect make for a calm transition. At that point, Trump was an outsider’s outsider, a political novice who had rocketed into the stratosphere with no experience or preparation for the job. He relied on Beltway insiders to guide him through the transition, and these insiders often did not share his agenda or trust. It took Trump more than a month to choose a secretary of state, for instance—and Rex Tillerson turned out to be, let us say, ill-suited for the job.

By Inauguration Day 2017, Trump was ensnared in the Russian collusion pseudo-scandal. He was below 50 percent in the Gallup poll. Protesters marched in the streets. The effort to delegitimize his presidency and his movement did not stop. Trump fought back, of course. But his counterpunching further polarized the electorate.

The situation today could not be more different. CNN’s Harry Enten was the first to observe that the 2024 election is a 21st-century rarity in that most of the country actually accepts the result.

In 2000, the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. In 2004, conspiracists said voting machines in Ohio helped Bush defeat Kerry. In 2008 a different set of conspiracists said that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the presidency. In 2016 the left-wing conspiracy mongers said Trump was a Russian agent. In 2020, Trump said Democrats had used widespread fraud to boot him from the White House. While none of these theories had merit, they all contributed to a climate of mistrust and suspicion.

That climate persists, to be sure. Yet few people deny the legitimacy of Trump’s 2024 victory. And part of the reason must be that Trump won the popular vote, and with close to an outright majority.

There is also the fact of Trump’s new popularity. During his first term, Trump did not rise above 47 percent job approval in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. His disapproval rating was consistently higher than his approval rating. He was the first president not to reach 50 percent approval in the Gallup poll at any point in his term.

Yet four years of Joe Biden caused the electorate to reassess Donald Trump. Voters discovered that they liked him better than before. On Election Day, according to the Fox News Voter Analysis, Biden’s approval rating was 42 percent. Trump, by contrast, had a job-approval rating of 52 percent.

Polls since the election have shown that the public continues to view Trump favorably, if by narrow margins. The Trump transition is more popular still. For example, a November CBS poll found that 59 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the transition. That is what a honeymoon looks like.

Indeed, Trump’s popularity is nothing short of remarkable. Consider that he achieved his current stature after two impeachments, two federal indictments, two civil judgments, one state conviction, another state RICO charge, two assassination attempts, and the most unrelentingly negative media coverage in modern history. Such a catalogue of nasties would leave most politicians in a ditch. Not Trump. He didn’t just revive his career. He defined a political epoch.

How did he do it? No doubt Trump’s record looks better to voters when compared with Biden’s incompetence and policy perversity. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the economy enjoyed growth and higher incomes without inflation, the southern border was secure, and the world was stable. Biden presided over record inflation, record illegal immigration, and the collapse of deterrence in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Israel. Biden’s age and physical and mental condition became impossible to hide, and his replacement on the ticket did nothing to separate her record from his own. As Biden shuffles off the stage, voters recognize that they made a mistake four years ago. Trump benefits.

Trump also benefits because over the past year he became, quite unexpectedly, a figure of sympathy and even fun. His daily appearances outside his New York City trial for business fraud highlighted the disparity between the justice system’s treatment of Republicans and conservatives and its handling of President Biden and the Biden family. Trump portrayed himself, quite reasonably, as the target of lawfare and selective prosecution. He was transformed, in the eyes of many, from an agent of corruption into a victim of corruption. And when the assassin’s bullet grazed his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania, he responded vigorously and courageously.

Meanwhile, Trump displayed a lighter and more sympathetic side to his personality in his appearances at a police officer’s funeral, at a Harlem bodega, at a rally in the Bronx, and in countless long and frank interviews on popular podcasts such as Joe Rogan’s. His silly YMCA dance became a cultural trope. By the end of the campaign, when Trump worked the drive-through line at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania and donned a safety vest and rode a garbage truck in Wisconsin, he was not only having more fun than his opponent. He was taking on symbolic meaning as the irreverent, fearless, and shameless champion of working class, traditional America, thumbing his nose at an insulated, ineffective, and politically correct establishment.

The sense that Trump’s win is not just personal but represents a broader rejection of the progressive left contributes to the public’s optimism. CBS found that since the election, a higher share of voters considers the economy to be performing well. In December, the University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment jumped to its highest level in eight months. A separate survey of business leaders found that they were more excited about the economy than at any point since 2020.

The Democrats, for their part, have faded into the background. The party has no leaders. Biden and Harris are barely visible. The Democrats in Congress are consumed with internal battles, and with determining the direction of their party. Other Trump antagonists, such as the hosts of Morning Joe and the prime minister of Canada, have made the trek to Mar-a-Lago, seeking a rapprochement with the once and future president. The permanent bureaucracies in Washington wait uneasily for Trump’s arrival.

These are happy holidays, then, for the president-elect. Yet he must know as well as anyone that every honeymoon comes to an end. And at some point, the Trumpmoon will end, too.

Photo: AP Photo/Heather Khalifa

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