Professor Hanna E. Morris published the opinion piece We Need a Media 2.0 to Cover Trump 2.0 in the Earth Island Journal.
In the midst of the November 2024 US presidential election and what is now often referred to as the start of Trump 2.0, several reporters lamented with deep frustration: Why is it so difficult for Americans to remember the horrors of Trump’s first presidency? Is it a coping mechanism, after years of turmoil, including a deadly pandemic beginning in 2020 and a violent insurrection at the Capitol in 2021? Is it willful forgetting?
In my new book, Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power, I argue that after Trump’s first electoral victory in 2016, the four years that followed were cordoned off by many public officials and national news outlets as a mere political mirage. Trump 1.0 is so difficult to recall, because his presidency was assumed to be an extreme, but only momentary, blip within an otherwise exceptional national history.