Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with William McKinley
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/23/why-donald-trump-is-obsessed-with-william-mckinley
Trump’s knowledge is thin, but his instincts are sharp, and if he picked the wrong individual he nevertheless picked the right era. McKinley sprang from an age when the United States’ relationship to the world was fundamentally different. It was a time of trade barriers and colonial wars, a time before what political scientists call the “liberal international order.” Trump grew up in the shadow of that order and came to resent it enormously. His attraction to the nineteenth century seems to derive from his desire to be free of liberal internationalism. But, in reaching back to that past, what sort of future is he steering toward?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/23/why-donald-trump-is-obsessed-with-william-mckinley
Trump’s knowledge is thin, but his instincts are sharp, and if he picked the wrong individual he nevertheless picked the right era. McKinley sprang from an age when the United States’ relationship to the world was fundamentally different. It was a time of trade barriers and colonial wars, a time before what political scientists call the “liberal international order.” Trump grew up in the shadow of that order and came to resent it enormously. His attraction to the nineteenth century seems to derive from his desire to be free of liberal internationalism. But, in reaching back to that past, what sort of future is he steering toward?