The Real Power Of Donald Trump

February 1st, 2017 | T. Carter
trump power

Donald Trump is more than just the leader of the free world, he is a movement in and of himself. Using a single tweet or Facebook post, he can reach millions of Americans and make or break a single idea. If Donald Trump tweets a stranger's name, that stranger becomes famous overnight. If Donald Trump doesn't like the way mainstream media covers his policies, he can change the narrative in an instant. There has never been a more powerful man in American politics than Donald Trump. His very existence as an entity on the world stage is historic.

When Trump won on November 8, America became a different place. It had been building up for years, but with Trump's victory came the defeat of the mainstream narratives that helped put Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton into office. The same narrative that was supposed to make Crooked Hillary Clinton the 45th president failed, marking the beginning of something new and exciting. Deep blue Democrat states like New York and California couldn't compete with the tired and forgotten people of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio. Donald Trump's ability to reach millions more people than CNN, MSNBC and the left-wing media caused America's establishment to cave in. 2017 will be the worst year for mainstream media, with faith in their abilities to report news at 32% among Americans. CNN's penchant for chronic lying has sunk its ratings and credibility to the lowest level in its history, which will likely make 2017 one of the toughest years for the news network. All of this only makes the Donald Trump machine more powerful.

As an example of his extraordinary influence, over the past several weeks, Trump has sunk and raised stock prices for major American companies like Boeing and Ford simply by tweeting. This influence on stock prices didn't just start after his inauguration, it began while he was still in the transitional phase.

Shares of Boeing turned down 1% in premarket trade Tuesday, after President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that an order for the aerospace giant to build a new Air Force One should be canceled because of rising costs. Just prior to the tweet, the stock was trading unchanged.” - Tomi Kilgore, MarketWatch, December 6, 2016

Donald Trump's ability to make or break stocks is similar to his ability to break narratives and spread ideas to millions of people around the world without the help of mainstream news. All previous administrations have relied on the White House press corp and mainstream journalists to spread messages, but with his social media savvy, Trump and his team have delegitimized the status quo. The press corp and press secretary still continue to wield big influence, but now Donald Trump controls them too, making him yet more powerful and his ability to control narratives even greater.

Under the Bush and Obama administrations, executive power increased to historic levels with the signing of unprecedented numbers of unchallenged executive orders. Both Bush and Obama have left a more powerful executive branch for their successors, helping to make Donald Trump one of the most powerful presidents in American history.

But there is another side to this admirable aspect of Obama’s legacy. With the notable exception of torture, in restoring the rule of law, he did not actually renounce Bush’s extraordinarily broad vision of executive power. Instead, Obama sought to put it on firmer legal footing—sometimes with help from Congress or the courts, sometimes simply by articulating a legal justification for government actions.” - Elizabeth Goitein, Fortune, January 18, 2017

With his ability to bypass mainstream media and control the executive branch, Donald Trump is arguably the most powerful man in the world, not just in America. In retrospect, through the scope of history, he is arguably the most powerful person to ever live in the White House. His influence has spread outside the borders of the United States in ways that past presidents could have only dreamed of.

Trump has already been blamed by media and European establishments for energizing nationalists across Europe, like Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Frauke Petry. Even in Canada, the country's Conservative Party is in the middle of selecting a new leader, some of which appear to be mirroring Trump policies in their platforms. Trump's ideas and influence have spread outside American borders in ways Barack Obama's influence never could. As time passes, Trump may reshape the whole global landscape.

Widely expected to be a front-runner in France's presidential elections next year, Le Pen says Trump's victory boosts her chances of winning because it 'makes the French realize that what the people want, they can get, if they mobilize themselves.'

'Donald Trump has made possible what was presented as completely impossible,' Le Pen told CNN in an interview Tuesday. 'So it's a sign of hope for those who cannot bear wild globalization. They cannot bear the political life led by the elites.'” - CNN, November 27, 2016

Marine Le Pen is the leader of France's Nationalist Front, a party that has gained ground at a dizzying pace since 2014. In the face of the country's socialist policies and open immigration policies, Le Pen's rise shows a striking similarity to the rise of Donald Trump. Since Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Le Pen's party has steadily risen in polls while countries across Europe watched his rise to power closely.

In Germany, the leader of Alternative For Germany, Frauke Petry, has faced criticism and wide ranging comparisons to Donald Trump in the country's mainstream media. Her party's policies call for reduced immigration and a slow return to German independence from the European Union.

Just one day after Trump's inauguration, Europe's nationalist leaders gathered in Koblenz, Germany for a summit to discuss policy and Trump.

Across the European Union, politicians on the right-wing fringe have been invigorated by Trump’s victory, which has given them a chance to attract new supporters, build coalitions and argue that, despite the often glaring differences between them, they are all part of a movement with seemingly unstoppable momentum.

The most striking proof yet of that movement came on Saturday in the cross-section of far-right populists who met for the first time, at the AfD's invitation, at a convention in the German city of Koblenz. A day after Trump’s inauguration, the stars of the European right drew a direct line between Trump’s success at the ballot box and their own looming electoral battles.” - Simon Shuster, Time, January 23, 2017

Trump's reach and influence across the globe is easily measured by the amount of chatter coming from countries across Europe. Not only are nationalists meeting at summits and reaching out to their supporters with Trump-like policies, they're dropping Donald Trump's name directly, making it clear whose footsteps they intend to follow. With the capabilities of social media, Donald Trump's words and influence are going directly to many of Le Pen's, Petry's and Wilders' supporters. Of Donald Trump's 22 million Twitter followers, it's estimated that 30% of them live outside of the United States.

As his term unfolds over the next four years, Donald Trump will keep bypassing mainstream media to send direct messages to millions of Americans and supporters across Europe. Mainstream media will keep getting frustrated by their own irrelevance, but it won't stop Trump's ability to reach millions of people around the world. Another example of Trump's effective and unprecedented influence is the lack of influence Obama wielded during his stop in the UK to encourage Britons to vote against Brexit. Obama's influence and reach on the global stage was laughable compared to the influence Donald Trump has wielded in just one year.