For US president Donald Trump’s first state visit to the United Kingdom in 2019, 100,000 people turned up on the streets of London to protest. In 2025? It was 5,000. I would not take this as evidence enough alone of his rehabilitation in the popular consciousness – we can only divine so much about the world by how activists behave – but it is a robust start.
“Is Donald Trump cool, actually?” asked GQ magazine earlier this year. In 2023, the Financial Times vaunted his “irresistible comedic value”. There is a shift happening. It is detectable in trace amounts in the liberal media – even the Atlantic and the New York Times demonstrate flashes. You may notice it in casual conversation. And anyone who reports from the front lines of the internet – whether on X or murkier forums like 4chan – will tell you that the further left you head on the political spectrum, the more you will find young people praising Trump as a kind of cheeky subversion of expectations.
Somewhere in recent years, hating Trump became evidence of millennial cringe – remember those pussy hats and all that Hillary valorisation? The kindest thing you could describe it as is passé. And what if you interrogate yourself – can you excavate the same passionate intensity the man previously inspired? I suspect that those who once opposed him with incontrovertible vehemence may start to quietly climb down.
Perhaps the final push necessary in this great 180 has come. In the wake of the Gaza ceasefire deal, liberals who were previously aghast at the president and his indefensible circumnavigation of political norms are wondering whether he is so bad after all. The most interesting thing about arguing for Trump as a deserving recipient of the Nobel prize is that it is not a contrary thing to suggest at all. In fact, the prospect of a better option for the accolade in 2026, if the ceasefire holds, is so slim that it is hardly worth considering.
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And just to add to that particular chorus: lasting peace in Gaza would be nothing short of remarkable. Motivations be damned, give him credit.
And then? Enough. Defending the Trump administration is still littered with moral hazard: whatever you think of illegal immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics are not coherent with the principles of modern western democracy. His disregard for institutional checks and balances does not just set a worrying precedent; for him to be so willing to endanger basic functions of the state is evidence of poor character. Meanwhile, has everyone forgotten about how he encouraged a run on the Capitol by deranged conspiracy theorists on January 6th, 2021? They might be cringe, but maybe all those “No Kings” protesters have a point.
Take the moral dimension out of it, and the instinct to reimagine Trump as not such a bad guy becomes even harder to defend, somehow. Cast your mind back to the nauseating display between Trump, JD Vance and Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the White House. Vance’s impertinence is one thing. The idea that Trump and his vice-president have threatened to abandon Ukraine, reneged with the promise of security in the end, only then to offer partial assurances and friendly meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin, is dangerously destabilising. And what is destabilising on Europe’s eastern frontier is destabilising for the rest of the Continent.
Why else, by the way, would British prime minister Keir Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, French president Emmanuel Macron and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte spend so long pining for the president’s approval in increasingly embarrassing acts of supplication? Europe’s security more or less relies on Trump’s good favour at the moment (that is, we should hasten to add, as much Europe’s fault as Trump’s). So, for those guys, rolling out the red carpet is sensible realpolitik. For the rest of us? It’s not necessary to reimagine the president as a stand-up guy. Certainly not when he hangs the prospect of Ukraine’s security over the entire Continent like a sword of Damocles.
I am not surprised this rewriting of recent history is happening. One of the most useful cliches about people is that they have short memories. The last thing the president did was good, ergo the president is good. This is an uncharitable reading of the human condition and the absolute best explanation for whatever is behind the Trump popularity shift. You might call it poor intellectual discipline.
There is also a slippier, more damning explanation. Politicians, like everyone, are subject to trend cycles. And Trump is just about to crest the wave of subversive favourability. When he wins that peace prize – which he should – there will be a host of quiet retreats, polite niceties about how he was never so bad, and how he should be treated well by history. As though the man is not an unpredictable renegade smashing his way through institutions and politeness codes. And we will be here, quietly offering moral licence to a man who poses an existential threat to Europe. All because it became a cliche to care?
