At an event over the summer where I knew the vast majority of the attendees to be highly socially and politically progressive, a woman pulled me aside and told me she needed to talk to me about something. Slightly concerned, I asked what it was regarding. “Trump,” she said. Oh God, I thought, has she been offended by one of my columns? She then uttered six words that have been ringing in my ears ever since: “The thing is, I love him.”
This woman — who considers herself staunchly on the left of the political spectrum — went on to tell me what it was about Donald Trump that she found so compelling: his “punk” (her words) outsider status, his funniness, the fact he’s unafraid to say what he really feels, his anti-war, anti-establishment stances.
It might have been the most unexpected, but it was far from the only such conversation I’ve had with people on both sides of the Atlantic — and both sides of the aisle — as the election approached. And what all of them had in common was the change in the way that Trump was being discussed. To use a neologism that has already become a cliché: there had been, since 2020, a distinct vibe shift.