Donald Trump is a Monument
Earlier this month, the hashtag #trumpisdead went viral on X, and the term “TRUMP DIED” earned millions of likes and views online. Anonymous left-wing social media accounts likely planted the rumor of Trump’s death, which similarly inclined journalists then amplified to create a “permission structure” to write about his demise.
What they don’t understand is that Donald Trump will never die.
Can a living man become a monument? Yes—if that man is Donald Trump.
Traditional monuments include grand examples such as the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Mount Rushmore, as well as simpler memorials that cities and towns erect to honor their founders or veterans. But monuments need not be inanimate objects.
Whether grand or humble, monuments are defined by presence – the concrete embodiment of people and ideas. Trump’s presence has been a phenomenon without parallel in American political history. He has withstood incessant attacks from the media, political opponents, former aides, false friends, and one-time confidantes. After losing a questionable election in 2020, his 2024 campaign sealed his status as a symbol of American persistence. Sneering journalists and influencers asserted that Trump would never be president again. Trump and 77 million voters made the commentariat eat their words.
To be sure, people seldom become monuments during their lifetimes. Public plaudits and recognition typically come with the passage of years and perspective of history. Trump is the exception to the rule. His monument was built on a movement. Trump led more than 900 rallies during his presidential campaigns, attracting crowds that ranged from a few hundred people to tens of thousands. At each stop, Trump’s MAGA followers felt his presence as full-body experience: the red, white, and blue rally stage; the iconic “Make America Great Again” red hat (“which can be yours for the low price of thirty-four dollars and ninety-nine cents!”); the tanned face and orange coiffure; and the “America First” and “Save America” polemics delivered bing-bing-bing to thousands of like-minded diehards.
“It’s the greatest show on Earth, a Trump rally,” said a man who traveled to 107 Trump rallies and hundreds of Trump events across the country. Such acts of devotion became common among followers of Trump, whose inspirational presence became its own source of truth about the country, unmediated by the cynical TV pundits, ‘woke bosses’, and other cultural highbrows who mocked his movement of “deplorables” and worked unsuccessfully to subvert it.
Neither the Left nor the establishment Right could tame the Trump phenomenon. The opposition has “retreated into the delusion that, if only Trump were gone, all their problems would vanish,” said political commentator Miranda Devine. But American political life will never be the same after Trump. For that reason alone, he is a living monument to the death of the old paradigm.
That fact seems to inspire murderous fantasies in the minds of those mourning the end of the pre-Trump status quo. After Trump survived the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, one third of select Democratic voters said they agreed with the statement: “I wish Trump’s assassin hadn’t missed.” Last month, two people were arrested in Washington, D.C. and charged with making death threats against the president. And then there’s the recent “Trump is dead” rumor, as his opponents self-soothe with fantasy.
Those on the Left seek to censor, cancel, or destroy what they don’t comprehend, let alone defeat. In 2020, they destroyed monuments to historical figures including Christopher Columbus and Federick Douglass. They also desecrated memorials to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant because they once owned slaves. In Boston, activists toppled a statue of Abraham Lincoln because it portrayed Lincoln kneeling over a former slave, even though the memorial had been funded by freed slaves. But these revolutionaries cannot erase history—for each monument destroyed, another will rise. The collective hands of millions from the Rust Belt and Bible Belt and Farm Belt continue to hold up Trump, today and for future generations.
History will memorialize Barack Obama as the first Black president, and Joe Biden as the enfeebled and infirm leader of the free world.
President Trump, today and for all time, will be the bloodied-but-defiant fighter who rose again to save America.
John J. Waters is a lawyer. He served as a deputy assistant secretary of Homeland Security from 2020-21. Follow him at @JohnJWaters1 on X. Adam Ellwanger is a professor at University of Houston – Downtown, where he teaches rhetoric and writing. Follow him at @1HereticalTruth on X.
This article was originally published by RealClearHistory and made available via RealClearWire.
