Whether a Donald Trump presidency happens, Trump has already happened, and it is now part of being an American to translate him, wherever you may go

Answering Trump questions is now part of the baggage of travel outside of US

For the American traveler in the summer of 2008, Europe was a happy wonderland of people wanting to share their congratulations on the rise of Barack Obama, which everybody took to signify something marvelous about the US character.

That’s changed.

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The wonderland has turned to waste, under the long shadow of a new political celebrity, who boasts all the global renown of the current president but apparently none of the inspiring qualities. On top of threatening to wreck the constitution and what’s left of the world order, Donald Trump has seriously harmed the ability of American citizens to pass unmolested through foreign lands by questions along the lines of, “[expletive], seriously?”

During two recent weeks of peripatetic family time, it was the same at every table and bar, in every cab, in every square. The question of Trump, and whether he could win, popped out as soon as my Americanness did.

“Should we fear the worst?” a British border control agent asked me, smiling ironically, my blue passport under his hand behind the book-thick glass. Then, with the same smile: “Are we going to have to slip something in his tea?”

It was the first time I’d heard a border control officer crack a political assassination joke. “I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” I said. Stamp.

Usually my nonagenarian father-in-law, who left Paris in the exodus in a car filled with eight, only wants to talk about one of the wars, one of the big wine years, or one of the amazing new ways I have found to vandalize his mother tongue.

This time I hadn’t even kissed his cheeks before he started in on Trump. What is going on in America, he wanted to know, standing with effort on his deck in Brittany, the bags still in the taxi, dog yelping at kids yelling. Was it true that Trump might win?

Let’s talk about a big wine year, I said. In fact, let’s test one. Immediately.

Whether a Trump presidency happens, Trump has already happened, and it is now part of being an American to translate him, wherever you may go, just as it is now part of being British to decode the Brexit vote, wherever you stood on that.



It does not matter that you, personally, may not support Trump, or may not believe that Trump can win. Saying that Donald Trump will likely not be the next president of the United States is the same as saying that Donald Trump might be the next president of the United States.

The cabbie driving us to the station in St Brieuc, as soon as he heard the accent: “Et alors le train?”

Confused, I told him the train didn’t leave for 45 minutes and we had plenty of time.

“No, Trump!” he said. I had misunderstood him not only because a Bréton saying “train” sounds a lot like a Bréton saying “Trump”, but because he had posed the question so instantly, so urgently. He told me France had certain immigration problems of its own. Great.

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The groom’s stepfather at a Camden wedding seemed to take a mild perverse pleasure at America’s spectacle of a political season and had to pop the Trump question.

“Oh well, anything can happen, can’t it?” he concluded, with as close to a twinkle in his eye as they can mean when they say that.

What to say? Without claiming to hold the answer, one grapples with the question. I may have told people that I thought Trump would not win the presidency. I may have added that I also once thought that he could not win the nomination. I may have told them what they already knew: anything can happen.

One of the many privileges of being American is that wherever in the world you travel, you meet people who know a lot about the United States, who can conversationally come to you as you physically came to them.

Next year maybe somebody will ask about Hillary Clinton.