You Can Thank George W. Bush’s War on Terror for Donald Trump
The Bush administration’s war on terror meted out unthinkable violence in the Middle East while imposing an atmosphere of repression and nativism at home. It was the perfectly malignant petri dish for helping produce Donald Trump.
George W, Bush speaking at campaign rally in Burbank, CA in 2000. (Joe Sohm / Visions of America / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
In a three-part series on Jacobin Radio’s The Dig, Daniel Denvir interviewed journalist Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, about how the Forever Wars unleashed violence and wrecked countries across the world, very much including the United States.
The following is a transcript of the first part, edited for length and clarity. They discuss the bipartisan war fever after 9/11, the campaign of mainstream misinformation around the Iraq War, the deflating 2004 John Kerry campaign, and the symbiosis between neoconservatives and nativists in the brutal projection of American military power.
The Post-9/11 Psychosis
Daniel Denvir
For those who were small children or not even born yet, it’s hard to describe the generalized psychosis that coursed through American politics and society after 9/11. George W. Bush’s approval ratings went into the nineties. It was surreal. What was the immediate political and social aftermath of 9/11 in the United States? And how did it shape who Americans are and how they think about their country and the world?
Spencer Ackerman
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