Donald Trump is a loser

As the expression goes, Donald Trump was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. With his penchant for spectacular confabulations, however, he might instead say he was born an inch away from home plate and was sure he invented baseball.

Factor in the three Supreme Court Justices on the bench, hundreds of other questionably talented judicial appointees Mitch McConnell pushed through, and one tax cut for billionaires, and Trump objectively remained a winner. Then the 2020 election happened. Because of the threat of COVID-19, there were more mail-in ballots this year than ever before, and a slower-than-usual tallying process. But now, a winner has finally, finally been confirmed, and it is Joe Biden. Although Democrats lost some House seats and have not yet taken back the Senate, Biden’s electoral college victory, combined with the largest number of votes ever received by a presidential candidate, marks an unmistakable repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. For the first time since the 2016 election, there is no way he can lie, ignore, or spin away this outcome. The verdict is in: Donald Trump is a loser. I’m going to type it again, since I was one of the people waiting to tweet that word at Trump in 2016 and never had the chance.

Donald Trump is a loser. Big league! The first one-term president in 28 years. Sure, he got more than 70 million people to vote for him a second time, and Mitch McConnell will likely remain the leader of a GOP-majority Senate, and it will take years, possibly decades, to hose Trump’s stench off of America. But the good news is it’s really happening and the hosing starts right now. Donald Trump is a loser. Say it out loud. Let those words fill the air. Feel the weight of their truth. Don’t let anyone tell you that Democrats not yet controlling the Senate diminishes this victory. Along with Trump’s loss, we will also be losing so much more. Here are some things, in no particular order, that America will now be rid of as a direct result of Donald Trump being the loser that he is. (What a loser!) We will lose the fascist cruelty of Stephen Miller, specifically in regards to Trump’s child separation policy at the southern border. While this administration’s strategy over the past couple of years has been to deflect blame by pointing out that Obama made the cages that Trump put separated kids in, Biden will undoubtedly favor non-barbaric policies, even if he doesn’t create a perfect solution right away.

We will lose Trump as a negative role model for children and adults. Despite Melania Trump’s anti-cyberbullying campaign, her husband has shown Americans that if you act like a big enough a-hole and never wonder if you might be wrong, you can triumph in any situation. It will take years to assess the trickle down effect of his piss-poor behavior. We may never know the degree to which Americans have subconsciously absorbed Trump’s antagonism and mirrored it in their daily lives. Trump will still be on terrible display wherever he goes now, whether it’s on his own TV network or, God forbid, back on the campaign trail for the 2024 presidential election. But he will do so as a rejected president. We will lose Trump’s sense of infallibility. Throughout his improbably lucky life, Trump has scarcely faced a consequence. Because Republicans have been eager to keep him in power, he has governed as someone who could and does and always will get away with anything. After a while, it felt pointless even to mention when Trump violated the Hatch Act for the umpteenth time by using his office for political gain. What is the opposition going to do, impeach him? (Again?) But Trump has been able to get away with everything throughout his life and career only because he has never been investigated with the scrutiny that comes with a presidency. As The New Yorker reports, Trump is now at the center of dozens of investigations and lawsuits that will take on a new dimension without the presumption of immunity that comes with being president. Social media platforms will have to treat him as just another public figure and not a head of state. The investigations will keep coming—hopefully, there will be a big one around Trump’s catastrophic coronavirus response—and Trump may be too tied up in court appointments to effectively campaign for office in 2024. The last thing we will lose, though, is the daily gaslighting—the insistence on an alternate reality that all those alternate facts reinforce. For years, many of us have pointed out when Trump says something demonstrably false, only for Trump and his supporters to respond by insisting that, no, it’s actually true, and we are Fake and Bad for even suggesting otherwise. This moment may not bring all of that to heel—some of Trump’s 70 million supporters will continue defending him until the end of days—but Trump’s false interpretation of reality no longer stands as America’s official position. Republicans in power used to put up a unified front to protect Trump’s alternate reality, but that is no longer tenable. A rift is now wending its way between those on the right who are willing to acknowledge the facts of this election, like Laura Ingraham, one of Trump’s toughest soldiers on Fox News, and those like Ted Cruz who are committed to the usual lie that it’s all an elaborate conspiracy against Mr. Trump.