ABSTRACT
This chapter engages the contemporary crises of public health, the economy, and democracy in the U.S. during the era of Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic with an aim of using these aspects to build a foundational awareness of the potential futures of the nation’s politics and journalism after an era of overt authoritarian populism. The chapter begins with a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. and Trump’s chaotic and inept responses. What follows is a discussion of Trump and authoritarian populism to argue that Trump’s floundering fortunes in the context of a hotly contested 2020 presidential campaign triggered his chaotic and contradictory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, producing a crisis of democracy, but which led to a decisive electoral defeat of Trump by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, inaugurating a (potential) post-Trump era. Finally, the essay argues that both the U.S. presidential elections of 2016 and 2020 and the intense political struggles around authoritarian populism in the Trump era disclose the primacy of technopolitics for the future of democracy.
