Trump's MAGA Mortal Sin Against the American People

Trump was punished for sinning against the great American Dream
Janet Daley
Sat, November 7, 2026


The president may have wrapped himself in the flag, but he failed to understand what it means to be American - NurPhoto

This was not all about the price of petrol. Whatever you may have heard, last week's tumultuous events in the United States were more than a protest at the pumps, or even rage at the price of eggs. Which is not to say that the cost of living was not a big factor in the cataclysm.

But it is necessary to understand that, for Americans, a rise in the cost of goods which are essential to a functioning life is not just a practical problem: it is an existential threat.

The reason that you, or your parents, or your grandparents came to America was to "better themselves", to be free from poverty or the low expectations of their social position in the old country, and most importantly, to ensure that the next generation – their children – would be better off than they were.

Any circumstances, particularly those that arise from political decisions, which undermine that intention are unforgivable. They are a sin against the great American dream.

This can be quite difficult for Europeans – who have largely retained their paternalistic attitudes to class in spite of generations of supposed meritocracy – to grasp. For Americans to find themselves less affluent or financially secure than their parents expected to be is not just disappointing or infuriating. It is shameful.

Trump's electoral cataclysm is not explained by high prices alone - iStockphoto/eyecrave productions

If they can justifiably attribute the blame for this disgrace to elected political leaders, their fury is boundless. So yes, the cost of living was a considerable factor in the rout of Donald Trump's Republicans. But it was more an expression of moral outrage. American voters had been robbed of what should have been their birthright: self-improvement and proud independence.

There was another, less tangible, dimension to this repudiation of the Trump presidency. Alongside their profound Calvinist belief in material success as a sign of fortitude and virtue, Americans are raised with a reverence for their country's constitutional principles, a reverence that is also difficult for Europeans – even those who live in revolutionary republics – to comprehend.

The critical separation of powers between the executive and legislature, which is designed explicitly to prevent autocracy, is drilled into schoolchildren in the way that Roman Catholic pupils might be taught the catechism.

That division of authority between the branches of government means that no member of Congress may serve in a presidential cabinet, which is why Marco Rubio had to resign his Senate seat to become Trump's secretary of state.

This is precisely the opposite of our system, where no one who is not a Member of Parliament may serve in Cabinet (David Cameron had to be given a peerage before he could be appointed Foreign Secretary).

America's Founding Fathers are still seen as the ultimate moral arbiters - Universal Images Group Editorial/Universal History Archive

Here, a prime minister with a parliamentary majority can pass a party programme into law, in the knowledge that some future government might reverse it. The American founders were determined to limit such power in a presiding head of state with a rigorous system of checks and balances.

Watching Trump barging through those boundaries, sometimes using tactical work-arounds, without a thought for the spirit in which they were conceived, was truly shocking. How could he have been permitted to undermine the integrity of the country's most fundamental institutions?

I found it difficult to believe as I watched his bullish defiance that, however desperate voters might be for solutions to intolerable problems, somewhere in the consciousness of America there were no misgivings.

You may have noticed, as a bemused British observer, how frequently US politicians refer with solemn reverence to the Founding Fathers for ultimate moral sanction. That is because the Founders, who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are secular saints.

Without them – and the sacred documents which they composed – the United States, and the possibility of being American, would not exist. To threaten the integrity of those principles is to undermine what being an American means: the only thing that it can mean.

Unlike other republics which were created by revolutions in existing countries with established populations, America was invented as an embodiment of an 18th-century idea. It is populated by people who voluntarily accept the social contract that it offers, which is articulated in the Constitution.

The behaviour of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has struck many as profoundly un-American - AFP/ROBERTO SCHMIDT

Yet here was a president who arrived at his first inaugural waving his fist in the air like a tinpot dictator, swore vengeance against competitors who were his legitimate opponents, became outraged when he discovered that he did not have absolute power, and shamelessly monetised the presidency to make himself, his family and his cronies even richer than they had been.

So where was the American patriotic conscience? Surely the redneck army which British broadcasting finds so irresistible as comic interview fodder could not be all that was left in a country which has the highest proportion of university-educated people in the world?

Watching the news coverage assiduously, you could still catch glimpses of it. When those ICE raiders with their masked faces descended on communities to seize what they assumed were illegal migrants from the streets (or from the workplaces where they were earning a living), there were often furious protests, not from the terrified "illegals" who were being led away in handcuffs, but from righteous onlookers who regarded this treatment as profoundly un-American.

What now? Trump and his sidekicks are on the attack, of course. In their panic and outrage, they are choosing some bad targets: labelling any suggestion that Americans might need some form of universal healthcare as communist – when the US has one of the lowest life expectancies in the developed world, and even affluent families fear that extended illness could bankrupt them. But the Democrats, drunk on their electoral triumph, may yet fall into factional disarray.

There is scope for a Republican to emerge for the next presidential contest. JD Vance, however hard he tries to distance himself, is implicated in this terrible presidency and so, unfortunately, is Marco Rubio.

My bet would be on the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, the only reasonable Republican left standing. But that discussion is for another day. The good news now is that America does remember why it was created, and why that still matters.