‘The Trump Effect’: The internet is warning the rest of the world about the immediate aftermath of Trump’s re-election
It's more like a disease.
Donald Trump has been re-elected, and the internet has words to say. All across X (formerly Twitter), users are warning the rest of the world about the “Trump Effect.” What is the Trump Effect? The Trump Effect is a term for the uncanny way that Trumpian rhetoric infects political discourse around the world.
Following Trump’s example, politicians and civilians alike are emboldened to adopt harmful rhetoric and deploy it across the globe. “Effect” might not quite be the right word—it’s really more of an ideological disease.
And it’s spreading.
A Canadian X user tweeted that the Trump Effect has already made its way to Canada, citing the racist interaction they had with a customer who told them to “return to Haiti or the Dominican Republic or wherever you’re from.” According to the OP, this is the first time in their life that they have been on the receiving end of such xenophobic rhetoric. As a Canadian, it is unthinkable. As an American, it’s par for the course.
The Trump Effect is emboldening American racists as well, as another X user points out. The video included in their post shows a MAGA-clad Trumper shouting in the face of a Black woman while using threatening body language. One could make a legal case for assault here, but sadly, that’s not even the most troubling thing about this video. In a stitch with the video, a user points out that violent rhetoric towards Black Americans became a deeply disturbing norm the morning after the election. Thousands of Black men, women, and children awoke to racist text messages on their phones, telling them that they would soon be enslaved to “pick cotton at the nearest plantation.”
Around the same time at the University of Texas, Trumpers were holding an in-person display. Bearing signs saying “women are property,” and “Homo sex is a sin,” two men paraded around the campus, evidently emboldened by the rhetoric of the candidate they no doubt helped elect into office.
Mainstream news was critical of Trump’s recent Madison Square Garden rally, which featured an appearance from a comedian who likened Puerto Rico to a “floating pile of garbage.” While some Latinos who had voted for Trump in the 2024 campaign wished to withdraw their vote after the remark was made, the GOP was able to court a high number of Latino voters into their political fold. According to the internet, the Trump Effect was again to blame.
One X user listed what they perceive to be the biggest Trump Effected hypocrisies, which include white women voting for a man who would strip reproductive rights away from their descendants, and supposedly morally conscious Christians who voted for an adjudicated rapist to hold the nation’s highest office.
What is The Trump Effect at its core? One X user outlined the symptoms, but not the cause, describing the Effect as “misery, chaos, division, negativity, and disgust.”
For another, the cause was simple. The Trump Effect is what happens when a populace normalizes “being the worst version of oneself, and being proud about it.”
The term isn’t relegated to social media either, as mainstream media also uses the Trump Effect to describe the phenomenon. As reported by Politico, the Trump Effect is in full swing around the world. According to New York Times reporter Andrew Higgins, The Trump effect is being embraced by “like-minded populist European politicians in Germany, the Netherlands, Serbia, and elsewhere,” all of whom are eagerly awaiting Trump’s return. The Trump Effect has America on her worst behavior, and sadly, wannabe autocrats and nationalistic civilians will likely follow her troubling example.
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