Trump’s 2015 campaign announcement made him the center of American politics

Evidence

On June 16, 2015, he descended the gilded elevator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination. His speech carried the incendiary line: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” From that moment onward, Trump became the central figure in American politics, which dragged global culture into his chaotic orbit. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 424

Categorization

• XREF: This is the culmination the book has been building toward — the ‘anti-omnivore’ figure whose blankness, extremity, and authenticity-by-contrast is a candidate for the era’s signature identity that Marx may have misidentified.