… Usually when presidents win, they seek to reach out to the political opposition — at least rhetorically — to build a coalition with which to govern. Trump never made that outreach in any significant way, talking often about unifying the country but making clear the gulf between the two partisan sides would need to be crossed by a bridge the Democrats need to build. In office, his policies have been a mix of traditional Republican priorities and the cultural red meat he pledged in the Republican primaries.
All the while, he’s continued to run against the elites and the establishment and Democrats. The media — positioned as the opposition from Day One — is the “enemy of the American people,” according to one tweet. Democrats are “obstructionists” blocking his agenda (ignoring the splits within his own party which preventing him from passing everything he desires). The elites are seen in the “deep state” that’s running the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. There’s an always-at-war-with-East Asia feel to the Trump presidency, and he’s leveraging partisan hostility to Democrats to expand that conflict outward. CONT.
Philip Bump, Washington Post