Mark Halperin

Well.

So cataclysmic doesn't necessarily mean negative.

It just means a big change.

It means a shock to the system.

And I stand by what I said.

I took a ton of criticism, as I suggested earlier, for saying that this would be cataclysmic.

Some because people saw it as something negative.

I just knew from having traveled the country and seeing the reaction to Donald Trump, both positive and negative, that this would be cataclysmic, that his first term, didn't know at that point it would only be one consecutive term, would discombobulate so much of the country, would shake things up so fundamentally.

And I stand by what I said that night.

I think as horrible as 9-11 was, as much as it impacted the city where I live, as much as it impacted so much of the country, I really don't think it had as profound effect in society and how people think about America as the election of Donald Trump did in 2016.

So he serves his term and then loses.

People can debate all they want about the 2020 election circumstances, the role of COVID, the role of changes in election laws because of COVID, the roles of the social media platform, the roles of how the country saw Trump's first term.

There's all sorts of debates about that stuff.

But what I do know is that after he lost and the assumption was he would not be back, that he was done politically.

That there was kind of a sigh of relief in blue America that said, OK, Hillary Clinton screwed that up.

He barely won the first time he didn't win the popular vote.

But now everybody's seen who he is and what he's like, and he'll never be back again.

The Republicans won't nominate him.

And if they do, we'll be so lucky as a Democratic Party to have Trump to run against.

And of course.