A Cultural Icon

If you watch NFL football, you may have noticed something unusual. Players on four different NFL teams did the same little hip swivel dance after big plays.

It wasn’t anything obscene. In fact, you had to look closely to realize they were celebrating. What they were doing is called the “Trump dance.”

Donald Trump often performed this dance at his rallies when “YMCA” was played over the loudspeakers. Now it’s being imitated on football fields and by sports teams all over the world.

This is evidence of how Donald Trump has transcended politics to become a major cultural influence. And there’s some irony here.

During the first Trump administration, the president got into a major dispute with the NFL because left-wing quarterback Colin Kaepernick was disrespecting our country by kneeling during the national anthem. Trump was furious and called him out.

At the time, many NFL players rallied around Kaepernick. Now they are rallying around Donald Trump.

Trump becoming a cultural icon has tremendous impact and is politically powerful.

The Karl Rove GOP establishment and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal do not understand the moment we are in. Nor do they understand the president-elect’s agenda.

They desperately want to force Trump to return to the Romney/Ryan model, to retreat back into the “business as usual” version of the Republican Party. That’s not what the American people voted for.

It’s worth remembering that the GOP establishment fought hard to put Ronald Reagan back in the box and to make him conform to the ways of Washington. That’s where the plea of conservatives to “Let Reagan be Reagan” came from. Reagan’s political instincts were far superior to those of the so-called “professional politicians.” So are Donald Trump’s.