Trump began his victory speech hitting the kinds of conciliatory notes you would expect from Trump reading from a teleprompter. He praised Hillary Clinton, saying, “I congratulated her and her family on a very very hard fought campaign. She fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.” The crowd, unsurprisingly, didn’t know what to do with that.
Then Trump moved on to hit the exact notes that bad pundits were waiting for. “Now it’s time for America to bind its wounds of division. To all Republicans and Democrats and Independents across this nation I say that it is time for us to come together as one united people. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans,” Trump said.
And then things went off the rails. We got a preview of the forces Trump will unleash on the country: Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Sessions, Chris Christie, Michael Flynn. A parade of horribles that was only missing Pepe the Frog.
It’s hard to imagine a more disingenuous speech from Trump, who ran as a divider, speaking solely to a white base and basing his entire campaign on racial resentment and rage. Nothing about Trump’s campaign suggests that he wants peace and prosperity for all Americans, or anyone else for that matter. What he wants is revenge—and he won the election promising to get it.