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<h1 class="css-19v093x">The Unraveling of America </h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-1q5ec3n">Wade
Davis</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">rollingstone.com</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">19 min</div>
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<figure> <img
src="https://pocket-image-cache.com//filters:no_upscale()/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F08%2Ftattered-flag-nyc-skyline.jpg%3Fresize%3D1800%2C1200%26w%3D450"
alt="The COVID crisis has reduced to
tatters the idea of American
exceptionalism. Gary Hershorn/Getty
Images"> <figcaption>The COVID crisis
has reduced to tatters the idea of
American exceptionalism. Gary
Hershorn/Getty Images</figcaption> </figure>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<p><em>Wade Davis holds the Leadership
Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at
Risk at the University of British
Columbia. His award-winning books
include “Into the Silence” and “The
Wayfinders.” His new book, “<a
rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"
href="https://amzn.to/3kfgh2q">Magdalena:
River of Dreams,</a>” is published
by Knopf.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Never in our lives</strong>
have we experienced such a global
phenomenon. For the first time in the
history of the world, all of humanity,
informed by the unprecedented reach of
digital technology, has come together,
focused on the same existential threat,
consumed by the same fears and
uncertainties, eagerly anticipating the
same, as yet unrealized, promises of
medical science.</p>
<p>In a single season, civilization has
been brought low by a microscopic
parasite 10,000 times smaller than a
grain of salt. <a
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/covid-19/">COVID-19</a>
attacks our physical bodies, but also
the cultural foundations of our lives,
the toolbox of community and
connectivity that is for the human what
claws and teeth represent to the tiger.</p>
<p>Our interventions to date have largely
focused on mitigating the rate of
spread, flattening the curve of
morbidity. There is no treatment at
hand, and no certainty of a vaccine on
the near horizon. The fastest vaccine
ever developed was for mumps. It took
four years. COVID-19 killed 100,000
Americans in four months. There is some
evidence that natural infection may not
imply immunity, leaving some to question
how effective a vaccine will be, even
assuming one can be found. And it must
be safe. If the global population is to
be immunized, lethal complications in
just one person in a thousand would
imply the death of millions.</p>
<p> </p>
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<p>Pandemics and plagues have a way of
shifting the course of history, and not
always in a manner immediately evident
to the survivors. In the 14th Century,
the Black Death killed close to half of
Europe’s population. A scarcity of labor
led to increased wages. Rising
expectations culminated in the Peasants
Revolt of 1381, an inflection point that
marked the beginning of the end of the
feudal order that had dominated medieval
Europe for a thousand years.</p>
<p>The COVID pandemic will be remembered
as such a moment in history, a seminal
event whose significance will unfold
only in the wake of the crisis. It will
mark this era much as the 1914
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the
stock market crash of 1929, and the 1933
ascent of Adolf Hitler became
fundamental benchmarks of the last
century, all harbingers of greater and
more consequential outcomes.</p>
<p>COVID’s historic significance lies not
in what it implies for our daily lives.
Change, after all, is the one constant
when it comes to culture. All peoples in
all places at all times are always
dancing with new possibilities for life.
As companies eliminate or downsize
central offices, employees work from
home, restaurants close, shopping malls
shutter, streaming brings entertainment
and sporting events into the home, and
airline travel becomes ever more
problematic and miserable, people will
adapt, as we’ve always done. Fluidity of
memory and a capacity to forget is
perhaps the most haunting trait of our
species. As history confirms, it allows
us to come to terms with any degree of
social, moral, or environmental
degradation.</p>
<p>To be sure, financial uncertainty will
cast a long shadow. Hovering over the
global economy for some time will be the
sober realization that all the money in
the hands of all the nations on Earth
will never be enough to offset the
losses sustained when an entire world
ceases to function, with workers and
businesses everywhere facing a choice
between economic and biological
survival.</p>
<p> </p>
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<p>Unsettling as these transitions and
circumstances will be, short of a
complete economic collapse, none stands
out as a turning point in history. But
what surely does is the absolutely
devastating impact that the pandemic has
had on the reputation and international
standing of the United States of
America.</p>
<p>In a dark season of pestilence, COVID
has reduced to tatters the illusion of
American exceptionalism. At the height
of the crisis, with more than 2,000
dying each day, Americans found
themselves members of a failed state,
ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent
government largely responsible for death
rates that added a tragic coda to
America’s claim to supremacy in the
world.</p>
<p>For the first time, the international
community felt compelled to send
disaster relief to Washington. For more
than two centuries, reported the <em>Irish
Times</em>, “the United States has
stirred a very wide range of feelings in
the rest of the world: love and hatred,
fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe
and anger. But there is one emotion that
has never been directed towards the U.S.
until now: pity.” As American doctors
and nurses eagerly awaited emergency
airlifts of basic supplies from China,
the hinge of history opened to the Asian
century.</p>
<p>No empire long endures, even if few
anticipate their demise. Every kingdom
is born to die. The 15th century
belonged to the Portuguese, the 16th to
Spain, 17th to the Dutch. France
dominated the 18th and Britain the 19th.
Bled white and left bankrupt by the
Great War, the British maintained a
pretense of domination as late as 1935,
when the empire reached its greatest
geographical extent. By then, of course,
the torch had long passed into the hands
of America.</p>
<p>In 1940, with Europe already ablaze,
the United States had a smaller army
than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within
four years, 18 million men and women
would serve in uniform, with millions
more working double shifts in mines and
factories that made America, as
President Roosevelt promised, the
arsenal of democracy.</p>
<p>When the Japanese within six weeks of
Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent
of the world’s rubber supply, the U.S.
dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to
protect tires, and then, in three years,
invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber
industry that allowed Allied armies to
roll over the Nazis. At its peak, Henry
Ford’s Willow Run Plant produced a B-24
Liberator every two hours, around the
clock. Shipyards in Long Beach and
Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a
rate of two a day for four years; the
record was a ship built in four days, 15
hours and 29 minutes. A single American
factory, Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal,
built more tanks than the whole of the
Third Reich.</p>
<p> </p>
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<div> </div>
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</div>
<p>In the wake of the war, with Europe and
Japan in ashes, the United States with
but 6 percent of the world’s population
accounted for half of the global
economy, including the production of 93
percent of all automobiles. Such
economic dominance birthed a vibrant
middle class, a trade union movement
that allowed a single breadwinner with
limited education to own a home and a
car, support a family, and send his kids
to good schools. It was not by any means
a perfect world but affluence allowed
for a truce between capital and labor, a
reciprocity of opportunity in a time of
rapid growth and declining income
inequality, marked by high tax rates for
the wealthy, who were by no means the
only beneficiaries of a golden age of
American capitalism.</p>
<p>But freedom and affluence came with a
price. The United States, virtually a
demilitarized nation on the eve of the
Second World War, never stood down in
the wake of victory. To this day,
American troops are deployed in 150
countries. Since the 1970s, China has
not once gone to war; the U.S. has not
spent a day at peace. President Jimmy
Carter recently noted that in its
242-year history, America has enjoyed
only 16 years of peace, making it, as he
wrote, “the most warlike nation in the
history of the world.” Since 2001, the
U.S. has spent over $6 trillion on
military operations and war, money that
might have been invested in the
infrastructure of home. China,
meanwhile, built its nation, pouring
more cement every three years than
America did in the entire 20th century.</p>
<p>As America policed the world, the
violence came home. On D-Day, June 6th,
1944, the Allied death toll was 4,414;
in 2019, domestic gun violence had
killed that many American men and women
by the end of April. By June of that
year, guns in the hands of ordinary
Americans had caused more casualties
than the Allies suffered in Normandy in
the first month of a campaign that
consumed the military strength of five
nations.</p>
<p>More than any other country, the United
States in the post-war era lionized the
individual at the expense of community
and family. It was the sociological
equivalent of splitting the atom. What
was gained in terms of mobility and
personal freedom came at the expense of
common purpose. In wide swaths of
America, the family as an institution
lost its grounding. By the 1960s, 40
percent of marriages were ending in
divorce. Only six percent of American
homes had grandparents living beneath
the same roof as grandchildren; elders
were abandoned to retirement homes.</p>
<p> </p>
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</div>
<p>With slogans like “24/7” celebrating
complete dedication to the workplace,
men and women exhausted themselves in
jobs that only reinforced their
isolation from their families. The
average American father spends less than
20 minutes a day in direct communication
with his child. By the time a youth
reaches 18, he or she will have spent
fully two years watching television or
staring at a laptop screen, contributing
to an obesity epidemic that the Joint
Chiefs have called a national security
crisis.</p>
<p>Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. in
Akron, Ohio on April 3rd, 1944. When the
Japanese within six weeks of Pearl
Harbor took control of 90 percent of the
world’s rubber supply, the U.S. dropped
the speed limit to 35 mph to protect
tires, and then, in three years,
invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber
industry.</p>
<p>AP</p>
<div class="RIL_IMG" id="RIL_IMG_2">
<figure> <img
src="https://pocket-image-cache.com//filters:no_upscale()/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F08%2Ffirestone-factory-ww2.jpg%3Fw%3D1024"
alt="Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.
in Akron, Ohio on April 3rd, 1944.
When the Japanese within six weeks
of Pearl Harbor took control of 90
percent of the world’s rubber
supply, the U.S. dropped the speed
limit to 35 mph to protect tires,
and then, in three years, invented
from scratch a synthetic-rubber
industry." width="789" height="635">
<figcaption>Firestone Tire &
Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio on April
3rd, 1944. When the Japanese within
six weeks of Pearl Harbor took
control of 90 percent of the world’s
rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the
speed limit to 35 mph to protect
tires, and then, in three years,
invented from scratch a
synthetic-rubber industry.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p>Only half of Americans report having
meaningful, face-to-face social
interactions on a daily basis. The
nation consumes two-thirds of the
world’s production of antidepressant
drugs. The collapse of the working-class
family has been responsible in part for
an opioid crisis that has displaced car
accidents as the leading cause of death
for Americans under 50.</p>
<p>At the root of this transformation and
decline lies an ever-widening chasm
between Americans who have and those who
have little or nothing. Economic
disparities exist in all nations,
creating a tension that can be as
disruptive as the inequities are unjust.
In any number of settings, however, the
negative forces tearing apart a society
are mitigated or even muted if there are
other elements that reinforce social
solidarity — religious faith, the
strength and comfort of family, the
pride of tradition, fidelity to the
land, a spirit of place.</p>
<p>But when all the old certainties are
shown to be lies, when the promise of a
good life for a working family is
shattered as factories close and
corporate leaders, growing wealthier by
the day, ship jobs abroad, the social
contract is irrevocably broken. For two
generations, America has celebrated
globalization with iconic intensity,
when, as any working man or woman can
see, it’s nothing more than capital on
the prowl in search of ever cheaper
sources of labor.</p>
<p>For many years, those on the
conservative right in the United States
have invoked a nostalgia for the 1950s,
and an America that never was, but has
to be presumed to have existed to
rationalize their sense of loss and
abandonment, their fear of change, their
bitter resentments and lingering
contempt for the social movements of the
1960s, a time of new aspirations for
women, gays, and people of color. In
truth, at least in economic terms, the
country of the 1950s resembled Denmark
as much as the America of today.
Marginal tax rates for the wealthy were
90 percent. The salaries of CEOs were,
on average, just 20 times that of their
mid-management employees.</p>
<p> </p>
<div>
<div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Today, the base pay of those at the top
is commonly 400 times that of their
salaried staff, with many earning orders
of magnitude more in stock options and
perks. The elite one percent of
Americans control $30 trillion of
assets, while the bottom half have more
debt than assets. The three richest
Americans have more money than the
poorest 160 million of their countrymen.
Fully a fifth of American households
have zero or negative net worth, a
figure that rises to 37 percent for
black families. The median wealth of
black households is a tenth that of
whites. The vast majority of Americans —
white, black, and brown — are two
paychecks removed from bankruptcy.
Though living in a nation that
celebrates itself as the wealthiest in
history, most Americans live on a high
wire, with no safety net to brace a
fall.</p>
<p>With the COVID crisis, 40 million
Americans lost their jobs, and 3.3
million businesses shut down, including
41 percent of all black-owned
enterprises. Black Americans, who
significantly outnumber whites in
federal prisons despite being but 13
percent of the population, are suffering
shockingly high rates of morbidity and
mortality, dying at nearly three times
the rate of white Americans. The
cardinal rule of American social policy
— don’t let any ethnic group get below
the blacks, or allow anyone to suffer
more indignities — rang true even in a
pandemic, as if the virus was taking its
cues from American history.</p>
<p>COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it
simply revealed what had long been
forsaken. As the crisis unfolded, with
another American dying every minute of
every day, a country that once turned
out fighter planes by the hour could not
manage to produce the paper masks or
cotton swabs essential for tracking the
disease. The nation that defeated
smallpox and polio, and led the world
for generations in medical innovation
and discovery, was reduced to a laughing
stock as a buffoon of a president
advocated the use of household
disinfectants as a treatment for a
disease that intellectually he could not
begin to understand.</p>
<p>As a number of countries moved
expeditiously to contain the virus, the
United States stumbled along in denial,
as if willfully blind. With less than
four percent of the global population,
the U.S. soon accounted for more than a
fifth of COVID deaths. The percentage of
American victims of the disease who died
was six times the global average.
Achieving the world’s highest rate of
morbidity and mortality provoked not
shame, but only further lies,
scapegoating, and boasts of miracle
cures as dubious as the claims of a
carnival barker, a grifter on the make.</p>
<p> </p>
<div>
<div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
<p>As the United States responded to the
crisis like a corrupt tin pot
dictatorship, the actual tin pot
dictators of the world took the
opportunity to seize the high ground,
relishing a rare sense of moral
superiority, especially in the wake of
the killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis. The autocratic leader of
Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, chastised
America for “maliciously violating
ordinary citizens’ rights.” North Korean
newspapers objected to “police
brutality” in America. Quoted in the
Iranian press, Ayatollah Khamenei
gloated, “America has begun the process
of its own destruction.”</p>
<p>Trump’s performance and America’s
crisis deflected attention from China’s
own mishandling of the initial outbreak
in Wuhan, not to mention its move to
crush democracy in Hong Kong. When an
American official raised the issue of
human rights on Twitter, China’s Foreign
Ministry spokesperson, invoking the
killing of George Floyd, responded with
one short phrase, “I can’t breathe.”</p>
<p>These politically motivated remarks may
be easy to dismiss. But Americans have
not done themselves any favors. Their
political process made possible the
ascendancy to the highest office in the
land a national disgrace, a demagogue as
morally and ethically compromised as a
person can be. As a British writer
quipped, “there have always been stupid
people in the world, and plenty of nasty
people too. But rarely has stupidity
been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid”.</p>
<p>The American president lives to
cultivate resentments, demonize his
opponents, validate hatred. His main
tool of governance is the lie; as of
July 9th, 2020, the documented tally of
his distortions and false statements
numbered 20,055. If America’s first
president, George Washington, famously
could not tell a lie, the current one
can’t recognize the truth. Inverting the
words and sentiments of Abraham Lincoln,
this dark troll of a man celebrates
malice for all, and charity for none.</p>
<p>Odious as he may be, Trump is less the
cause of America’s decline than a
product of its descent. As they stare
into the mirror and perceive only the
myth of their exceptionalism, Americans
remain almost bizarrely incapable of
seeing what has actually become of their
country. The republic that defined the
free flow of information as the life
blood of democracy, today ranks 45th
among nations when it comes to press
freedom. In a land that once welcomed
the huddled masses of the world, more
people today favor building a wall along
the southern border than supporting
health care and protection for the
undocumented mothers and children
arriving in desperation at its doors. In
a complete abandonment of the collective
good, U.S. laws define freedom as an
individual’s inalienable right to own a
personal arsenal of weaponry, a natural
entitlement that trumps even the safety
of children; in the past decade alone
346 American students and teachers have
been shot on school grounds.</p>
<p> </p>
<div>
<div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
<p>The American cult of the individual
denies not just community but the very
idea of society. No one owes anything to
anyone. All must be prepared to fight
for everything: education, shelter,
food, medical care. What every
prosperous and successful democracy
deems to be fundamental rights —
universal health care, equal access to
quality public education, a social
safety net for the weak, elderly, and
infirmed — America dismisses as
socialist indulgences, as if so many
signs of weakness.</p>
<p>How can the rest of the world expect
America to lead on global threats —
climate change, the extinction crisis,
pandemics — when the country no longer
has a sense of benign purpose, or
collective well-being, even within its
own national community? Flag-wrapped
patriotism is no substitute for
compassion; anger and hostility no match
for love. Those who flock to beaches,
bars, and political rallies, putting
their fellow citizens at risk, are not
exercising freedom; they are displaying,
as one commentator has noted, the
weakness of a people who lack both the
stoicism to endure the pandemic and the
fortitude to defeat it. Leading their
charge is <a
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/donald-trump/">Donald
Trump</a>, a bone spur warrior, a liar
and a fraud, a grotesque caricature of a
strong man, with the backbone of a
bully.</p>
<p>Over the last months, a quip has
circulated on the internet suggesting
that to live in Canada today is like
owning an apartment above a meth lab.
Canada is no perfect place, but it has
handled the COVID crisis well, notably
in British Columbia, where I live.
Vancouver is just three hours by road
north of Seattle, where the U.S.
outbreak began. Half of Vancouver’s
population is Asian, and typically
dozens of flights arrive each day from
China and East Asia. Logically, it
should have been hit very hard, but the
health care system performed exceedingly
well. Throughout the crisis, testing
rates across Canada have been
consistently five times that of the U.S.
On a per capita basis, Canada has
suffered half the morbidity and
mortality. For every person who has died
in British Columbia, 44 have perished in
Massachusetts, a state with a comparable
population that has reported more COVID
cases than all of Canada. <span>As of
July 30th, even as rates of COVID
infection and death soared across much
of the United States, with 59,629 new
cases reported on that day alone,
hospitals in British Columbia
registered a total of just five COVID
patients.</span></p>
<p> </p>
<div>
<div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
<p>When American friends ask for an
explanation, I encourage them to reflect
on the last time they bought groceries
at their neighborhood Safeway. In the
U.S. there is almost always a racial,
economic, cultural, and educational
chasm between the consumer and the
check-out staff that is difficult if not
impossible to bridge. In Canada, the
experience is quite different. One
interacts if not as peers, certainly as
members of a wider community. The reason
for this is very simple. The checkout
person may not share your level of
affluence, but they know that you know
that they are getting a living wage
because of the unions. And they know
that you know that their kids and yours
most probably go to the same
neighborhood public school. Third, and
most essential, they know that you know
that if their children get sick, they
will get exactly the same level of
medical care not only of your children
but of those of the prime minister.
These three strands woven together
become the fabric of Canadian social
democracy.</p>
<p>Asked what he thought of Western
civilization, Mahatma Gandhi famously
replied, “I think that would be a good
idea.” Such a remark may seem cruel, but
it accurately reflects the view of
America today as seen from the
perspective of any modern social
democracy. Canada performed well during
the COVID crisis because of our social
contract, the bonds of community, the
trust for each other and our
institutions, our health care system in
particular, with hospitals that cater to
the medical needs of the collective, not
the individual, and certainly not the
private investor who views every
hospital bed as if a rental property.
The measure of wealth in a civilized
nation is not the currency accumulated
by the lucky few, but rather the
strength and resonance of social
relations and the bonds of reciprocity
that connect all people in common
purpose.</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with political
ideology, and everything to do with the
quality of life. Finns live longer and
are less likely to die in childhood or
in giving birth than Americans. Danes
earn roughly the same after-tax income
as Americans, while working 20 percent
less. They pay in taxes an extra 19
cents for every dollar earned. But in
return they get free health care, free
education from pre-school through
university, and the opportunity to
prosper in a thriving free-market
economy with dramatically lower levels
of poverty, homelessness, crime, and
inequality. The average worker is paid
better, treated more respectfully, and
rewarded with life insurance, pension
plans, maternity leave, and six weeks of
paid vacation a year. All of these
benefits only inspire Danes to work
harder, with fully 80 percent of men and
women aged 16 to 64 engaged in the labor
force, a figure far higher than that of
the United States.</p>
<p> </p>
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<p>American politicians dismiss the
Scandinavian model as creeping
socialism, communism lite, something
that would never work in the United
States. In truth, social democracies are
successful precisely because they foment
dynamic capitalist economies that just
happen to benefit every tier of society.
That social democracy will never take
hold in the United States may well be
true, but, if so, it is a stunning
indictment, and just what Oscar Wilde
had in mind when he quipped that the
United States was the only country to go
from barbarism to decadence without
passing through civilization.</p>
<p>Evidence of such terminal decadence is
the choice that so many Americans made
in 2016 to prioritize their personal
indignations, placing their own
resentments above any concerns for the
fate of the country and the world, as
they rushed to elect a man whose only
credential for the job was his
willingness to give voice to their
hatreds, validate their anger, and
target their enemies, real or imagined.
One shudders to think of what it will
mean to the world if Americans in
November, knowing all that they do,
elect to keep such a man in political
power. But even should Trump be
resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all
clear that such a profoundly polarized
nation will be able to find a way
forward. For better or for worse,
America has had its time.</p>
<p>The end of the American era and the
passing of the torch to Asia is no
occasion for celebration, no time to
gloat. In a moment of international
peril, when humanity might well have
entered a dark age beyond all
conceivable horrors, the industrial
might of the United States, together
with the blood of ordinary Russian
soldiers, literally saved the world.
American ideals, as celebrated by
Madison and Monroe, Lincoln, Roosevelt,
and Kennedy, at one time inspired and
gave hope to millions.</p>
<p>If and when the Chinese are ascendant,
with their concentration camps for the
Uighurs, the ruthless reach of their
military, their 200 million surveillance
cameras watching every move and gesture
of their people, we will surely long for
the best years of the American century.
For the moment, we have only the
kleptocracy of Donald Trump. Between
praising the Chinese for their treatment
of the Uighurs, describing their
internment and torture as “exactly the
right thing to do,” and his dispensing
of medical advice concerning the
therapeutic use of chemical
disinfectants, Trump blithely remarked,
“One day, it’s like a miracle, it will
disappear.” He had in mind, of course,
the <a
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/coronavirus/">coronavirus</a>,
but, as others have said, he might just
as well have been referring to the
American dream.</p>
<p> </p>
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<p> In This Article: <a title="coronavirus"
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/coronavirus/">coronavirus</a>,
<a title="covid-19"
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/covid-19/">covid-19</a>,
<a title="Donald Trump"
href="https://www.rollingstone.com/t/donald-trump/">Donald
Trump</a> </p>
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