When Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in 2015 to announce his presidential run, the world laughed. And when I landed in Washington later that year to lead the ABC's coverage, there was an expectation that Hillary Clinton would walk into the Oval Office.
Throughout that campaign, as fellow correspondents and I crisscrossed America trying to understand the grievance politics creeping across the nation, especially in inland states, we battled a perception from Australia that Trump was just a sideshow.
Yet he masterfully commanded centre stage, attracting outsized mainstream media coverage because he drove clicks and ratings, creating a massive unfiltered Maga echo chamber via social media and successfully undermining journalism as fake news. By the time the media snapped back at him, along with the whiplashed political classes, it was too late. Criticism was read as conspiracy against the will of the people.
Those who stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 were accused of treason, but in their minds it was the reverse. They believed the election had been stolen from Trump. Even attempts to hold him to account via impeachment merely fed his popularity.
He capitalised on a fragmentation of trust in politics, media, and the global order. Mystifyingly, given his wealthy background, he framed himself as the 'everyman' who would stand up for real people and call out elites. By the time the media realised he was building a movement, it was too late.
Right now, in Australia, commentators left, right and centre are similarly trying to grasp the bouncing ping-pong ball that is Pauline Hanson's One Nation, which has been hiding in plain sight.
If only journalists had been as quick to catch on to the shortcomings of the major parties as voters have. This is partly due to a lack of media resources for ongoing field reporting, but also to the media's attachment to the two-party system. While they now marvel at the rise of a party that has been a sleeping threat for years, the ping-pong ball has escaped the arena and is already bouncing down the hill.
We have already passed Trumpism stage 1: outsized media coverage in response to ratings and public fascination. Stage 2: controlling the social media algorithm by unleashing spectacle and paid bots. Stage 3: undermining journalism and banning those who ask hard questions. In stage 4, the post-truth era, no matter what evidence is mounted against Hanson—her voting record, lack of policy depth, poor attendance in parliament—it doesn't matter.
Once a fish and chip shop owner, always a woman of the people. That is despite being a politician, celebrity, and property investor for all of the 30 years since. The fact that neither the major parties nor the mainstream media saw it coming is, on reflection, surprising.
The rise of the community independents is different but related. As numbers show, votes for major parties are on the slide. The independents built a movement to provide an alternative. One Nation is now borrowing from that. As South Australia's One Nation state president Carlos Quaremba told The Australian: 'That's why One Nation is going to keep building because it is transcending the rules of what it means to be a political party.' People are 'just so sick of business as usual and are coming to us,' he said.
The crowdfunding movement supporting it sounds familiar, as does the sentiment. As ABC's US bureau chief during the first Trump administration, I spent years trying to understand his supporters. By and large, they were everyday people angry with how they were being led. Often, but not always, they lived in towns that had lost manufacturing, been negatively affected by global trade, seen jobs taken by migrants, couldn't afford education or healthcare, and struggled to make ends meet. They had lost hope.
Some were doctors, lawyers, teachers, successful in business. All felt disempowered. Many had misgivings about Trump, especially regarding his treatment of women and multicultural communities. Many supported him anyway, seeing it as a way to take power back.
From a journalistic perspective, it was full of contradictions. There was no way to rationalise it. The only approach was to listen.
In a few days, Hanson will speak at the National Press Club for the first time in her sporadic three-decade political career. It is being billed as both a risk and an opportunity—for her and for reporters who may reflexively go for gotcha moments. Doing so will only cement the public trust gap driving political upheaval. Questions must be asked and answered, but answers may be found more outside the four walls of the National Press Club than inside, by listening to everyday people.
