Is Trump Still a Threat? Was He Ever a Threat?

Want to get a good and fresh perspective on what the 2024 Presidential campaign really means? Spend four minutes watching and listening to Tom Hanks being interviewed by Christiane Amanpour during the celebration marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, particularly how he responds to her question about a November victory by Donald Trump.

Hanks was at Normandy because the movie he co-produced with Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan, contains a remarkable cinematic depiction of the D-Day invasion, in particular the fighting which took place on Omaha Beach.

What Hanks said about the possibility that Trump could return to the Oval Office next year ran like this: our Constitution is a document which was designed to help us create a ‘more perfect union,’ which means that the process of nation-building goes on ad infinitum even if there are sometimes a zig instead of a zag.

To give this comment some more perspective, I recall that when I first arrived at the Berkeley campus as a faculty member in January 1976, this was when Ronald Reagan had announced he was running for President, even though he ended up running twice before he achieved his goal.

Meanwhile, when I asked members of the Berkeley faculty what Reagan was like as Governor, they all told me that he was completely crazy, and if he…