Donald Trump’s comeback as the 47th president of the United States of America is to a great extent based on a cocktail of hate, lies and fear he served to the people. Even though commentariats have focussed on the economic discontent to explain his triumph, the American economy had, in fact, recovered from the ravages of the COVID pandemic. The unemployment rate was down, and even the soaring inflation rates during the Biden administration’s initial years had been brought under control.

These gains were drowned in the din generated by Trump’s politics of hate, and the atavistic passions thus stoked swept away the danger of his policies aggravating even further the income inequalities that widened under the Biden administration, a factor said to have wrecked Kamala Harris’s chances. It is bewildering that the voters should still remain in thrall to Trump’s politics eight years after he first created the cocktail of hate, lies and fear to vanquish Hillary Clinton.