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The 45th President of the United States
Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Prelude: Down the escalator
Other couples go shopping, the Trumps are running for the presidency.
One of the craziest pop moments in Donald Trump's political work came when he announced his political work: On June 16, 2015, to announce his candidacy for the White House, he and his wife Melania drove an escalator in the skyscraper named after him down.
The two looked like a couple who were spending a relaxing afternoon in a shopping mall.
Other political aspirants jump out of helicopters when appearing to suggest actionism.
Trump looked like someone rolling from the nail salon to Pizza Hut with his wife.
The escalator stands as a symbol for being carried from one pleasure or shopping location to the next in US leisure worlds with the greatest possible passivity.
In short: the announcement of the candidacy was a statement for consumerism.
The moment was also crazy because Trump countered it with Neil Young's song "Rockin 'in the Free World" - an unmistakable statement against consumerism.
Dialectic or stupidity?
With the escalator down, Trump began to work on the chaos of signs into which he is now releasing the weary USA for the next presidential period.
Unless he is re-elected.
Christian Buss
"Tiny Hands": The Anti-Grabbler Anthem
Even after four years of presidential insanity, the fact that the scandal surrounding the "Access Hollywood" tape ("Grab 'em by the pussy") did not cost Trump the election victory in October 2016 still leaves one speechless.
Pop muse Fiona Apple filled this vacuum in January 2017, just in time for the Women's March, with a mini anthem.
The song not only used the mocking Trump meme of the "little hands", but also invented a handy antitoxin against machismo and sexism with the slogan "We don't want your tiny hands / Anywhere near our underpants".
Andreas Borcholte
Donald in Paris: Dinner on the Eiffel Tower
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The married couples Trump and Macron on July 13, 2017
Photo: Carolyn Kaster / AP
It was a summer evening in the French capital and a bit like the amusing Netflix series "Emily in Paris": A competent, educated woman had been expected, but instead of her someone else made the trip across the Atlantic, in a sense became the unsuspecting but enthusiastic Emily played by Donald Trump that night.
The Macron couple invited Melania and him to the "Jules Verne" restaurant, where Chef Alain Ducasse rules in an imposing white chef's jacket.
The result was beautiful pictures, Melania even seemed genuinely happy.
Macron and Trump tried briefly together.
But before dessert they both thought about how to get rid of the other quickly.
Nils Minkmar
Drinking against Trump: At the G20 summit
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Toast with the Mexican against Trump
Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt / picture alliance / dpa
In the past few years, not only Trump had crazy ideas, his opponents also had crazy ideas.
This one was especially nice: One night in February 2017, a couple of friends were crouching at the bar of the Hamburg pub "Zoo" and thinking about how they could mess with the really big animals that would soon come to the city for the G20 summit.
The result was "Mexicans Against Trump," a high percentage response to the US President's announcement that he would build a wall on the border with Mexico.
Pubs, so the idea of the left-wing extremist friends, should advertise the world-famous tomato and tabasco schnapps called Mexikaner in Hamburg in the coming months - and then donate part of the sales proceeds to the G-20 protests.
In the end, there were actually pubs around the world, more than 150 in number, one of them from Mexico.
And Trump?
Wasn't impressed by either tomato cocktails or supposed Molotov cocktails in Hamburg.
"The police and the military did a spectacular job in Hamburg," he tweeted in July when he said goodbye.
"Everyone felt totally safe, despite the anarchists."
The Schanzenviertel was still smoking.
Tobias Becker
Tight bushes, stone heroes
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In the rose garden of the White House, May 2020
Photo: Bloomberg / Bloomberg / Getty Images
Trump and his first lady love gardens.
At least since this year.
Melania Trump had the rose garden of the White House spruced up in the summer and then gave her speech at the Republican Congress.
The bushes were neatly cut, all the flowers stood at attention.
The first lady herself too, she wore a dress in the military style - and in green color.
At the beginning of July, her husband announced that he would be creating his own garden, a "National Garden for American Heroes".
In the country, protesters dismantled historical statues of slaveholders and other delicate figures - and Trump let enemies and friends know what was now in bloom: a park full of old-fashioned sculptures.
A task force was commissioned.
Only she obviously lacks the green - or lime-colored - thumb.
So far no concrete plans have been published, but a website.
Ulrike Knöfel
Trump Era Photographer: Philip Montgomery
In June 2020, mourners raise their fists in front of a memorial for George Floyd.
Shortly before, Floyd had been buried, killed by a white policeman.
At the funeral, Floyd's niece spoke, writes photographer Philip Montgomery on his Instagram post.
He quotes her: "Someone said, 'Make America great again,' but when has America ever been great?"
("Someone said, 'Makes America great again', but when was America ever great?")
Photojournalist Philip Montgomery visually shaped the reporting of Trump's reign.
(Here is his Instagram account with many photos) For the "New York Times" and "The New Yorker", for "Vanity Fair" and "The Atlantic", also for the "Guardian" and "Stern" he documented contemporary history in Intense snapshots, including the protests against police violence in Minneapolis, the opioid crisis and the corona pandemic.
Carola Padtberg
"Very fine people, on both sides": cultural break in Charlottesville
Contrary to what one might think, Donald Trump has already distanced himself several times from right-wing extremists, the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, including in his press conference after the fatal escalation of a demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017. Nevertheless, marked his much-quoted sentence that there were violent criminals on both sides of the protests, but also "very fine people" on both sides, a cultural break.
The president's defiant assertion of equidistance should perhaps be an awkward reconciliation, but it must have signaled the reactionary forces in the country: As long as you don't drive cars into the crowd and there are dead, it's okay to chant racist and anti-Semitic slogans, as in Charlottesville happen.
Is not it.
But on that day Trump canceled this consensus of every enlightened democratic society.
Andreas Borcholte
Melania's slap: the "handgate"
The Beatles immortalized the most beautiful form of wooing in the song "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".
Seldom has it been so phenomenally brutally rejected as by Melania Trump in a defensive movement that soon found recognition on social media as #Handgate.
Several times she publicly refused her hand to her husband's paw that was ready to be held, once even with an elegant slap.
A symbolic gesture not just for the presidential marriage, but for the relationship between the sexes in general.
The time of cuddling and patting is over.
Especially in the reorganization of the courtship and dating rules according to #MeToo, a harshness and a new coldness are emerging that we should not complain, but welcome as new clarity.
Wolfgang Höbel
"Covfefe" - what do you mean?
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The Covfefe tweet at Wikipedia
With his new word "covfefe" the divider Donald Trump united the world for a few hours in May 2017 - in perplexity and laughter.
Had he made a mistake in the word "coverage"?
Reveal the password for the atomic case?
Ordered a coffee?
Nobody knew.
A meme was born that still has an impact today.
A sign that, in its inexplicability, functions like its creator: Everything could be meant, but ultimately it only refers to itself.
Jonas Lages
"The Mooch" and other rivets: Trump's environment
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Anthony Scaramucci
Photo: Hollywood To You / Star Max / GC Images Getty Images
Anthony Scaramucci had hoped for a job in the White House at an early age, but soon after Trump's election he stopped working as a hedge fund manager.
In July 2017 the time had come when the New Yorker with the spray hair and mirror sunglasses became the President's communications chief - and only stayed that way for eleven days.
Steve Bannon tried to suck his own cock, he told a reporter;
further swearwords were raised against presidential advisors.
just never a hint that he doesn't want to be quoted.
Since then, Scaramucci (nicknamed "The Mooch") has been making waves in the media, appeared in "Big Brother" (even if he did not stay in the house permanently), and wrote an exposé book about Trump.
Loud, narcissistic, unpredictable in character: Many of the characters who have appeared around Donald Trump in the past four years had traits in common with their boss.
Felix Bayer
In court in Sweden: Trump and the rapper
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A $ AP Rocky, again at large
Photo: Scott Dudelson / Getty Images
If Barack Obama surrounded himself with the biggest pop stars in the world during his presidency, Trump sensed a chance to make his populism pop-compatible when rapper A $ AP Rocky was on trial in Sweden in 2019: Trump tweeted Swedish premier first praise, then disappointment, sent his special envoy to Stockholm for hostage affairs.
The rapper was acquitted.
And Trump?
Triggered a moderate diplomatic crisis, but remained largely in the pop music vacuum.
Jurek Skrobala
America not first?
The Oscar goes to Korea
Sometimes you could watch live during Trump's tenure as he and his fans were overwhelmed by the present.
For example after the Academy Awards, at which this year the South Korean film "Parasite" was recognized as best film.
"What the hell was going on?", Trump asked the audience rhetorically at one of his rallies, and: "Can we please have 'Gone with the Wind' back?"
A stupid joke.
But the longing for an imagined golden past (including slavery) is real.
Oliver Kaever
#HeilenWieTrump: "Laughing gas against depression"
When Donald Trump brought up the possibility of administering disinfectants against the virus in his daily corona briefing at the White House in April 2020, there were clear reactions.
The next day he put his idea into perspective and called it sarcastic, but the mockery on Twitter remained: Under #HeilenWieTrump users added their own tips such as "drain cleaner against clogging", "laughing gas against depression", "decalcifier against dementia".
The laughter got stuck in your throat, however, because numerous experts including the disaster control agency warned the US population after Trump's statement against taking detergents and disinfectants.
Carola Padtberg
In the end there is an umbrella
Trump's presidency is threefold in the umbrella incident.
First, Trump is a kid who expects to be cleaned up behind him.
Second: With Trump, you never know for sure whether he simply cannot do something and therefore it is a question of incompetence - or whether he simply doesn't care.
You don't know which would be worse either.
And third, this wet umbrella left by Trump, swaying in the wind, is an excellent symbol of the state of American society.
After 40 seconds, a Secret Service agent had pity and collected the umbrella.
The US will, however, need more than one skilled employee to get things back on track when Trump is long gone.
Xaver von Cranach
Icon: The mirror