Will history eventually look back more kindly on the Trump presidency?

It is not only the current White House incumbent’s future that has been blighted by the events at the Capitol, but his past as well, writes Mary Dejevsky

Dawn breaks on the US Capitol after the house voted to impeach President Donald Trump  (Reuters)

Future historians of the United States may one day chronicle the current period as before and after Donald Trump. For some, Trump will be an aberration – a disruptor who broke into the slow, but sure, decline of a great power, but was unable to reverse the tide.

For others, he may be closer to a “great corrector”, who tried to bring an atypical 70 years of foreign engagement to an end and pick up where US policy had left off before the Second World War.

For now, though, and perhaps for decades to come, that big debate will not happen. Because, for the foreseeable future, the dividing line will not be his presidency as such, but 6 January 2021. His presidency will be seen exclusively through that – distorting – lens.