I arrived in New York City a couple years too late to experience Studio 54, But my partner Lenny was full of stories about it. We watched Cabaret there in 98, and I thought it was so cool how one of the city's most famously gay-accepting clubs had been transformed into the Kit Kat Club of Weimar Germany.

Of course, in 1998, I don't think anybody felt like we needed Cabaret to warn us about anything. The end of HIV/AIDS was finally in sight, and the march toward true LGBTQ equality seemed unstoppable. Optimism was boundless.

Donald Trump was just a crass businessman few people outside New York had heard of.