Trumpism Revisited
In December 2020 frequent references in the media to “Trumpism” prompted me to consider just what that term referred to as the Republican Party had failed to adopt a platform for that year’s election and Trump, himself, had announced no specific agenda for his next term. I recorded my thoughts on the subject in an article entitled “Trumpism” in which I concluded that Trumpism was neither a governing philosophy nor a political movement, but simply a personality cult. That assessment, which others have since endorsed, has stood the test of time as Republican politicians all across the country and at every level have tied their careers to Trump, courting his endorsement and embracing his “Big Lie.” It’s not that they are enamored of him. Indeed most of them despise his disjointed and cacophonous behavior and fear his vindictive nature. Rather, they understand that their voting base is captivated by a spell he has cast upon them and staying within his good graces has become requisite to their political survival. This is clearly evidenced by the Republican voters’ rejection of Liz Cheney, a member of a prominent Republican family with an impeccable Republican voting record until she voted for Trump’s impeachment.
Trump’s continued political life is now very much in jeopardy. The House Select Committee studying the January 6th attack on the Capitol has now unleased its opening salvo and it was aimed directly at our 45th President. In its first hearing the Select Committee asserted that Trump orchestrated a multifaceted campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election which culminated in the January 6th attack. Over 20 million Americans are reported to have viewed that televised presentation. The Select Committee’s assertion were not only based on documents, video images and testimony collected over the past year but featured live testimony provided by Trump’s own political appointees, White House personnel and his daughter Ivanka. This broadcast was carried by all of the major TV networks and cable news channels except Fox. It was followed on Monday, June 13th with a second TV presentation detailing how all knowledgeable people in Trump’s inner circle (save Rudy Giuliani) had advised him that he had indeed lost by over 7 million votes and there was no evidence of voter fraud that would have altered that outcome. In a succeeding presentation the Select Committee explored Trump’s efforts to coerce Mike Pence to usurp the counting of electoral votes and swing the election to Trump and another presentation on June 21st featured Trump’s efforts to have legislators in key states won by Biden to redirect their states electoral votes to him.
These compelling presentations have increased the percentage of Americans who believe that Trump should be criminally prosecuted from 52% t0 58%. Still, they have done little to change the views of the roughly 25 million Americans who believe Trump was right to make every effort to secure a second term and continue to wish that he had succeeded. Most of these individuals embrace Trump’s political agenda (discussed below) and obtain their news from the Fox News Channel and social media and have been schooled that the national news organizations are purveyors of “fake news.”
The Fox News Channel not only chose not to televise the Select Committee’s initial presentation, but characterized it as an unabashed effort at political assassination. That characterization is not entirely wrong. While the ostensible purpose of the Select Committee’s investigation is to develop remedial federal legislation that would prevent future elections from being taken out of the hands of voters, it seems highly unlikely that the Senate will pass any bill proposed by the Select Committee. This is evidenced by the fact that not a single Republican senator voted to proceed with the voting rights legislation previously offered by the Democrats which essentially was designed to prevent the various abuses that the Select Committee’s recommendations are destined to address.
To be sure, the Select Committee’s first two presentations have left little doubt as to who should be held responsible for the January 6th insurrection and its two succeeding presentations have laid out evidence that the January 6th insurrection was only one of many efforts orchestrated by the 45th President to overturn the results of the 2020 election. An ABC/Ipsos news poll has found that 60% of those surveyed believe that the Select Committee’s is conducting a “fair and impartial” investigation. This should leave the Department of Justice with little choice as to whether to press criminal charges against Trump. Still, it’s hard to feel confident that the heretofore timid Attorney General Garland will muster the courage to initiate such a criminal action.
Nevertheless, the Select Committee’s presentations are likely to provide Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, with ample evidence that Donald Trump was fully aware that he had lost the 2020 election (even if he chose not to believe it). Accordingly, she should have little difficulty getting her grand jury to find that Trump’s January 2, 2021 telephone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s State’s Secretary of State, was motivated by criminal intent. It was during that hour-long call Trump pressured Raffensperger to find him an additional 11,780 votes needed to swing Georgia’s 16 electoral votes to Trump. Thus, the Select Committee’s revelations are likely to be sufficient to motivate District Attorney Willis to choose to move forward with charges against Trump. Indeed, at least one pundit has suggested that the Fulton County DA’s proceeding is likely to pose the greatest danger of placing Trump behind bars.
Whatever criminal convictions against Trump that may grow out of the Select Committee’s efforts will undoubtedly be appealed by Trump to the highest courts that will hear them and this process could extend well beyond the 2024 election. Thus, our modern day “artful dodger” may never be criminally sentenced. Trump also faces dozens of civil claims, many of which arise out of his actions being highlighted by the Select Committee. These include actions by members of Congress threatened by the Capitol rioters, Capitol police officers injured in that melee, and state election officials who have received threats of violence from Trump supporters encouraged by Trump’s “Big Lie.”
There is little doubt that Trump currently remains the first choice of Republican voters. He continues to attract large crowds to his rallies and his political endorsements have enabled relatively unknown candidates to beat incumbent Republican politicians in primary elections. In addition, roughly 70% of registered Republicans continue to believe his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Still, his blatant multi-faceted efforts to thwart our nation’s electoral system will have been so often repeated over the next two years that they, together with his other ample political liabilities, are likely to render him unelectable. For this reason a third presidential nomination for him now appears unlikely, something a growing number of Republican presidential hopefuls seem to have come to realize.
The likely political demise of Trump has led a number of media pundits to assert that even though Trump may vanish from American politics, “Trumpism” is going to persist. It will do so as a form of Nativist-Populism. According to Jane Mansbridge and Stephen Macedo of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, populism has four core elements: (a) people, (b) in a morally charged (c) battle (d) against elites. This construct characterizes the “people” as being honest and hard-working and the “elites” as being controlling, corrupt and morally wrong. The “people” are generally characterized as the producers of goods such as farmers and factory workers and those who help distribute the fruits of their labors. “Elites” include business owners, financiers and politicians. Populism also envisions a champion who will energize the people’s moral outrage and lead them in an effort to overcome the power of the elites who support certain “vulnerable outgroups.”
It's not difficult to understand how political pundits might envision Trump as the champion of populist voters. To be sure, his well-honed (but undeserved) reputation as a successful businessman capable of reforming a dysfunctional federal government would understandably be of great appeal to those Americans who feel they have been left behind economically. Similarly, he proclaimed to be the only one who could right his supporters’ calamitous situation and exhorted them “to fight like hell to take back [their] country” and “Make America Great Again.” He also brought to the presidency an “us-against-them” vision of life, depicting his supporters as morally straight and their enemies as villains bent on doing them harm. In addition, he characterized Democratic leaders as elites who want to “replace” his supporters with blacks and immigrants and “cancel” their values and beliefs.
Nativism is defined as a political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants. It’s based on the belief that those coming from without are inferior and less deserving of establishing the nation’s laws and societal rules. When nativism’s call for favoring “original” Americans is merged with populism’s propensity toward moral outrage and demagoguery the result is a political movement built on hate directed toward people of color as well as those coming here in search of a better life.
Those contending that Trumpism will not vanish when Trump disappears from American politics point out that nativist-populism has been a part of Republican politics for the past 50 years and that it will continue to be so long after Trump is gone. They also support their contention by pointing out that nativist-populism is not unique to America and is on an up-swing in many of our allies. Still, it’s hard to conclude that Trumpism is not qualitatively different from nativist-populism. There’s little doubt that Trump greatly expanded the voter base of the Republican Party during his term in office. He received 74.2 million votes in the 2020 election. Until he came along the most votes garnered by Republican presidential candidates were by John McCain who received 59 million votes in 2008, George W. Bush who received 60 million votes in 2004 and Mitt Romney who received 61 million in 2012. One has to wonder just what were Trump’s contributions to the Republican Party that caused such a dramatic expansion of his party’s voter base. Surely, those contributions must be considered an important component of Trumpism.
As a national party whose members only represent approximately 26% of America’s register voters and 45% of voters leaning toward Republican candidates, it has become critical for the Republican Party to maximize voting participation among its followers. Since the party’s principal agenda items (minimizing taxes and government assistance and regulation) offer little in the way of economic assistance for its supporters, the party has come to concentrate its political efforts on disinformation about Democrats and their agenda and fostering hate and fear among its supporters by waging divisive “culture wars.” Indeed, the single aspect of Trump’s popular appeal which seems to fit comfortably in the Republican Party’s strategic plan is his employment of hate and fear tactics to motivate his supporters.
In this connection, Trump tried valiantly to construct his great wall to keep out Mexican “murderers, rapists and drug dealers” illegally crossing our southern border. He even separated these individuals from their children in an effort to discourage others from coming to this country. He also demonized individuals protesting police killings of unarmed black citizens. He even voiced public support for right-wing hate and militia groups. These efforts were hailed by his political base even though they did nothing to improve their economic conditions. Similarly, his strong advocacy in favor of gun ownership was highly popular among his supporters, but only fueled their fears of immigrants, non-whites and a strong federal government. Those actions did nothing to fill the stomachs of his supporters.
It would thus appear that Trump’s principal voter attraction is his bombastic and outspoken nature --saying out loud what more traditional Republican politicians have only been willing to imply or insinuate. In this regard, he has been effusive in his support for white supremacists and gun owners and unflinching in his denunciation of “elitists” including members of his own party who have disagreed with him. In doing so, he has not limited himself to factual assertions, but has embellished the truth and all too often simply made up his own facts to appear to give greater substance to his assertions. For example, the asylum seekers at our southern border were coming from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, not from Mexico as Trump asserted, and they were not criminals but rather victims crime and famine seeking better lives. Nor were they sent by their governments but came of their own wills. Similarly, he is reported to have characterized Biden as a doddering tool of the radical left and that in Biden’s America factories will be closed, oil fracking will be banned, taxes will be quadrupled, police departments defunded, guns confiscated, and suburbs destroyed.
Mike Bebernes described Trump’s political style as “a flair for spectacle, an anti-elite rhetoric, racial grievance, an adversarial view of rivals and a tenuous relationship with –and sometimes outright disdain for—the truth.” Jay Wissot has summarized Trump’s unique contribution to the Republican political strategy as follows: “Donald Trump brought the elegance and dignity of professional wrestling to American politics.” While most Americans are offended by Trump’s divisiveness, cruelty, mendacity and outright criminality (which in large measure explains why “Sleepy Joe” Biden was able to garner significantly more votes than any previous presidential candidate), his followers seem to relish his brazenness and uninhibited willingness to bend or break established mores, rules and laws in order to achieve his goals.
While I don’t purport to have any expertise in sociology or psychiatry, I am struck by how closely Trump’s behavior seems to fit within the definition of “Machiavellianism” posted on Wikipedia. That term is reported to describe a personality directed by selfishness, manipulativeness and callousness. Persons with a Machiavellian personality are deceitful and unsympathetic and accord a high priority to money, power and unmitigated achievement. They endeavor to win at all costs and by whatever means necessary even if it entails doing things that others consider terrible or immoral such as lying, cheating and stealing. Thus, Trump seems to fit within the role of a populist champion which might explain his attraction to the Republican Party’s voter base.
At this juncture there are no less than fifteen Republican politicians traveling around the country in search of campaign contributions and political support in preparation to run for the presidency in 2024. Indeed, several appear ready to run even if Trump announces his own intention to try again for a second term. They all have embraced the “Big Lie” and most of them have been trying to emulate Trump’s outspoken and belligerent style of politics. In this sense Trump has cast his imprint on Republican politics. What remains unknown, however, is whether any of these individuals can actually win over Trump’s supporters and do so without alienating the balance of American voters.