JANUARY 2021 

INTRODUCTION

Patrick Bateman, Bret Easton Ellis’ anti-hero from American Psycho, worshiped Donald Trump for his success.  Perhaps that should have been enough of a warning for us – that a fictional, delusional, psychopath wanted to be Donald Trump.  Fiction and delusion have been hallmarks of the Trump Presidency, as the resurgent sales of Orwell’s 1984 testified to in 2016: Americans wanted a glimpse of their future. As for the psychology of the Forty-Fifth President: it is unwise for professionals in the field to make clinical assessments in the media of Trump’s state of mind – which a number in America have done - without proper medical consultation with the subject himself. That said…:

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If you invite your supporters to attend a protest that ‘will be wild’; on the day, you address a mass rally and tell them ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore’; and then disrespect your loyal deputy and the political party that supported you publicly, for following constitutional provisions, then – at best – your judgement must be questioned.  Poor judgement which contributed to the needless death of five people.  It is oft said that a politician’s career ends in failure: Donald Trump’s has been nothing but that – failure which surpasses that of Hoover and Nixon.

NATIONAL POPULISM

It is difficult for the British to appreciate the American political landscape.  The U.S. Democratic party maps to the British Tories.  There is no meaningful ‘left’ in American politics; there is hardly a ‘centre’ to speak of: to be labelled a liberal is generally a term of abuse.  Few, however, want to tap into the radical right or the far right for support to further their political careers.  Steve Bannon understood, however, that a disaffected and de-aligned right in America was looking for a voice: Bannon’s late inclusion on Trump’s campaign team won the 2016 Presidential election.  After 45 years of the neo-classical revival in economics morphing to a neo-libertarian orthodoxy in America, courting the radical and far right without being damned as being ‘of them’ became feasible.  They even rebranded themselves to appear acceptable: the ‘alt-right’ was born.  

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Although Governments in Sweden, Hungry and Brazil might indicate otherwise, the ‘national populism’ movement may have burnt itself out as a political force.  Britain has ‘Brexited’, and Nigel Farage is going through another rebranding of his political party.  Marine Le Pen may have lost the French Presidential election, but she still garnered a third of the popular vote; and may be a credible candidate again for 2022.  There still is an appetite for this brand of ‘anti-modernity’: Trump polled over 74m votes in 2020, which is more than any other presidential candidate since 1945, whether Republican, Democrat or independent.  Bar one – Joe Biden, with 81,283,485 votes.  ‘National populism’ hasn’t gone away; but it has galvanised those opposed to it to a far greater degree.

THE REVOLVING DOOR

Steve Bannon’s departure from the Trump White House was not the first from Team Trump, but with regards to a second term, it was possibly the most significant.  Bannon left in August 2017, not long after the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally; and was derided by Trump thereafter as the principal source for Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury.  This illustrated three trends in the Trump Presidency: the ‘revolving door’ of the Trump cabinet; ‘unattributed’ briefings on a dysfunctional administration; and ‘kiss and tell’ revelations.

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There were those, of course, who never got on the bandwagon to begin with.  President George H W Bush – Bush41 – dismissed Trump as a ‘blowhard’, and voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.  This may also be true of his son, Bush43; but President George W Bush distinguished himself in a way he rarely did in office by calling out Washington under Trump thus: “I don’t like the racism and I don’t like the name-calling and I don’t like the people feeling alienated”.  Although slightly hackneyed and outdated in its phrasing, Bush43 summed up the storming of the Capital in stinging terms: ‘this is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic”. The use of the fruit analogy may hark back to nineteenth century colonialism (and might be otherwise avoided), but as an indication of the Trump mentality, it encapsulates his backwardness.

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For those who did sign on, many did not do so for long.  Four Secretaries of Sate (two acting); six National Security Advisors (two acting); five Secretaries for Defence (with three acting, including temporarily Mark Esper before returning permanently a month later): none of this speaks of stability.  Even those who have tolerated Trump for his term are leaving: “…[W]e are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protestors overrunning the U.S. Capital … There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation” (Betsy DeVos resignation letter, U.S. Secretary of Education 2017-21, 08JAN21). There is always a certain turnover in each administration; but in the case of Trump, this has become a churn, unless you are a direct relative, of course.

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For those who are not part of the immediate Trump family, this discontent has regularly surfaced in print.  One of the most astonishing aspects of this was Trump himself giving Bob Woodward taped interviews: Trump had either not read Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House (2018), or didn’t care.  The resulting book Rage (2020) showed Trump in no better light; neither did John Bolton’s 2020 book on his time as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House – a book Trump tried to have banned.

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The Bolton book aside, it wasn’t just Trump who didn’t care about the allegations of ‘locker room banter’, trysts and payoffs with an adult film star, an affair with a Playboy centrefold, ill-tempered and ill-judged tantrums over policy, nepotism … frankly anything: Trump supporters were not deflected – his national electoral vote went up by 11,231,894 2016-20.  This is where the modern phenomenon of fragmented internet communities becomes a problem.  It does not matter what the ‘general consensus’ is, there will always be a news source which fits more with your views and opinions.  That has always been the case; but now there is a justification why you can ignore ‘the truth’, spurious though this reason is: it must be ‘fake news’.

THE NEW CREDULOUS SOCIETY

Donald Trump’s greatest legacy may be the creation of word salads, the ingredients of which are unfathomable.  ‘Bigly’ apparently existed before Trump, but it is unlikely any single individual has ever used the term as frequently.  The Atlantic, politely, listed out Trumps ‘vague source attribution’, which has allowed him to make unsubstantiated claims, ambiguously on the surface, which become a certainty to his true believers.  Should anyone contradict him publicly: ‘FAKE NEWS’!  That retort is tired, objectionable, and infuriating – it takes away any common basis for discussion.  Which may be the point.  The Kennedy brothers 1961-63 were whip sharp in complaining to the media if they felt they had been misrepresented.  There was, however, some decorum in this dialogue with the press: President Kennedy did not personally shout down and deride reporters in open press conferences, as Trump has done repeatedly, from before his inauguration.  There is a liberal bias to the U.S. media; but that does not mean they are wrong.  

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Trump’s recourse has been to Twitter – to communicate directly to his congregation unfiltered from this media bias. Twitter is a commercial organisation, selling advertising space alongside the message feeds.  Trump’s 88m followers on @realDonaldTrump was the sort of audience Twitter wanted to tap into.  Not anymore, however.  It might be that Trump was tolerated by the Republican Party, and social media outlets, while he brought them a return.  He may not be ‘fake news’; but he will soon be yesterday’s news.  It will be President Biden on 20 January 2021.  Donald Trump now shares the notoriety of being permanently banned from Twitter along with Katie Hopkins – a commentator Trump regularly re-tweeted. Dumped by Facebook as well, repudiated by Republican Senators, and now impeached by the House of Representatives for a second time –– all these are limiting his relevancy for America.  If 17 Republican Senators vote with the Democrats and independents when the impeachment comes to trial, Trump would be barred from holding Federal office in the future – killing his vaunted 2024 bid for the Presidency dead, and sparing the Republicans further embarrassment: for a man who turned the U.S. Presidency into a reality TV show, this may be the ultimate failure.

THE END?

There is no border wall between Mexico and the United States.  The Swamp has not been drained.  Climate change denial has become Trump administration policy.  There is no revival of the coal mining industry.  The military threat from North Korea still exists, and Iran no longer feels constrained in developing its nuclear technology.  The Affordable Care Act (‘Obama Care’) has not been repealed or revised.  It is difficult to see why Trump supporters think his time in office has been successful.  Essentially, Trump has been a ‘do nothing’ President; and that is the source of his ‘success’.  A broadly conservative policy, with little action beyond tax cuts and further deregulation, suits many.  Economic growth and job creation up to February 2020 might have been enough to have seen him re-elected.  Covid-19 changed all of that.  Federal policy and the commitment by Trump to deal effectively with the pandemic has been piecemeal at best.

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At worst: as of 8 January 2021, 356,229 Americans have died of coronavirus; the CDC are projecting by the end of January that number will be as high as 438,000.  Let’s put that last figure into perspective: it represents SEVEN times the number of deaths suffered by American combatants in the Vietnam War.  No presidential term which ends with such little regard for the population, never mind the rule of law and the Constitution, can be judged a success.