Part 1 - The End of the Culture War Era
Trump Lives, Trumpism Dies
In early 2024, it appeared that the Dissident Right had gone mainstream. But by late 2024, the question had become more complicated.
The dissident and establishment Right appeared to have converged over time. However, after Trump won the 2024 election (along with his Vice President, the Thiel-aligned JD Vance), it seemed that this would take the form of the “New Right.”
I predicted that the convergence of the dissident and establishment Right was inevitable in 2016, when I said that “Alt Right views would continue to spread, but become diluted and moderated as they did so” (covered in “A Normie’s Guide to the Dissident Right Part 3). When I originally wrote A Normie’s Guide to the Dissident Right in 2023, the entire text was predicated on the idea that this would happen.
But just how diluted had its ideas become? Did the mainstream Right become more extreme, and grow closer to the Dissident Right, or did the Dissident Right become so diluted as it became mainstream that it had become indistinguishable from the establishment Right?
In other words, the question became:
“Did normies become based or did the Right become cucked?”
While on the surface, it might have appeared that Dissident Right ideas were more popular than ever, Trump’s victory in 2024 arguably has also precipitated a “de-radicalization” of not only the Right, but American politics as a whole.
Trump Lives, Trumpism Dies
In 2016, Trump ran as an unapologetically anti-establishment figure.
In fact, in 2016 anti-establishment fervor was popular on both sides, with Bernie Sanders representing a similar sentiment on the Left. Americans had been growing increasingly dissatisfied for over a decade, starting with the widespread backlash to the Patriot Act and War on Terror during the Bush years, and accelerating after the 2008 Financial Crisis and failure of Obama to deliver any meaningful change to the system. Americans saw a system where elite bankers had received a bailout from the government, while ordinary Americans were screwed over. Americans continued to suffer the slow disintegration of their constitutional rights under the NSA wiretapping operations revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, while their sons were sent overseas to fight in Iraq—a seemingly endless war based on false pretenses. No matter which party won the election, the same basic policies continued unabated.
This growing dissatisfaction began to manifest itself with mass demonstrations, such as Occupy Wall Street (covered in A Normie’s Guide to the Dissident Right Part 1). On the Internet, Americans began to become more open to radical, unorthodox ideologies. Finally, they turned to Trump.
The Trump campaign of 2016 spoke directly to this dissatisfaction. Trump attacked the Democrats of course, but also the Republicans. Most importantly, he attacked the American political system writ large. The message of the Trump 2016 campaign was that the system was rigged, and that both the Democrats and Republicans were simply puppets of “donors” and “special interests.” According to Trump, he alone—as an outsider to this system, as a billionaire who was self-financing his campaign and thus could not be bought and compromised—could fix the broken American system and “Make America Great Again.”
Accepting the Presidential nomination at the 2016 RNC, Trump’s anti-establishment critique of Hillary Clinton—who had become the face of the Washington establishment—was clear and explicit.
Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.
That is why Hillary Clinton's message is that things will never change...never ever. My message is that things have to change – and they have to change right now!
— Trump at the 2016 RNC (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-cleveland)
This anti-establishment rhetoric was not merely limited to the Democrats, however. In his February 6 primary debate, he attacked Jeb Bush (another face of the establishment, this time on the Right), which was met by boos from the audience. Trump then accused the audience of being full of “donors and special interests” that had been planted there by the RNC. He accused these donors and special interests of booing him and supporting his opponent because “I don’t want their money [and] I don’t need their money.”
That's all of his donors and special interests out there [booing]. So it is what it is. By the way, let me just tell you…you know who has the tickets for [the television audience]? The donors, special interests, the people that are putting up the money…the RNC told us we have all donors in the audience, and the reason they're not loving me is I don't want their money. I'm going to do the right thing for the American public. I don't want their money, I don't need their money and I'm the only one up here that can say that.
— ABC News, Feb 6 2016, “Trump Elicits Boos After Spat With Bush [Republican Debate Highlights” (https://www.youtube com/watch?v=TG6_5m8RIIg&t=39s)
During the first Republican primary debate hosted by Bret Baier, Trump even threatened to run as an Independent spoiler candidate against the Republicans if he did not win the nomination.
BAIER: Gentlemen, we know how much you love hand-raising questions. So we promise, this is the only one tonight: the only one. Is there anyone on stage, and can I see hands, who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican party and pledge to not run an independent campaign against that person.
Again, we’re looking for you to raise your hand now — raise your hand now if you won’t make that pledge tonight.
Mr. Trump.
(BOOING [FROM THE AUDIENCE])
Mr. Trump to be clear, you’re standing on a Republican primary debate stage.
TRUMP: I fully understand.
BAIER: The place where the RNC will give the nominee the nod.
TRUMP: I fully understand.
BAIER: And that experts say an independent run would almost certainly hand the race over to Democrats and likely another Clinton.
You can’t say tonight that you can make that pledge?
TRUMP: I cannot say. I have to respect the person that, if it’s not me, the person that wins, if I do win, and I’m leading by quite a bit, that’s what I want to do. I can totally make that pledge. If I’m the nominee, I will pledge I will not run as an independent. But — and I am discussing it with everybody, but I’m, you know, talking about a lot of leverage. We want to win, and we will win.
…
RAND PAUL: Hey, look, look! He’s already hedging his bet on the Clintons, OK? So if he doesn’t run as a Republican, maybe he supports Clinton, or maybe he runs as an independent…
BAIER: OK.
PAUL: …but I’d say that he’s already hedging his bets because he’s used to buying politicians.
TRUMP: Well, I’ve given him plenty of money.
BAIER: Just to be clear, you can’t make a — we’re gonna — we’re going to move on.
You’re not gonna make the pledge tonight?
TRUMP: I will not make the pledge at this time.
BAIER: OK. Alright.
— TIME, Aug 6 2015, “Transcript: Read the Full Text of the Primetime Republican Debate” (https://time.com/3988276/republican-debate-primetime-transcript-full-text/)
Notice in the exchange with Paul, Trump once again implies that politicians are “bought” by elite donors, such as previously Trump himself
The climax of this anti-establishment fervor was January 6, 2021. What had started with picket signs and chants during Occupy Wall Street had escalated over time into Trump flags and MAGA hats occupying the Capitol. While J6 was at best a riot, and not some sort of bloody coup, it was nonetheless an unprecedented show of force by the American people against the establishment—one that could have potentially gone far worse. If things continued to escalate from there, what would the next stage of this escalation be like? It would not be unreasonable to imagine society wading into the waters of something resembling violent resistance.
However, Trump 2024 seemed to be a reversal of this trend. If Trump 2016 accelerated the radicalization of the country, Trump 2024 seemed to be accelerating its de-radicalization.
Donald Trump faced unprecedented legal challenges during the 2024 campaign, involving multiple criminal indictments and civil cases across different jurisdictions.
One prosecution concerned Trump's handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. In June 2023, Trump was indicted on several counts related to mishandling classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence
Another indictment followed in August 2023. This time, Trump was indicted on four counts related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Again in February 2024, Trump was found liable in a civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The court ruled that Trump and his business associates had engaged in fraudulent business practices, resulting in a substantial financial penalty of approximately $355 million. This ruling significantly impacted Trump's business operations in New York.
These numerous legal challenges meant that Trump was running the campaign with a knife to his throat. If Trump had been motivated to run in 2016 out of a genuine desire to make America great again, in 2024 his motivations were likely more mixed. It is not a stretch to conclude that he was probably at least in part motivated to run in order to prevent himself from being thrown in jail.
Trump’s legal difficulties took a financial toll as well. According to Forbes, by early 2024, Trump's Save America PAC was repurposed to help cover legal expenses, so that donors were essentially subsidizing his legal battles through political contributions (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/05/politics/donald-trump-legal-bills-what-matters/index.html).
The 2016 campaign relied heavily on grassroots donations. 52% of his campaign contributions came from small-dollar donors, those contributing less than $200 (https://whyy.org/articles/trump-fundraising-small-dollar-donor-confusion/).
It was also financed heavily out of Trump’s own wallet (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/figures-show-trump-spent-66-million-of-his-own-cash-on-election-campaign-idUSKBN13Y0B2/).
The financial strain of these legal challenges in 2024 began to outpace the amount of money grassroots fundraising could raise. Thus, large donors became more critical in the 2024 campaign. In 2024, Trump’s campaign was financed primarily by his own set of “donors and special interests” such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and venture capitalist David Sacks. This time around, 69% of Trump’s campaign financing came from these large contributions, while only 28% came from grassroots supporters, despite the fact that Trump was arguably more popular than ever with conservatives (https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/donald-trump/candidate?id=N00023864).
Ironically, while these legal challenges probably contributed to Trump relying on the establishment more than ever before, they reinforced his image as an anti-establishment figure. On August 24, 2023, Trump was forced to take a mugshot when he surrendered at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia. While some on the Left tried to spin this mugshot, and fit it into their narrative of Trump being a crooked politician, to many Americans it only served to cement his “outlaw” image.
The mugshot went viral online, instantly appearing on hats, mugs, and T-shirts. The campaign raised over $7.1 million in just a few days after the mugshot's release by selling this merchandise. Trump, recently unbanned on X by Elon Musk, used the event as an opportunity to make his first post on the platform since January 2021, sharing the mugshot image with the caption "ELECTION INTERFERENCE. NEVER SURRENDER!"
All in all, it perfectly played into the narrative of “Trump versus the rigged system” that had been a staple of his political career since 2016. The difference was that now “the system” had been reframed as consisting of ideologically Leftist politicians such as Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, rather than the “donors and special interests” financing both sides of the American political system (which now included Trump himself).
Trump Without Trumpism
With the new donors came new policies and rhetoric.
Much of the 2024 campaign focused not on a rigged system that only Trump could fix, but rather on common Republican issues such as the economy and energy policy. Trump resurrected the 2008 McCain/Palin slogan of “drill baby drill” and promised to increase domestic production of fossil fuels and perhaps implicitly bring down gas prices. He also campaigned heavily on bringing down inflation, which had increased rapidly after Covid, likely due to increased spending during the pandemic funded by printing more money.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump indicated a desire to increase legal immigration. This was probably due to the influence of the tech industry on his campaign, which relies on immigration to supply it with cheap labor.
In June 2024 on the "The All-In Podcast," Trump proposed automatically giving green cards to foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges, including two-year community colleges. He stated, “What I want to do, and what I will do, is you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country"(https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/20/politics/trump-green-cards-gradutate-college/index.html)
As US Tech Workers, an Immigration reform advocacy NGO noted, this was in stark contrast to Trump’s 2016 promises to restrict H1B Visa workers in favor of American citizens.
2016 Trump: “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first.”
2024 Trump: “I promise to staple a Green Card to anyone who graduates from ANY college, even 2-yr community colleges.”
This isn’t America First.
— US Tech Workers, Jun 20 2024 (https://x.com/USTechWorkers/status/1803926021542154323)
Trump would repeat the same statement numerous times in various speeches from June to November.
In the 2016 election, Trump had drawn a stark distinction between himself and the other Republican candidates in the area of foreign policy. Since the rise of the neocons during the Cold War, most of the GOP were war hawks, supporting a large military and an aggressive foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. George W Bush, the last Republican to serve in the White House before Trump, had made the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan the cornerstone of his foreign policy. In 2016, in spite of a decade of unpopularity with the American people, the War on Terror was still almost uniformly defended by the Republicans. Until Trump.
During the Republican primaries, Donald Trump called the Iraq War “a big fat mistake.”
“Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump said. “George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”
— Democracy Now, Feb 15, 2016, “"The War in Iraq was a Big, Fat Mistake": Trump & Bush Spar over War & 9/11” (https://www youtube.com/watch?v=whX35NKthQw)
Even before the economic anxiety caused by the 2008 financial crisis, anxiety about America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East had led to mass protests and the election of the Democrats, who had been critical of the war in Iraq. Under Obama, they promised “change”—yet the wars continued unabated. Trump’s criticisms of the war played perfectly into the American people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo and his anti-establishment message.
However, in 2024, Trump’s foreign policy was not substantially different from that of his neocon predecessors. He now preached Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of “peace through strength”—especially when it came to Iraq’s neighbor, Iran.
On September 25, during a campaign event in North Carolina, Trump stated,
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We're going to blow it to smithereens.”
This came after US intelligence officials—who Trump had once called the “Deep State” and accused of attempting to sabotage him with the Russiagate controversy—leaked information alleging that Iran was planning to assassinate him (https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/09/25/trump-iran-war-zelenskyy-ukraine-russia-north-carolina).
This claim was denied by Iranian officials (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/world/middleeast/iran-trump-assassinate.html).
In the same speech in which he threatened to blow Iran to smithereens, he pointed out that under his first administration, he had started no new wars. This may sound on its face like a continuation of his earlier, anti-interventionist platform from 2016, but if one reads between the lines the message becomes very different.
In October 2024, in a series of tit-for-tat attacks between the two countries, Iran attacked Israel with a missile strike which did no significant damage to the Israelis. Reacting to this event, Trump lambasted the foreign policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
“The two incompetent people running our country — and I don’t think they’re even running it — are leading us to the brink of World War III, a war like no other,” he said.
And how? Because “Kamala Harris’ weakness has empowered our adversaries to wreak havoc around the world.” (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/01/trump-blasts-harris-iran-biden-administration-leading-world-war-iii-00181938).
In other words, his criticism of the Democrat’s foreign policy was not that it was too hawkish, but rather that it was too weak. Trump would keep America out of foreign wars not because he planned to be an anti-interventionist, but because he planned to strong-arm America’s political opponents into submission—an identical policy to the neocons.
In December, when asked directly if a war with Iran was off the table, Trump answered “anything can happen” (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-possible-war-iran-anything-can-happen-vows-leverage-us-supp-rcna183949).
His donors and cabinet, all anti-Iran hawks, fell perfectly in line with this rhetoric.
US President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Kash Patel as FBI Director could potentially sharpen US efforts to prevent Iranian influence operations in the United States that have raised alarm since 2023.
…
Patel’s track record suggests his leadership would bring a hawkish approach to countering Iranian influence.
Speaking in March, Patel criticized the Biden administration’s renewal of sanctions waivers on Iran, describing it as a form of appeasement. “You are either for the mullahs and ayatollahs in Iran or you are against them,” he said in another Fox Business appearance.
…
For Iran, Patel’s nomination would likely signal a heightened US effort to counter its global influence, reinforcing Trump’s legacy of prioritizing Tehran as a primary adversary in American foreign policy.
— Iran International, Dec 2 2024, “Trump's FBI man may hit hard at Iran's activities in the US” (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202412014228)
Former officials said the Trump transition team is already talking through plans to unleash a new wave of harsh economic sanctions on Iran and work to cut off its oil exports all while beefing up support for Israel. They said Trump would revamp his so-called maximum pressure strategy of working to isolate Iran, ramp up economic pressure and maintain a credible threat of military force as a deterrent.
…
Trump likely wouldn’t try to put guardrails on Israel. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” Trump told Fox News last month in response to Biden saying Israel shouldn’t target Iran’s nuclear sites. “That was the craziest answer because, you know what? Soon, they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.”
…
Brian Hook, who is leading the Trump campaign’s State Department transition team and helped run Trump’s Iran policy in his first term, touted the importance of maintaining a military threat against Iran while stressing that Trump has “no interest in regime change” in Iran in an interview with CNN on Thursday.
“If nobody believes you have a credible threat of military force, then you’re going to lose deterrence,” Hook said.
— Politico, Nov 8 2024, “A sneak peek on Trump’s Iran policy" (politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/11/08/a-sneak-peak-on-trumps-iran-policy-00183727)
Trump’s rhetoric was also notably directed towards Biden’s foreign policy specifically, rather than a larger critique of American foreign policy as a whole. That is to be expected of basically any Republican candidate, and is not inherently anti-establishment in nature.
The Loyalist Disavowal
In fact, Trump surrounded himself with establishment personnel, while alienating those that had been anti-establishment Trump loyalists in 2016.
This included Project 2025, a blueprint for the Trump administration which included a list of personnel recommendations consisting mostly of proven Trump loyalists, as well as many far-right policies. One of these far-right policies included a plan for reclassifying government bureaucrats in a way that would make it easier for Trump to fire them and replace them with this loyalist personnel. It also spoke of banning pornography, reversing federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, making it harder for transgender adults to transition, and other socially conservative agenda items.
Among those involved in Project 2025 were Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, who had legally challenged the results of the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. It also included John McEntee, a favorite of the Groypers and the epitome of a Trump loyalist.
John McEntee had volunteered for the Trump 2016 campaign very early on, eventually rising to become Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office. He was widely reported to have implemented an aggressive vetting process to ensure loyalty to President Trump among federal employees, including loyalty interviews with employees designed to assess an individual's commitment to Trump and his agenda, and monitoring the social media presence of federal employees to identify any potential disloyalty or criticism of the president (https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/who-would-help-trump-carry-out-his-promised-purge-of-the-deep-state/).
Donald Trump disavowed Project 2025 multiple times during his 2024 campaign. On July 5, Trump posted on Truth Social that “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who was behind it.” (https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html).
He would reiterate this on multiple occasions throughout the campaign, both online and in person, calling its policy goals “absolutely ridiculous” and promising to Kamala Harris during the Presidential Debate that he was “not going to read it” (https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-disavowed-project-2025-during-the-campaign-not-anymore/).
His campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita would do the same, stating that “President Trump's campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the president in any way."
These disavowals were met with denial by both Trump’s critics and his allies. Right wing commentators such as Scott Greer tried to minimize Trump’s comments and reassure his audience that Trump’s administration would still be based. Meanwhile, the liberal media and Democratic party attacked Project 2025 ferociously, going so far as to feature speakers reading excerpts from the most extreme parts of it during the DNC, and reassuring their audience that Trump knew all about it—after all, look at all of the Trump loyalists who were involved with it!
Meanwhile, Trump surrounded himself with establishment Republican figures, many of whom had previously disavowed him. This included Nikki Haley, an outspoken critic of Trump in 2015 who had once claimed that Trump’s rhetoric had inspired mass shooter Dylann Roof. (https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/282092-nikki-haley-on-trump-i-know-what-that-rhetoric-can-do/).
After she eventually endorsed Trump after being defeated by him in the primary, Trump was seen around Haley throughout the campaign, including at the RNC. He even floated the idea of offering her a place in the administration before allegedly receiving enough pushback from his base (along with perhaps his donors and special interests) that he reversed course.
Marco Rubio, a fierce Trump critic in 2016, was seen as a typical neocon establishment politician when he ran against Trump in the Republican primary. He had then served as a foil to the anti-establishment rhetoric of Trumpism, alongside Jeb Bush. But in 2024, Trump chose him as his Secretary of State (https://theconversation.com/marco-rubio-trumps-foreign-policy-pick-might-be-a-hopeful-sign-for-nato-243649).
Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign managers, were boilerplate GOP staff. Susie Wiles had worked as a lobbyist, and then for Rick Scott and Mitt Romney—the exact types of GOP establishment politicians Trump had built his career distinguishing himself from (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/07/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-susie-wiles-00188391).
Chris LaCivita had worked for GOP politicians that were equally typical of establishment politics, such as Mitch McConnell (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/chris-lacivita-ran-one-of-american-politics-most-notorious-smear-campaigns-now-hes-working-for-trump/).
He also supported removing Trump from office after January 6 (https://newrepublic.com/post/187439/trump-campaign-manager-lacivita-criticism-january-6). While this may sound like an understandable position to someone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool Trump loyalist, that is precisely the point. Would LaCivita pass McEntee’s loyalty interview?
While not exactly NeverTrumpers, Wiles and LaCivita were a far cry from the fiercely loyal, far-right radicals of Project 2025. They were not interested in an anti-establishment revolution, and if Trump lost they would simply work as campaign managers for the next Republican nominee.
However there was at least one outright NeverTrumper in the campaign: JD Vance, Trump’s Vice President. In 2016, while McEntee was enthusiastically supporting the Trump campaign, Vance was attacking it. He was not interested in Trump’s anti-establishment movement or Trumpism, and opted instead to vote for Evan McMullin. In fact, Vance called Trump “a moral disaster” and even compared him to Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick Ohio Sen. JD Vance was once a fervent critic of the former president. In private messages, he wondered ahead of Trump’s election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”
…
In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then best-known for penning the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” said Trump was “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America. He told CNN ahead of the 2016 election that he was “definitely not” voting for Trump and he also contemplated voting for Hillary Clinton (he ultimately said he planned to vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin.)
…
“At the heart of Trump’s immigration message is that if we had less immigration, we would have much better jobs,” he said. “I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. My own sense is that Trump definitely simplifies these problems. I don’t think if you build a great Mexican wall, all of a sudden, all of these steel mill jobs are going to come back to southern Ohio, but it at least gives people something to latch onto.”
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Vance also said that racism and xenophobia played a role in Trump’s rise.
“There is definitely an element of Donald Trump’s support that has its basis in racism, xenophobia, but a lot of these folks are just really hardworking people who are struggling in really important ways,” Vance said in a September 2016 “PBS NewsHour” Interview.
“Definitely some people who voted for Trump were racist and they voted for him for racist reasons,” Vance said in an interview at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.
Speaking with CNN in October 2016, Vance criticized Trump for “actively antagonizing” Black voters, claiming this tactic was a long-standing Republican strategy.
“It’s not just that Donald Trump doesn’t speak to issues of special concern of minority voters or Black voters, it’s that he seems to like actively antagonizing a lot of the Black voters,” Vance said during a panel discussion.
In a July 2016 interview with American Conservative, a right-leaning publication, he added Trump was making the problem of racial resentment “worse” by talking about “rapist immigrants and banning all Muslims” as part of his message.
To that end – Vance once tweeted he found Trump reprehensible.
“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us,” he wrote in October 2016.
— CNN Politics, Jul 16 2024, “JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick, once called him a ‘moral disaster,’ and possibly ‘America’s Hitler’” (https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/kfile-jd-vance-comments-trump/index.html)
JD Vance’s comments seem to echo Hillary Clinton’s portrayal of Trump in her infamous “Alt Right speech” during 2016 (covered in “A Normie’s Guide to The Dissident Right Part 3”).
This is not conservatism as we have known it. This is not Republicanism as we have know it. These are race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’
— The Washington Post, “Hillary’s Alt-Right Speech, Annotated”, August 25 2016 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/)
Why did JD Vance change his mind about Trump? According to CNN, Vance said it was because of Trump’s “many successes in office.” A truly vague statement that could be made of any politician who has ever served in any office at any time.
To be fair, Trump did return to his earlier anti-immigration rhetoric at times, especially after his poll numbers began to fall behind Kamala Harris. Illegal immigration had skyrocketed under the Biden/Harris administration, and the Left’s immigration policy was so unpopular that even Democrat politicians had begun to criticize it (covered in “A Normies Guide to the Dissident Right Part 7”). Perhaps Trump hoped to bolster his poll numbers by appealing to his base with more red meat on an issue favorable to him. Trump claimed that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and said undocumented immigrants who commit murder have “bad genes.” (https://time.com/7171654/donald-trump-immigration-plan-2024/).
These statements might be characterized as “extreme nativist rhetoric,” but would this translate to equally extreme policy?
A staple of the Trump 2016 campaign had been to build a wall between the US and Mexico, which Mexico would pay for (some speculated perhaps through tariffs or some sort of tax on remittances). In the end, out of the 1000 miles promised only 452 miles were built, out of which only 80 miles were new barriers where none existed before. Instead of a concrete wall, most of the new construction consisted of 30-foot-tall steel bollard fencing. And it was paid for by the US taxpayer, not Mexico.
In spite of the extreme nativist rhetoric, Trump’s comments concerned exclusively illegal immigration, which has long been opposed by the Republican party and even by many Democrats. Some of his proposals indeed went far beyond the normal Republican platform, such as the promises of mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship. However, would Trump actually make due on these proposals, or would it simply be a nothingburger just like the wall? If all of Trump’s predecessors had failed to follow through on their promises because they had been compromised by their donors, and now Trump was funded by the same donors, then there was little reason to believe that he would follow through. During his first term, Trump deported less illegal immigrants than Obama.
During his first term, Trump deported more than 1.5 million people, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. But that’s about half the 2.9 million deportations undertaken during Barack Obama’s first term and fewer than the 1.9 million deportations during Obama’s second term.
—CNN, Nov 16 2024 “ Mass detention and returning migrants to Mexico: Donald Trump’s plans on immigration are coming into focus:” (https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/politics/donald-trump-immigration-plans/index.html)
So did Trump actually intend to deliver on these extreme campaign promises, or was it merely rhetoric that was popular and would appeal to his base, cynically employed to win an election that would keep him out of jail?
Trump Lives
Perhaps the clearest sign that Trump had no intention of overthrowing the establishment was after the assassination attempt on his life. On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt during a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania while giving a speech at a campaign rally. Trump suffered no serious injuries, being slightly grazed by a bullet on his ear. After being shot, Trump raised his fist defiantly and yelled, “Fight!” Like the Trump mugshot, the iconic image of a bloody Trump raising his fist bolstered his image as a persecuted, anti-establishment hero of the people. But why?
The motives of the shooter, who was killed instantly by Secret Service snipers, remained unknown. So who exactly was Trump being persecuted by, and who exactly was he fighting?
If the anti-establishment fervor of America had grown from Occupy Wall Street, to voting for Trump in 2016, to storming the Capitol—then political assassinations would be the logical next step of escalation. Would this be the catalyst for another destabilizing event? Would Trump return with a vengeance after nearly losing his life to his persecutors (whoever they might be)?
The shooting occurred just a few days before the RNC. Between the shooting and the RNC, Trump made no public appearances. America watched with baited breath to see how Trump would respond. Would he blame the shooting on the deep state? The establishment? Leftist radicals? Perhaps the media, which had tried to convince the American people that Trump was the next Hitler, a threat to Democracy, and a puppet of Putin for almost a decade?
In fact, Trump did the exact opposite. He did not attempt to capitalize on the assassination attempt at all. Instead, he gave a speech emphasizing “unity” and telling Americans that they needed to turn down the temperature, come together, and heal the political divisions in the country.
Former President Donald Trump touted a message of unity at the Republican National Convention, eschewing his typical divisive and fiery rhetoric in the wake of a failed assassination attempt to instead urge Americans to come together ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
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“Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, color and creed,” he said. “The discord and division in our society must be healed. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart.”
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Trump’s speech comes five days after a shooter attempted to assassinate him at a rally in Pennsylvania, missing by mere inches and grazing his ear instead. The typically combative former president seemed to heed calls from Republican Party leaders to espouse a gentler tone in light of the shooting, capitalizing on the opportunity to deescalate divisive political rhetoric that has been a hallmark of the campaign so far.
“Despite such a heinous attack, we unite this evening more determined than ever. I am more determined than ever and so are you” Trump said, a bandage covering his right ear. “Our resolve is unbroken, and our purpose is unchanged–to deliver a government that serves the American people better than ever before.”
— US News, Jul 19 2024, “Typically Fiery Trump Calls for Unity at Republican Convention” (https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-07-19/typically-fiery-trump-calls-for-unity-at-republican-convention)
When compared with his defiant 2016 RNC acceptance speech lambasting the establishment, the difference was day and night. The Trump Era continued, but Trumpism was gone. It seemed that the time between 2014 and 2024 was best characterized not as the Trump Era after all, but as the “Culture War Era.” An era that was now drawing to a close. Put to bed by the same man who was most responsible for awakening it.
The End of NeverTrump
In 2016, many GOP establishment figures resisted Donald Trump's candidacy, expressing concerns about his rhetoric and qualifications. Many in the party, both politicians and media personalities such as Ben Shapiro, became “NeverTrump” Republicans. Just as Trump would not commit to supporting the Republican nominee in 2016 if it was not him, these Republicans refused to support the Republican nominee if it was him—even if that meant allowing Hillary Clinton to win by default.
Trump was attacked by many in his own party such as Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, JD Vance, and Lindsey Graham. Republican Party leadership showed resistance and concern about Trump's candidacy, and even threatened a contested convention.
The Republican establishment is just about out of candidates — and if the delegate math is tough for Donald Trump, it’s far worse for everyone else.
The donors who pumped millions into an anti-Trump campaign are now assessing whether to continue the fight. And while some mainstream Republicans are girding for a likely floor fight at the July convention, others are losing their resolve.
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“The goal for most of us at this point is to keep delegates away from Trump, and it really doesn’t matter who wins them,” said Charlie Black, a longtime GOP operative who just signed on as an adviser to Kasich’s campaign as it approaches a contested convention.
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The Republican Party’s #NeverTrump movement, after spending $15 million in Florida and not putting so much as a dent in Donald Trump’s armor, has only a few unpalatable options left: uniting behind Cruz, long a loathsome thorn in the establishment’s side, or pinning their hopes on a long shot like Kasich and girding for a messy fight at the RNC’s convention that could further fracture the GOP beyond repair.
“With Kasich winning Ohio, a contested convention is more likely than ever,’ said one Republican operative in Washington. ‘The backside shadow campaign for delegates who will come to you on the second and third ballots begins.”
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The party is not about to roll over for Trump, especially with his negatives rising higher amid a spate of violent skirmishes between his supporters and protesters at several recent rallies. In fact, there’s rising chatter on Capitol Hill that the party could nominate [Paul Ryan] at the convention.
Politico, Mar 16 2016, “GOP establishment on the ropes” (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-contested-convention-establishment-plans-220848)
By 2024, the #NeverTrump movement was essentially dead, and the GOP had fully embraced Trump's victory and leadership of the party.
The displays of obedience emerging in recent weeks remove any lingering doubt that the Republican Party is aligned to advance the interests of one man, signaling that a sweep of victories from Mr. Trump and his allies in November could also mean replacing checks and balances in Washington with his wishes and whims.
For many Republicans, those aren’t risks but the rewards of a second Trump administration. Only a rapidly dwindling minority inside the party remains worried about Mr. Trump’s intentions.
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At the same time, Mr. Trump, who long accused Republican leaders of rigging the system for their self-gain, has come to mirror their methods. The swamp that he once declared in need of draining, he now sees as wetlands in need of protecting.
Mr. Trump’s team argues that he is giving voice to popular opinions that had no champion in the party, and that the changes at the Republican National Committee are intended with a single goal in mind: electing him to a second White House term.
“Our mission is straightforward: maximize the Republican Party’s resources to get President Trump elected,” said Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign senior adviser set to take over as chief operating officer of the R.N.C.
— New York Times, Feb 16 2024, “Trump Fully Devours the Republican Establishment” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/us/politics/trump-republican-party-establishment.html)
In 2016, Ben Shapiro articulated a strong opposition to Trump's candidacy, writing that: "I will never vote for Donald Trump. Here’s why: Trump has no actual guiding principles other than his own aggrandizement." (https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-i-will-never-vote-donald-trump-heres-why-ben-shapiro)
By 2024, Shapiro's stance had reversed. He conducted interviews with Trump and participated in fundraising efforts supporting his campaign. Now Shapiro said that "serving in President Trump's administration was the honor of a lifetime." (https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiros-interview-with-former-president-donald-trump-full-transcript)
Clearly whatever threat the GOP establishment considered Trump to have posed in 2016, they no longer feared. So what had changed? Did the GOP establishment suddenly become “based and redpilled”? Did Trump finally convince them of the merits of right wing populism?
Ben Shapiro, once the face of NeverTrumpism, explained his evolution in a 2024 Op-ed.
So, how precisely did a conservative who didn’t vote for president in 2016 and didn’t support Donald Trump during the Republican primaries become a Trump donor?
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Unlike in 2016, we don’t have to guess at what a Trump administration will be. And we don’t have to guess what a Biden administration will be either. We know. America cannot afford another Joe Biden term.
Or, perhaps more realistically, a Kamala Harris term.
—BPR, Mar 21 2024, “Ben Shapiro: Why I’m co-hosting a Trump fundraiser” (https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/03/21/ben-shapiro-why-im-co-hosting-a-trump-fundraiser-1446859)
In other words, 2024 was a return to the typical partisan politics that existed before 2016, and Trump was simply the latest Republican candidate. Thus, Shapiro would support Trump the Republican where he had rejected Trump the populist.
Shapiro cites many of Trump’s policies that he preferred to Biden, primarily focusing on the economy and Trump’s hardline stance against Iran in the Middle East—exactly the same policies that would characterize any other GOP platform, with nothing anti-establishment among them. And, as Shapiro points out, he could rest assured that no such populist or anti-establishment agenda would be implemented by those surrounding Trump, just as it was not in the first term. In spite of the rhetoric, Trump was not a radical. He was just another Republican.
Shapiro would reiterate this during a debate with Sam Harris, moderated by Bari Weiss. Harris argued that Trump’s delegitimization of America’s establishment and destabilization of American politics presented a threat to democracy, while Shapiro reassured him that there was no threat to be had.
Sam’s biggest issue is January 6 and Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Sam writes, “The spectacle of a sitting president refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, culminating in an attack on the Capitol, remains the most shocking violation of political norms to occur in my lifetime.”
On the other side, Ben Shapiro—lawyer, co-founder of The Daily Wire, best-selling author, and host of The Ben Shapiro Show—will explain why he is voting for Donald Trump. Ben argues that we were a better country under Trump and that his policies make us safer and more prosperous. There were no hot wars, no inflation crisis, and less traffic at the southern border with Trump as president. Ben makes the case that Trump will not be abandoned by the experts who advised him during his first administration, and he will delegate responsibilities to capable and trustworthy policymakers.
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Sam Harris: I’m voting for Harris. The truth is I would vote for almost anyone over Trump. I think I would be voting against Trump with more or less anyone because what I want is normal politics.
I happen to be registered as a Democrat, but I would vote for Mitt Romney at this point. I would campaign for Mitt Romney. A normal Republican would be absolutely fine with me. The issue for me is that Trump is the most divisive political figure to appear in my lifetime. Whatever you think of Trump, even if you think he’s great, you can’t deny that he brings out the worst in us. He brings out the worst in both his friends and his enemies.
For all its flaws, the Democratic Party is a normal political party, and the Republican Party is now a cult of personality, which I consider to be actually dangerous. So that’s really my main concern. I don’t think any of this gets better until Trump gets out of politics.
Bari Weiss: And to just draw a line under it, let’s say the election was between Mitt Romney and Kamala Harris. Would you be voting for Romney or Harris?
SH: I would probably vote for Romney. But that really should not give any indication of how fully I favor Harris over Trump. I’m all-in for Harris. I’ve given her money. I’m going to be honest about what I think her flaws are as a candidate. But, I think Ben and you and I agree about many of the problems in the Democratic Party. And yet I would view a normal Republican as a corrective to that. But I don’t view Trump as a corrective to that. I think everything that Ben and I worry about on the left gets worse under four more years of Trump.
BW: Ben, let’s go to you. Obviously, you’re not voting for Kamala Harris.
Ben Shapiro: I’m coming at this from precisely the opposite point of view. I’ve given money to President Trump. I’ve campaigned with President Trump. I brought President Trump to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s Ohel on October 7th, where he met with hostage families. So I’m very involved in this campaign.
For me, the question is: Were you better off in 2019 or are you better off in 2024? And in 2019, what I got was a solid economy, the best foreign policy of my lifetime, a president whose rhetoric I very often didn’t like but who had made the country stronger in a variety of ways.
In 2024, what I see is an administration that has produced a world that is on fire in a myriad of ways, has produced 40-year highs in inflation, has not, in fact, calmed the waters. I know Sam was talking about normalcy. The reality is that Donald Trump has not been president for the last three and a half years. And not only have we not returned to normalcy, things seem to have gotten significantly worse.
And so the calculation for me is very simple. With all Donald Trump’s flaws, with all of his excesses, Trump was a better president than Kamala Harris would be. Also we have a very robust and durable constitutional system almost built to hem in his flaws and excesses. I get a lot of good policy that I wouldn’t get with Kamala Harris. I get a stronger American presence on the world scene with regard to America’s allies. I get a better economy. And I think it would serve as a corrective to a Democratic Party that seems to have spun out into a world of damaging wokeness.
— The Free Press, Oct 29 2024, “Donald Trump or Kamala Harris? Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris Debate" (https://www.thefp.com/p/donald-trump-or-kamala-harris-ben-shapiro-sam-harris-debate)
Later in the interview, Sam Harris says that a Kamala Harris administration would be better than a Trump administration for Israel, claiming “it would be staffed by sane people. Do you want Mr. Pillow guy in the conversation with…Mike Flynn and Candace Owens? Who’s gonna be in there [in the Trump administration]—Jack Posobiec?”
Shapiro assures him that Trump’s staff will include nothing but typical establishment-approved figures, commenting "I know precisely the people talking to him, I'm not speculating about that."
Clearly, the message had gone out to the establishment conservative elites: “Ignore what Trump says. Trump will not in any way present a populist threat to our power.”