Musings on the Election

A critical assessment of Trump 2024

Nov 09, 2024

Usually, my essays are far more thought-out than this one is going to be. I suppose I should have prepared something communicating my thoughts on the Trump win this past Tuesday (which I thought would happen), but have been tied down with other very research-intensive projects. However, I want to take the time to put down in writing what I believe happened, as well as what we all should be anticipating and looking out for in the months and years to come. This will be a critical assessment of the prospect of a second Trump administration.

So, what happened?

Plainly, what happened is that Power put its weight behind Trump. This is what explains his meteoric rise over the past twelve-to-eighteen months. The fact is that Trump was at or near his lowest less than two years ago—slapped with thirty-seven federal indictments for allegedly mishandling classified documents, facing indictments related to the January 6 ‘insurrection’, being tried on trumped-up felony charges in New York for the Stormy Daniels affair, ordered to pay near $100 million in damages in a defamation case, and looking at the prospect of centuries in prison. Then, the personalities of the donor pantheon smiled on him, had mercy on him, and gave him a second lease on life.

Frequently, when someone finds themselves in such dire legal straits as Trump was less than two years ago, interested parties (e.g. law enforcement, intelligence bodies) are able to ‘flip’ them—this is quite literally the process by which someone becomes a ‘fed’: when someone is facing ruin at the hands of the system, they receive salvation from someone who wants something from them. I believe with relative certitude this is what happened with Trump.

In the days since the election, I have heard endlessly about how Trump is going to orchestrate a revolution and change the face of the nation forever. Judging from what I’ve heard, Trump will end all wars, bringing peace and stability to the world. He will deport millions beginning on Day One. He’ll completely revitalize the economy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will ban seed oils to boot. If all of this sounds like a tall order—like wishful thinking—that’s because it is.

As delicious as it has been to watch liberals melt down over the past three days, the fact is that if you’re a true, rightwing, America First patriot, then you’re on the outs along with Kamala Harris. Trump owes his victory to a very special cadre of people, and it’s not you and me. Rather he owes the success of his campaign (which was 0% self-funded) to the following people and organizations:

SpaceX (Elon Musk) - $118,557,604
Adelson Clinic for Drug Abuse & Treatment & Research (Miriam Adelson) - $100,000,000
America First Action - $21,256,643
Isaac Perlmutter - $12,450,000
Andreesen Horowitz - $7,010,602
Elliot Management (Paul Singer) - $5,011,970

Each of these major benefactors represents a special interest. Miriam Adelson (and her late husband, Sheldon Adelson) has been some of the most prominent pro-Zionist GOP donors of the past of recent memory and appears to support West Bank annexation; Isaac Perlmutter was born in Israel, served in the IDF in the 1967 war and has donated large sums of money to a broad array of pro-Israel causes; Paul Singer funds Manhattan Institute, Christopher Rufo’s outfit, responsible for taking out Harvard President Claudine Gay on a pretext of academic misconduct after protests against the brutal Israeli campaign in Gaza; Singer also served on the board of directors for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), which lobbied for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Elon Musk, the man behind megadonor SpaceX, has reportedly supplied Israel with satellite capabilities which could substantially augment their military capabilities and alter the balance of power in the region. The venture capital firm, Andreesen Horowitz, is apparently deeply entrenched in the defense technology sector in Israel.

On top of all this, America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the think tank associated with America First Action, officially recommends that the US supply Israel with “all the military aid it needs”, “[give Israel] the time it needs to thoroughly defeat Hamas as a military and political entity” (read: ‘no ceasefire’), and “not try to second-guess the Israeli government as to its military needs, its policies, or its war goals and should not try to entangle Israel in ‘peace process’ talks about a two-state solution”.1 Furthermore, vis-à-vis Iran, AFPI recommends the US pursue a “Maximum Pressure policy of robust sanctions against the Iranian regime while reasserting a credible U.S. military deterrent to Tehran and its proxies…[in conjunction with an] ‘all of government’ approach to provide maximum support [to empower the Iranian people to change the regime]”.2 Crucially, the organization, being comprised of many former Trump staffers, is closely related with the Trump transition team, which means it is helping to build his next administration. An anonymous source told Politico that “by virtue of how they are situated and that we are in a very late timeline for this work, AFPI and the transition may be a distinction without a difference”.3

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Of course, Power (by which I mean the elites) is not a monolith—the Obamas obviously did not throw their weight behind Trump. There are, instead, competing factions with distinct interests and objectives. Changes in the political landscape, both at home and abroad, enable the ascendency of certain factions’ interests over those of opposing factions by making them more feasible, urgent, or desirable.

The attack by Hamas on October 7 of last year and the brutal Gaza war that followed thereupon was precisely the kind of sea change which elevates a certain faction over another—in this sense, comparisons to 9/11 have a remarkably prescient quality. Just as we had the neoconservatives in the US in the 1990s and 2000s, who seized upon 9/11 to launch a global war of empire, Israel has its own elite faction (Netanyahu’s right wing Likud coalition, which is directly descended from the Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism through Menachem Begin, leader of Irgun) that appears to be interested in leveraging the war against Hamas into a fully regional conflagration, the consummation of which will be the definitive elimination of the Iranian challenge to Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. What’s more, this faction has allies in the US who backed Trump in the election (see the aforementioned persons and entities), and who are likely to comprise the personnel of a the incoming Trump administration.

Taking out Iran has been a key Israeli objective for decades. If you aren’t familiar with the so-called ‘Yinon Plan’ and A Clean Break Report, read up. In 2002, while lobbying the US to invade Iraq, Benjamin Netanyahu made the following statement to Congress:

“Obviously, we’d like to see regime change, at least I would, in Iran, just as I would like to see in Iraq. The question now is a practical question: what is the best place to proceed. It’s not a question of whether Iraq’s regime should be taken out, but when it should be taken out. It’s not a question of whether you’d like to see a regime change in Iran, but how to achieve it”.4

He issued a guarantee that if the US were to “take out Saddam…it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. The more victories you amass, the easier the next victory becomes”. The strategy by which AFPI recommends a second Trump administration pursue regime change in Iran closely mirrors the approach the US took to achieve regime change in Iraq in the decade before the 2003 invasion: a maximum pressure sanctions campaign combined with support for opposition forces within Iraq.

While Trump may be personally inclined against interventionist foreign policy and regime change, there are are number of indicators that he is the pick of the elite war party. This is, in fact, what the 2024 election was primarily about. Domestic politics, culture war issues, and other ideological candy served, for the most part, as tools of elite factions to maneuver into positions of dominance. For a repeat of the 2003 Iraq War, all the country may require is a little push…

What should we expect?

Little to No Rioting/Civil Unrest: Some on the right are projecting massive resistance from the left, up to and including violent uprisings. This is very unlikely. Unlike the BLM riots that broke out in 2020, riots between now and the inauguration would in no way serve the empowered faction. Accordingly, there is little incentive for Power to gin up and sustain this kind of activity. Isolated outbursts of leftist discontent may take place, but without the elite support and protection enjoyed by the BLM mobs a several years ago, they will be put down in a timely manner.

More Border Fence, No Mass Deportations, Legal Immigration: ‘The Wall’ is Trump’s signature political invention and he has, in fact, been appointed with a mandate to reduce illegal immigration. Accordingly, I think he will encounter less obstruction to efforts to construct more fence along the southern border than he did during the first administration. This would involve a relatively small appropriation and would facilitate an easy political win for both Trump and Republicans in Congress. Additionally, JD Vance has been selected as the heir to the Trump movement, and he will need a record to run on in 2028. Power is, therefore, incentivized to permit Trump to finish ‘The Wall’. Illegal immigrants charged or convicted of violent crime will face deportation, but, most likely, ‘mass deportations’ will involve very little else. Finally, ‘green card stapled to diplomas’ will likely become a reality. Why? Because a large influx of smart Chinese and Indian immigrants will be a major boon to the tech sector backing Trump, and its not a difficult sell to many regular Americans, especially if it is billed alongside a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Escalation in the Middle East: I won’t officially predict a US war with Iran, but I won’t completely rule it out. At the very least, the presence of US forces in the region will continue to expand, thereby increasing the likelihood for something to go awry.

Republican Pivot Away from Heteronormativity, Toward Abortion: To be somewhat crass, I believe the GOP will continue to get gayer and try to put away the abortion issue. The reality is that abortion restrictions, even at the state level, may represent an electoral liability for Republicans going forward. Accordingly, under Trump’s watch, I suspect that the party will continue its move away from its traditional stance on the issue and potentially leave pro-life efforts on the state level to flounder. I believe the United States will basically reconstruct the conditions imposed by Roe v. Wade by enshrining it into state constitutions across the country.

Pacem in Terris

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