America's Right-Wing Populism Is on Its Deathbed

In both domestic and foreign policy, Donald Trump increasingly resembles George W. Bush.

Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography on Unsplash

Donald Trump’s unlikely rise to the presidency in 2016 marked one of the most spectacular political upsets in American history. The Democrats were so confident in their victory that they didn’t even bother to field a competitive field in their primary, it fell to Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders to throw his hat in the ring in the name of democracy and open debate in the Democratic Party.

With that annoyance out of the way, Hillary Clinton plowed through the general election in confidence. Pretty much every political observer thought that she had it in the bag (including me). But then Trump proved us all wrong. He did so by waging one of the most clever political campaigns in American history. Unlike many other Republicans whose political toolkit consisted of accusing the Democrats of being Big Government socialists who want to destroy America, Trump went after his opponents, Democrats and Republicans alike, with a mix of left-wing and right-wing attacks.

Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton were warmongers, in Trump’s telling; the former game show host also railed against Wall Street, the regime of globalization, and America’s porous borders. It ended up being a winning combination for him not once but twice. At the end of the campaign in 2024 you had to admit: Trump is actually pretty good at politics.

But in neither the first term nor the second have the populist politics that Trump promised actually fully emerged. In both foreign and domestic spheres, Trump’s administration increasingly resembles what you might imagine a third term of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s presidency would look like.

Abroad, Trump has essentially outsourced American foreign policy to the relatively minor state of Israel, which has not-so-minor political influence in the Republican Party via Christian Zionist and Likud-aligned megadonors. Trump sat by and watched Israel kill one of the very men he was negotiating with over Iran’s civilian nuclear program; the best U.S. intelligence estimate is that Iran hasn’t made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons over the past 20 years and if they did choose to make that decision, it would be months or even years until they reached that threshold.

The consequence of Trump pulling out of the Iran deal negotiated by President Barack Obama, then, appears to be the war we are all watching on our social media feeds and television screens. Thousands of people will be maimed and killed, mostly Iranian but also Israeli.

And if Trump chooses to involve America directly in the war — rather than simply providing military defense to Israel, which is essentially encouraging it to launch this unprovoked and unnecessary war by shielding it from most of the consequences — we will see Americans hurt and killed, too.

None of this seems out of place with how, say, Dick Cheney would be running American foreign policy. The right-wing populist Donald Trump, who would engaged in steel-eyed negotiations even with long-time adversaries in the pursuit of ending endless wars, has been replaced by the easily manipulated Donald Trump who now trusts a wanted war criminal named Benjamin Netanyahu over his own Director of National Intelligence, who assured Congress that America has no evidence that Iran is even working towards a nuclear weapon.

We have no idea how much blood will be shed before this frankly stupid war is over, but what MAGA can look forward to on the other side is…a tax bill that could’ve easily been written by former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The bill includes only modest increases in benefits for the GOP’s increasingly working class base while extending deficit-busting tax rates for large firms and Big Business.

It’s those very same businesses that Trump seems reticent to confront when it comes to his marquee issue: immigration. In recent weeks, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security through its ICE agency has been engaged in high-profile immigration raids in blue cities. But the administration’s deportation record actually lags behind other American presidents, and much of what Trump is doing on this front is simply theater.

The reason so many unauthorized immigrants are working all over the economy is that, well, the economy demands them. That’s why Trump recently recently called off raids on certain sectors of the economy — those titans of industry paid him a visit and told him that he needed those laborers. (Although of this writing the administration appears to have flipped yet again on that issue, so who knows what the policy will be by time you read this.)

If Trump really wanted to tackle issues like ending America’s endless involvement in overseas wars, our elitist tax and trade policies, and illegal immigration, it would require confronting powerful elites ranging from the Israel lobby to Big Ag to Wall Street. But Trump has a habit of caving when he comes face to face with concentrated power. He has always wanted elite approval and he only lashes out at them when he doesn’t get it. Such a vessel was never going to be a mascot for populism. At best, he may just be George W. Trump.