Turn a political party into an extremist cult

Is Trumpism a Supply or Demand Problem?

It takes more than one man to turn a political party into an extremist cult.

David Corn

By now, you probably don’t need any more mastication about the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. This was an event that required little after-the-fact explication. Harris deftly maneuvered Trump into displaying his worse qualities and unfitness for office. If you want to see how I weighed in, you can check this out. But it was troubling that two polls taken following the debate that captured the obvious—a majority believed Harris had won—showed that about a third of the viewers said Trump had triumphed. (CNN put the number at 37 percent for debate watchers; YouGov placed it at 31 percent for registered voters.) This gives us a good idea of how many Americans are either part of the Trump cult or susceptible to its pull. It’s not a majority or a plurality, but it’s a large slice.

Looking at these numbers, I thought of a recent New York Times column by David French, a Never Trumper conservative who has had to bear particularly cruel attacks from far-righters for his anti-Trump views. He reported that on a recent trip to Chicago he passed by the Trump tower there, and this triggered a thought:

I was reminded once again that Donald Trump is a singular figure in American politics. There is no one like him, and that means that no one can replace him. While it’s always perilous to make predictions about American politics—or anything else—here’s one that I’m almost certain is correct: If Trump loses in 2024, MAGA will fade. He is the irreplaceable key to its success.

French pointed out to his readers that after a recent column in which he said he was voting for Harris in order “to save conservatism from MAGA,” the MAGA response “was, in essence: You’re fooling yourself. Trump or no Trump, we own the party now.” No, he retorted in this offering: “If Trump loses, MAGA will fade. It will not go away, of course. Reactionary populism is a permanent fixture of American politics, but don’t believe MAGA’s hype. Its national success depends on one man.”

Of course, it is premature to ponder the fate of the GOP and the radical right should Trump lose the election (even after this week’s thrashing). But columnists have to column-ize. (Ditto for newsletter-ists.) And it struck me that French was, in a way, peering through the wrong end of the telescope.

Indeed, Trump is an unparallelled politician: a celebrity reality TV star and billionaire full of braggadocio and personality disorders who somehow convinced tens of millions of angry Americans he is their hero. He does possess unique characteristics—including malignant narcissism and profound dishonesty—that have helped him trounce all GOP rivals and seize control of the party and the MAGA movement, as he has tossed the bloodiest of red meat to our Republican neighbors. Yet at issue here is not supply but demand.

I explained this in my recent book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. You cannot have selling without buying. You cannot have a con without a mark who wants to believe the con. Since Trump became a political figure on the right with his championship of the racist birther conspiracy theory, he has been a carnival barker peddling grievance, culture war, hate, bigotry, and paranoia—the same way he has pitched luxury apartments, steaks, vodkas, ties, tea, books (about himself), a board game (about himself), Trump University (a fraud), casinos (that failed), an airline (that failed), a social media platform (that is failing), and, more recently, sneakers, Bibles, pieces of his clothing, NFTs, trading cards, and, yes, crypto.

He has usually found an audience for his junk and his bunk. As I pointed out in American Psychosis, before he entered politics, the conservative movement and the GOP base had been radicalized for decades by an assortment of its leaders and outfits, from Joe McCarthy to Barry Goldwater to Richard Nixon to the New Right and the Religious Right to Ronald Reagan to Pat Robertson to Sarah Palin to the tea party. Repeatedly, significant figures on the right made common cause with extremists to push the crass politics of hate and othering. The basic message has been that liberals, Democrats, progressive activists, civil rights and social justice advocates, feminists, environmentalists, academics, the media, and that entire ilk are all godless commies conspiring to destroy the real America—and they must be annihilated.

Over recent decades, conservatives with big megaphones—think Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and subsequently much of Fox News—have pressed increasingly harsh and divisive rhetoric. Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderers. Barack Obama was a secret, born-in-Kenya socialist with a plot to destroy the economy so he could take over as a dictator. A feedback loop was established. Conservative thought leaders dished out the swill, riled up voters, were rewarded with lucrative gigs or votes, and, subsequently, intensified the poison. The impulse to exploit and boost the worst fears of right-leaning voters was incentivized and rewarded.

Trump saw this market opportunity and rushed in with his wares of rage and all his lies. Republican voters had long been encouraged to cultivate a taste for demonization. Trump saw how easy it was to feed this beast and ride it to glory. That is, self-glory. Canny as he can be, he realized there was a demand for Trumpism.

What happens to this demand should he lose? Part of that might depend on what occurs after such a defeat. Will he again generate chaos, chicanery, conflict, and violence? Let’s assume that he does go (somewhat) quietly—granted, a huge assumption. What becomes of MAGA? Without the pitchman, French believes, it withers. He notes that there is “no ready heir to his MAGA crown,” observes that MAGA candidates, such as Kari Lake in Arizona, have not fared well in recent elections, and says MAGA is generally a hot mess of weirdness and scandal (see JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene).

Will the craving for Trump’s politics of cruelty, carnage, conspiracy, and contempt evaporate? There may be no obvious successor. Yet with Trump gone, the radicalized base of the GOP will still be here. Certainly, there might be disruptive battles within the party among those who desire to claim the throne and no quick and clear resolution. (Tom Cotton versus Ted Cruz!) But the 30 percent or so of Republicans who believe the QAnon conspiracy theory that the government, media, and financial worlds are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation—a bonkers idea that Trump has legitimized and amplified—are not going away. Nor are the more than half of Republicans who still buy Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 election. And their yearning for that red meat of hate and demonization may well remain.

I understand why French and other anti-Trump conservatives want to view MAGA as an anomaly and tie its dominance on the right to the machinations and success of just one extraordinary man. Get rid of that guy and the GOP has a shot at becoming once more a normal party. This absolves French and other lifelong conservatives of having spent decades within a party as its base was guided by GOP leaders and influencers into its extremism of today. MAGA was not a break from the GOP’s past; it was an evolution. Many anti-Trump right-wingers can’t come to terms with that. (One who has is Stuart Stevens, formerly Mitt Romney’s chief strategist, who acknowledged his own role in the GOP’s devolution in his book, It Was All a Lie.)

Trump is not the cause of the disease that ails French and the rest of us. He sussed out how to capitalize on dangerous sentiments that have been brewing and nurtured for years. He is just the symptom. It’s pretty to think that one election can rid the body politic of this virus. Preventing Trump from returning to power is a first step, but stronger and longer treatment will likely be necessary to cleanse this system of Trumpism.