Jim Antle is the editor of The American Conservative.
I would say that there has been a sea change in our perception of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement since the 2016 election. We aren’t just complaining about Donald Trump nearly dragging us into a war with Iran in the fourth year of his presidency.
Donald Trump has been a disappointment across the board on immigration, trade, foreign policy, political correctness and campaign finance. These were the five reasons why I personally supported him in the 2016 election. On foreign policy, I heard “knock the crap out of ISIS,” reduce tensions with Russia and “end the endless wars.” On trade, I heard that our free trade deals were awful and would be renegotiated to bring down trade deficits. On immigration, I heard that Trump was going to “build a big beautiful wall,” deport illegal aliens and cut legal immigration. On political correctness, I was given the impression that Trump was opening up discussion on hitherto taboo topics by violating norms. On campaign finance, I heard Trump was self financing his campaign so that as president he would be independent of the Republican donor class.
There were many aspects of the Trump agenda which I didn’t support in 2016, but went along with anyway because of the rest of the MAGA agenda that I was sold. In particular, I did not like his warmongering with Iran or his tax plan. I don’t recall hearing anything about banning bump stocks or criminal justice reform. On the contrary, Trump ran in 2016 as the “law and order” candidate in the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter riots.
As Jim Antle explains in the video below, we thought that we were voting for these big systemic changes in the 2016 election because Donald Trump had sold us on these unorthodox policies during the campaign, but in reality we were voting to elect a government. This government would end up being completely staffed by mainstream conservatives who were trained, indoctrinated and vetted to be committed to the ideological consensus of conservative liberalism that Trump had ran against in the primary and general election. So the result of the 2016 election was that one man – a lazy, incompetent con artist – effectively ended up on top of the conservative mountain and ended up as a rubber stamp for the preexisting conservative agenda.
Where does this leave us today after three years of Trump in 2020? Has Donald Trump really “realigned” the Republican Party? It looks to me instead like he has been swallowed by the GOP. Donald Trump’s impact on the GOP has been to make it more intensely Zionist and more accepting of homosexuality than it was before he ran for president. He hasn’t betrayed the anti-war Right on Iran. He is doing what he said that he do on Iran. It just so happens that he was serious about that and more importantly has the support of conservatives who oppose the rest of his agenda. The same is true of the tax cuts as opposed to infrastructure which got done.
In the 2016 election, Donald Trump was perceived as the candidate less likely to embroil us in the another Middle East war. In the 2020 election. Donald Trump clearly won’t have that advantage over Bernie Sanders and it is blurrier regardless of whether his opponent is Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren due to his recent actions on Iran. After the 2020 election is over, Donald Trump’s Iran policy won’t be constrained by the prospect of losing reelection which is the check that has constrained him. We have to trust Donald Trump not to start a war with Iran.
In the 2016 election, we thought that we were voting for a self-financing billionaire who was financially independent of the Republican donor class. In the 2020 election, we are voting for a candidate and party that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, Paul Singer and thousands of other “America First” Jewish donors. In order to vote for Donald Trump in 2020, I have to walk into the voting booth with the knowledge that he watched the 2018 election in the White House with Sheldon Adelson at his side and gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his wife shortly after losing the House of Representatives. I have to vote for someone who is selling the government to people like Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Also unlike the 2016 election, I have to weigh voting to reelect Jared Kushner.
What would Donald Trump do with a second term? Is the composition of the Trump administration going to change to become more populist and nationalist? What if Donald Trump continues his ideological reversion into Charlie Kirk-style conservatism and calls that “nationalism” and “populism” as he plunges us into a war with Iran for Sheldon Adelson? Who has more influence on Donald Trump? Sheldon Adelson or Tucker Carlson and the anti-war Right? More to the point, will Donald Trump need or owe the anti-war Right anything after November?
The Jew from Vermont will give us everything free. It is a winning position. The babes will totally go for it, because all they vote for is more gibs. Trump will lose if the Jew wins the nomination.
I am all in. I know exactly how well communism works in practice. But Solshenitsyn did warn us, we would go through it too, because people are unable to learn from the misfortunes of others.
Accelerationism here we come. Bolshevik Bernie listen up old man: COME AND TAKE IT.
I wish he actually were a Communist. Unfortunately no matter who wins the election this capitalist shit system stays in power and the working class is treated like garbage, and the bombs never stop raining on oppressed nations that resist the (((west))). Any candidate claiming to advance the interests of the workers CAN NOT BE TRUSTED. Neither can anyone pretending to be antiwar. Unless it’s someone like Cynthia McKinney with zero chance of winning.
(((Capitalism))) can not be reformed. It’s time for a Marxist revolution.
Your last paragraph contains the salient question(s). I only know that no democrat candidate is going Nationalist.
Ad nauseum, many of us here have commented that Blompf betrayed us on every major issue he campaigned on. Voters expect pols to lie on some issues, but the Potatus has gone beyond the typical backstabbing. I can’t think of another pol who went back on every single thing he or she promised, especially if it concerned the main issues that got them elected. The Unstable Pinhead had opportunities to push through his promises on the border AND the more problematic one of draining the DC swamp, during the gov’t shutdown. Instead, he inexplicably caved for absolutely nothing in return. When you see Blompf as a lazy, egomaniacal salesman of his personal brand and nothing more, though, you realize why it was easy for him to cast aside not only the voters, but his oldest friends once they got in the enemies’ crosshairs. As long as he gets petted and praised by sycophantic and manipulative courtiers, everyone else can go to hell.
Drumpf “inexplicably caved”. No,
he didn’t. As a life-long globohomo ZOG-stooge, Drumpf
never had the slightest intention of fullfilling any of his populist promises. You,
HW, and lotsa others here
were played. For
the suckers U R. Now try to
learn from the experience.
You are also an ego
maniac.
You often miss the
obvious, such as:
Many of us
Saying (acknowledging)
we were lied to. As
above. Pay attention.
That is learning
from mistakes.
You have an exalted
view of self
I have never seen
justification for.
Writing about
past prescience means
Nothing now.
Yes, Trump has been not just a failure, but a catastrophe. It’s one thing to fail to deliver on campaign promises, but quite another to pursue vigorously the opposite policies.
But I am less inclined to think that he would start a major war against Iran in a second term because of what Iran made very clear a week or so ago. Iran said it considers the US and Israel as one. No difference. An attack on Iran brings down tens of thousands of Iranian and Hezbollah missiles on Israel. Trump would not risk precious Israeli lives and infrastructure. US military personnel and bases, yes, but not Israel.
you have it exactly backwards. Iran’s response to Drumpf’s act of (((state terrorism)))
was both pathetic and incompetent. The Zionist aggressors
are thus emboldened.
Not at all. Iran, unlike Israel-US, does not want a destructive major war. A hail of missiles targeting Israel last week would bring just that. They threatened the missiles if the US brought their “shock and awe” to Iran. Iran is not reckless.
For once I have to disagree with Haxo. I think you are correct.
The accuracy of Iran’s medium range missiles clearly surprised the Israeli-US-Saudi axis:
Satellite Photos Reveal Extent Of Damage From Iranian Strike On Air Base In Iraq
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794517031/satellite-photos-reveal-extent-of-damage-at-al-assad-air-base
Imagine Israel receiving the brunt of Iranian missile strikes.
As to Iran’s shoot down of the Ukrainian jetliner, there is more there than meets the eye. Somebody knew exactly when and where to point that camera, the video from which was immediately “authenticated” by, I believe, the New York Times. I know it sounds crazy, but If somebody electronically gamed the jetliner’s transponder and flight plan, then it is possible the jetliner was misidentified for another type of aircraft by Iran’s surface-to-air missile batteries. With Iran having demonstrated that it could blow Israel to rubble with a blizzard of precision guided missiles, it could be that POTatUS/Israel wanted to send a “discrete” response to Iran. The response was the downed jetliner.
Oldtradesman,
I’d like to add that Israel’s famous Golden Dome anti-missile defense system would indeed be overwhelmed by dozens if not hundreds of short and medium to long range high explosive (HE) missiles raining down on all their populated area as well as high priority military installations and air bases. It would be under this scenario that Israel might execute its “Sampson Option ” of launching some of its illegal nuclear weapons into Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
There’s a strong possibility that both Russia and China possess technology that can jam computer guidance systems or completely turn of the software that controls their power plants both cause American naval vessels and aircraft, so it’s quite possible that DARPA developed the ability to hack Iranian SAMs or project the incorrect FFI (friend or foe indicator) squawk onto a civilian aircraft.
Iran warned the bases. They didn’t want bloodshed.
Which clearly shows that Iran is putting its national interest above simple revenge.
Trump the Herodian has calculated that we have no where else to go but support him. Wrong.
The die was cast when he went for “Big Luther”; he had no intention of delivering on his promises, of which the two most salient were to get out of Afghanistan and end DACA “Day One”.
Nothing short of a geohistorical earthquake can prevent the Abolition of Man.
If there is another stock market meltdown like 1987, 1998, 2000 and the biggest one so far, 2008 Trump is all done. He has touted the stock market as one of his great achievements yet the market’s advances have continued to concentrate wealth into the hands of the %.01 with crumbs, at best, for everyone else. The financial markets are supported by a mountain of debt and money printing from the Fed, not sound economic investment and growth.
No one knows when the markets will crash but it has been almost twelve years since the last one and we are overdue. When the market crashed last time it nearly destroyed the financial system which would have caused banks to close, credit cards and ATMs to stop working and cash and carry to be the means of trade. Trump is inviting economic catastrophe through his reckless spending and war mongering. If he gets it wrong there will be a hard left turn in the Autumn as a communist like Bernie or Pocahontas gets elected.
Yes he did. However was the Anti War right real in the first place? Sure people like us (Nationalists) are Anti War. Many Nationalists voted for Trump. So yes he betrayed people like us. However 99% of Republicans love War. Any war. Just in love with War. That’s especially true on Wars against Islamics……the Jews enemies. The Christian nuts who think the Jews are the Chosen People and Israel is the only thing that matters in he World. Those people are the most brainwashed people on Republicans. Those people will support Trump more than ever thinking he’s God or something. Rick Perry even called him the Messiah of America. These people are all a bunch of nuts and will never embrace our Christian and White Nationalist views. Those people are all the enemy and one day will spark a Nuclear War between the Nations and or World War III. It will be so bad that Jesus will return at that time. What we call the End Times or Post Tribulation Rapture. The rest is right in the Bible. It’s us Nationalists of different races who truly live for God and advocate honest peace and trade in the World. We’re the peacemakers that are blessed by God. The Republicans, Jews, the New World Order, the Military Industrial Complex, and the World Government / ZOG will one day have a special place in Hell…..thanks Yahweh! Deo Vindice !
Presumably your vote would be somewhat influenced by who ends up being the Democratic nominee.
Nope, not a chance — I am fed up with having to choose the ‘lesser of two evils’ when faced with an ‘evil of two lessers’ contest — while I’ve always found him to be a buffoonish oaf, I did vote *for* him in 2016, mainly in the hope he would grow into the office — but that didn’t happen — so after seeing him as President, I could never vote *affirmatively for* Trump again — I don’t care who the opposition is, frankly.
It’s fairly obvious Trump is an intellectual child — he’s not smart enough to be a conman — his campaign rhetoric in 2016 was, in hindsight, about would you’d expect from a puerile, petulant outsider who senses that no one like or respects him (for good reason, as it turned out) — he was never sincere in 2016, and cannot be taken seriously now, about anything.
“Is the composition of the Trump administration going to change to become more populist and nationalist?”
Is this a serious question? — Trump must lose in 2020 in order to discredit his carnival barker brand of phony populism — Conservative Inc is already discredited; Romney 2012 was its last gasp — only with Trump gone can some kind of effective Dissident Right opposition emerge — and the sooner the better.
In answer to the headline question – yes, he did, but can you blame him? if we give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume he really did believe what he was campaigning on, it’s easy to imagine what happened after he won, probably before being sworn in. He was sat down in a meeting where he was told the way things would be and what the penalty would be if he didn’t cooperate. It’s really that simple. The man has, in no particular order, a fortune, a wife, children and businesses which can all be threatened by our rulers.
This all assumes, of course, that he really did intend to keep his promises. The other possibility is that the similarity of outcome of the bipolar election process was becoming too obvious and there was a fear the natives would be getting restless. Our rulers than decided the gap in the bipolarity had to be expanded to more extreme positions. This was done on the right first, with Trump and is now being done on the left with the numerous shills vying for the Democratic nominations. The result being that one sees candidate X as very near my position (or even farther right or left), so now there’s a chance to vote for someone who will get things done. That is, keep hope in the system going.
The final conclusion of either position expounded in the previous two paragraphs is that voting is pointless.
“Anti-War Right” is an EXCELLENT identification marker for the Dissident Right/American Nationalists.
Such an identity can only bring support and positives for the nationalist movement.
And, note this important point….
From “Anti-War Right” to Anti- Interventionists/nationalists is NOT TOO FAR of a mental leap to make.
And once we persuade people to see us as Anti Interventionists as nationalists(if we elegantly/academically conflate Nationalism with anti Interventionism), then we have shifted the overton window completely to our side !!!
Work SMARTER not harder !