POLITICS in PUBS Newcastle

Trump's victory: what to expect from MAGA 2.0
Notes from meeting held on 3^rd December 2024

Introduction by Phil Miles

You are the media now

"You are the media now". That phrase was the oft-repeated mantra of Charlie Kirk and other high profile MAGA activists throughout the recent election. It proved to be a winning strategy. Instead of trying in vain to get their message out through a hostile mainstream media, Team Trump sidestepped the interruptions, smears and misrepresentations by communicating directly with the public through social media platforms like X, and long-form interview platforms like the Joe Rogan Experience.

Republican senator and soon-to-be secretary of state Marco Rubio gave a neat demonstration of the tactic when he was confronted by a journalist-cum-activist who asked him if he would call for a ceasefire in Gaza. "No I will not," he replied, before turning to someone nearby with a cameraphone. "Are you filming this?" he asked them. "I want you guys to get this." After telling the hostile journalist that Hamas was "100% responsible" for the deaths of babies and other civilians in Gaza, he turned back to the guy with the cameraphone and said: "Make sure you post that please". The guy with the cameraphone did indeed post it, and the entire exchange - free from the unflattering and misleading edits that legacy media outlets might well have subjected it to - was shared widely on X.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and JD Vance were all queuing up to talk to Joe Rogan for three hours straight - again, crucially, without edits. The contrast between the authenticity of these friendly, freewheeling conversations and the inauthenticity of 5-second soundbites and constant interruptions from reporters hungry for their 'gotcha' moments was laid bare for all to see. Charlie Kirk later commented:

"The left is full of chatter about how they need their own, liberal version of Joe Rogan and the like. But that's the thing: The left used to have a liberal version of Joe Rogan. His name was Joe Rogan. He voted for Obama twice and endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. But because he's openminded, will talk to anyone, and doesn't mindlessly accept the latest propaganda, the left kicked him out".

Trump, Musk and Vance all had substantive policy discussions on Rogan. Kamala Harris had Hollywood celebrity endorsements, wine mom vocal fry and empty rhetoric. To her credit, she did at least steer mostly clear of 'vote for me because I'm a woman of colour' messaging. But if identity politics was off the table, what exactly was on the table? Aside from a stunningly vague promise of 'joy', it was hard to tell.

Why did people vote the way they did?

Trump and Harris might not have seen eye to eye, but the election would ultimately be decided by two I's and a C: inflation (i.e. cost of living), immigration (especially illegal immigration) and culture. Two kinds of culture. Work culture, in the form of identity rather than merit-based hiring practises, and play culture, in the form of biological men in women's sports and women's changing rooms. Only Trump promised to tackle all of it.

Voting for Trump used to be the thing that lots of people did, but few openly admitted to. Not anymore. As commentator Melissa Chen pointed out: "The impact of mainstream, successful and admirable people from Bill Ackman to Elon Musk coming out in support for Trump gave moral cover to so many to follow suit." The fact that several key members of Team Trump - including Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Junior, and Elon Musk - used to be democrats, must surely have given former Democrat voters more moral cover still.

So much for the election itself. The more pressing question now, of course, is: what to expect from MAGA 2.0?

What to expect - domestic policy

Let's start with domestic policies. Arguably the most high profile of these is Mass Deportation. What will it look like? In a recent interview with a friendly journalist - John Solomon - Trump's border czar Tom Homan said: "People need to understand, we're going to be arresting people around the country and we've got to detain them anywhere from a few days to a few weeks while we get travel documents from their home nation. We can't just put them on airplanes and send them home. There's all sorts of treaties and agreements, we've got to get travel documents from their home country that say 'he's our citizen', then we've got to get flight arrangements and so forth." When Homan was asked by a not-so-friendly journalist if there was a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families, Homan responded bluntly. "Of course there is," he said. "Families can be deported together." That might sound callous to some, but there's a surprisingly compassionate flipside to Homan's argument. He defends the plan by pointing out that under Biden's watch, close to 4000 people have died trying to enter the country illegally. "We're gonna save a lot of lives by securing that border," he says. He also points out instances where accompanied minors who show up at the border appear to have been drugged, so that they cannot tell border officials who it really is they are accompanied by. Homan adds: "Over half a million children have been smuggled into this country under Joe Biden. And they can't find 300,000 of them. So that's something President Trump is committed to doing." So for Homan, it seems, removing the incentive to enter the country illegally (via the prospect of immediate deportation) is the most humane thing to do, not the least.

As for Trump himself, he likens the plan to what Eisenhower did in the 1950s. In a 2024 interview with Time magazine, he said: "Dwight Eisenhower was very big on illegal immigration not coming into our country. And he did a massive deportation of people. He was doing it for a long time. He got very proficient at it. He was bringing them just to the other side of the border. And they would be back in the country within a matter of days. And then he started bringing them 3,000 miles away-" (And at this point, surprise surprise, Trump is interrupted by the journalist, so he never gets to finish his point, presumably because it's getting in the way of a gotcha moment for the reporter, and we can't have that now can we!).

It's also worth keeping in mind that Barack Obama deported roughly three million people during his eight year presidency, so it'll be interesting to see how Trump's numbers compare.

When it comes to Energy policy, Trump's famous "Drill, baby, drill" comment reveals two things about him: one is his unwavering belief in the importance of energy independence for America. The other is an unwavering disbelief in the notion that unrestrained fossil fuel use is causing catastrophic climate change.

And then of course there is Musk and Ramaswamy's 'Department of Government Efficiency'. DOGE is meant to be about saving taxpayers money - and increasing their freedoms - by making government small again; stripping it down to its core functions and abolishing wasteful and unnecessary departments. But in the eyes of its advocates, it's as much about democracy as it is about efficiency. One such advocate, David Sacks, explains it like this:

"There's roughly 3 million people who work for the federal government. Of those, the president basically appoints 3000, and it takes forever to get them through. So we have roughly 3 million people who don't report to anyone. Nominally, they're supposed to report to the executive branch, but the president can't fire them. If Elon had gone into Twitter and he hadn't been allowed to fire anyone, do you think he could have restored free speech to Twitter? Of course not. They just would have kept doing whatever they wanted to do. And that is the big problem with the federal government right now. We are ruled by a fourth branch of government that is not in the constitution, that doesn't report to anybody. It is not subject to elections. We can't vote them out and we can't fire them. And the big question of Trump's second term will be whether he can finally subdue this bureaucracy and bring it under democratic control, under the control of the executive branch."

Critics of DOGE might point to the alarming prospect of anywhere up to 3 million job losses in one fell swoop. I haven't yet looked into the potential knock-on effects of such a scenario, but I know where I would start looking, and that would be Argentina.

There is also a burgeoning 'DOGE UK' movement, spearheaded by Charlotte Gill and her 'Woke Waste' project. Just recently, Purley Politics In Pubs had a go at deciding which of the staggering 424 UK government agencies and public bodies they would keep and which they would axe. Although with Labour in power for the foreseeable, I suspect that number is more likely to go up than down.

On Education, Trump has been unequivocal:

"When I return to the White House I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges, once again and once and for all. These standards will include defending the American tradition and western civilisation, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly, removing all Marxist, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bureaucrats, offering options for accelerated and low cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money's worth."

The Committee For Academic Freedom (not to be confused with Academics For Academic Freedom!) were less than complimentary, saying:

"Trump wants to "protect free speech" by "reclaiming our educational institutions from the radical left" and making them "defend the American tradition and Western civilisation". That doesn't sound like protecting free speech to us."

Personally, I think CFAF are dead wrong here, not least because free speech is a cornerstone of the American tradition, in the form of the First Amendment, and a cornerstone of Western civilisation in general. But that's just me.

Trump has also tasked Linda McMahon with spearheading the effort to send education 'back to the states', meaning that he intends to abolish the Department of Education, once again due to concerns about woke indoctrination of schoolchildren. 'Back to the states', by the way, is also his position on abortion, and it is not, I would argue, the position of a dictator or a fascist. Quite the opposite. Dictators and fascists tend to gather as much power as possible into their own hands. Here Trump is doing just the opposite; dispersing power rather than hoarding it.

What to expect - foreign policy

That said, when it comes to Trump's foreign policy (which is basically Ronald Reagan's foreign policy) power is everything. The doctrine of 'peace through strength' says that you must first have great strength, great power, in order to never need it. It could also be expressed as "You don't want to mess with us, and you know it", or "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or even "We don't start fights, but we sure as hell end them."

Let's start with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. According to a recent Reuters report, Putin has three non-negotiable conditions for a ceasefire deal with Trump. 1. No Russian-occupied territory to be handed over. 2. Any security arrangement in the region would have to entail Ukraine being declared a neutral state. 3. NATO membership for Ukraine must also be abandoned. American economist Jeffrey Sachs (another guy called Sachs) has argued that NATO's eastward expansion throughout the 1990s and 2000s (despite promising Russia that it wouldn't) has been a provocation, and that the western media portrayal of Putin as a sort of aggressively expansionist Hitler 2.0 is actually the inverse of the truth; that it is NATO, not Russia, that has been aggressively expansionist. Elon Musk responded to a video of Sachs's speech with a one-word tweet: "Interesting." And if Trump is as sympathetic to Sachs's argument as Musk seems to be, then it's easy to imagine Trump agreeing to most if not all of the ceasefire conditions Putin has set out. This wouldn't be 'peace through strength' so much as 'peace through mea culpa', but at a time when other NATO countries - including the UK - seem to be escalating rather than de-escalating the conflict, perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Moving to the Middle East, Israel's recent ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon seems to have been neatly timed so as to wait out the dying days of the Biden administration. Pro-Israel commentator Ben Shapiro had a theory that the Israelis were basically just running out of ammo, and because the Biden administration was slow-walking military aid to the IDF, Israel's only option was to pause the conflict until Trump - the guy who really has their back - is re-installed in the White House. If Shapiro is right, then we can expect to see a resumption of hostilities in the region soon after Trump is sworn in… assuming Hezbollah don't break the ceasefire first . Trump is certainly on Israel's side, though he and Netanyahu may well stop short of taking the fight directly to Iran. As Douglas Murray noted: "When the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran is strong the whole region suffers. When it is weak - as it was when Trump was throttling them with sanctions in his first term - they are quiet."

Last but not least ... what about the UK? How will MAGA 2.0 affect us?

The good news for free speech advocates is that Team Trump - and Elon Musk in particular - have already been vocal in their condemnation of so-called 'non-crime hate incidents' in the UK. I'm speculating here, but it's possible that Trump might even use punitive trade tariffs - or at least the threat of them - as a stick with which to beat Keir Starmer until he agrees to ditch NCHIs.

You probably already know that our foreign secretary David Lammy has described Trump variously as "deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic, a dangerous clown, and a neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath." But a lesser known old tweet of Lammy's ran as follows: "In parliament hoping to get called to speak in the Trump debate. A state visit to suck up to President Trump? Not in my name. No way."

Cut to September 2024, and we find Lammy and Starmer enjoying lunch in Trump Tower in New York, where Lammy and JD Vance apparently bonded over their mutually poor backgrounds and struggles with addiction issues in their families.

Karen Pierce, the U.K.'s ambassador to the U.S., addressed Lammy's remarkable change of tune like this: "In my experience, politicians kind of absorb those sorts of comments as part of the wear and tear of political life. What's important is the relationship now."

But aside from all the usual cliches about the 'enduring special relationship' and all that jazz, the true nature of the relationship now remains hidden. At least it does to me. If anyone here knows different, I'm all ears ...

For reference

NEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SO FAR: * Vice President: JD Vance * Secretary of State: Marco Rubio * Attorney General: Pam Bondi (Matt Gaetz withdrew) Defense Secretary: Pete Hegseth (under attack in the media due to sexual misconduct claims that were already investigated by police and no charges brought) * Secretary of Homeland Security: Kristi Noem * Director of National Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard * National Security Advisor: Mike Waltz * CIA Director: John Ratcliffe * White House Chief of Staff: Susie Wiles * EPA Administrator: Lee Zeldin * Ambassador to the United Nations: Elise Stefanik * White House Counsel: Bill McGinley *Deputy Chief of Staff: Stephen Miller * Border Czar: Tom Homan * Ambassador to Israel: Mike Huckabee * Government Efficiency Advisors: Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy *Middle East Envoy: Steve Witkoff * Press Secretary: Karoline Leavitt

Phil Miles, 2024

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