Trump’s effect on the Republican Party happened slowly, and by the time party elites noticed, it was too late. The former president is now striving for the White House to change the world according to his vision.
Addiction is a sneaky thing. Something initially pleasant starts to consume a person from the inside, increasing their reliance with each passing day. After a certain point, the habit becomes a focal point of life, and they begin to reject it. However, once you develop a dependency, it becomes impossible to feel normal without a daily fix. The Republican Party has faced its own sort of addiction: to Donald Trump.
No one could have foreseen how things would pan out when Trump first announced his presidential campaign in June 2015. Up until the primaries, Trump’s candidacy remained more of a joke than anything else. He wasn’t much more than a billionaire with a plan to “drain the swamp” and a claim to represent the blue-collar class, a man who professed to understand the average American better than anyone but who had never worried about making ends meet. When he started winning primaries, the reality of the situation was an abrupt wake-up call to many Americans. “Make America Great Again” had gained much more momentum than they previously realized.
Trump made waves with his persona of a Washington outsider who understood the issues faced by the average American conservative, someone who would give voice to the “silent majority.” He also made an impact by skillfully using the growing resentment of immigrants. Even then, Hillary Clinton continued to be the favorite, and no one took Trump seriously, all the way up to Election Day in 2016, the morning after which Americans woke up to the likes of a president that had never been seen before.
There was Republican resistance to Trump during the first few years. He had, however, gained the half-hearted acceptance of the Republican elite by preventing another Democratic administration after Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure. The Republican Party began to change as Trump’s gravitational pull gradually increased, and in the years that have followed, party members who had been initially against him started to join his ranks. Opponents within the party adopted his own tactics in an effort to combat him. In the end, Trump’s rapidly developing political mastery rendered this ineffective as well, and more of those who had stood against him started to join his side.
The GOP has nominated Trump for president three times in the past eight years. His sustained popularity and success in the primaries, even after losing the 2020 election, is unprecedented in the United States. By the end of his term, he had gained so much favor among the radicalized components of his supporter base that a sizable crowd of devotees refused to accept that he lost the 2020 election, which led to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In short, Trump may have been just what the Republican Party needed to win in 2016, but he has now become the party’s only chance of winning. Along the way, he has changed the norms of the 170-year-old GOP, making it more radical, right-wing, chauvinistic, and totalitarian.
You can see this particularly clearly in who Trump has chosen as his running mates. In 2016, he opted for the more traditionally conservative Mike Pence in an attempt to avoid excessive disruption of the GOP status quo. When Pence refused to join Trump’s effort to overthrow the 2020 election, Trump declared him a “traitor,” leading to violent threats against Pence from supporters involved in the Capitol attack. Now, just months before the 2024 election, Trump has picked J.D. Vance as a running mate, someone who aligns more closely with Trump’s own views. Although Vance was once a critic of Trump, he later changed course, getting Trump’s endorsement during his 2022 Senate race, winning a term that began in 2023. He has embraced Trump’s movement and become a standard-bearer for the cause.
It’s a critical mistake to write Trump off as a fool with no plans for the future. Democratic and Republican elites failed to prevent his rapid rise because that’s what they thought. Since 2016, Trump has been laying the foundations of a permanent political legacy that may outlive him. His survival of the July 13 attempt on his life only strengthened the image of a “chosen one” that he’d worked to create. That’s why he has emphasized that he is “supposed to be dead,” and that he was saved “by luck or by God.”
This was the first essential step in reshaping the party in his own image. The second was his selection of Vance as his running mate.
Vance is to be the heir of the MAGA movement. If Trump wins the 2024 election, it’s likely that the torch will pass to Vance in 2028, cementing Trump’s transformation of the party. In the best case, Vance would pass the MAGA mantle to someone else when the time comes. In Trump’s vision of the future, he sees MAGA as the Democratic Party’s opponent, not the GOP.
Vance built his career carefully. The 2020 Oscar-nominated film “Hillbilly Elegy,” based on Vance’s 2016 memoir, paints a very favorable picture of Vance, who had not yet entered politics when the movie was filmed. The son of a mother grappling with drug addiction and an absent father, he grew up in a Rust Belt town in Ohio, yet managed to escape the poverty of his childhood, eventually attending Yale University. After the announcement of Vance’s selection as vice presidential candidate, the film began to attract more attention in the U.S. and abroad. Young people worldwide will know him not from the way he is depicted in the media, but instead from his likable portrayal in the movie.
Are Trump’s dreams of revolution limited to the United States? It might pain some socialists to see Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution set against Trump, but it’s worth a brief comparison. One of the most important characteristics of the permanent revolution theory was its contrast to Joseph Stalin’s thesis of socialism in one country. In Trotsky’s view, socialist revolutions needed to occur in nations across the world to hinder capitalist hegemony. He believed that as the number of socialist nations increased, capitalist structures would be forced into a corner.
I believe that, if elected again, one of Trump’s top priorities will be to help establish like-minded leaders globally. Trump was influenced by authoritarian figures including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban while building his political persona in 2016.
T24 writer Murat Sabuncu recently cited this remark by Harvard Professor Cemal Kafadar: “There is some info that has been passed from Trump’s circle to my colleagues, and from my colleagues to me. Trump is currently studying the likes of Erdoğan, Modi, and Orban to see what immediate actions he can take in universities and the media if he wins the 2024 elections.” He is learning from the examples of leaders abroad who have managed to overcome opposition in their own country. However, these leaders are, in turn, influenced by Trump.
If Trump is elected again, he will return to the helm of the most influential country in the world. Orban and other “Trumpist” European political figures do not lead countries that seriously influence world politics. Trump is planning a march to the White House with the support of a united party behind him.
The state of the world has changed, and there are wars in Ukraine and Gaza drawing global attention. We should expect to see the U.S. cut support for Ukraine if Trump wins; this will lead to a stronger Putin, someone Trump does not hesitate to support. Trump has also outwardly praised Orban, against whom the EU is increasingly opposed.
It will be no surprise if Trump’s support for authoritarian leaders continues to grow if he wins the election. Nor is it beyond the realm of possibility that he’ll work to elect leaders with congruent views worldwide. The more “little Trumps” that emerge in various nations, the better it will be for Trump’s vision of the future — not least because it is easier for him to influence such figures.
The upcoming election may be even more critical than 2020, and we have no choice but to watch closely. It’s important to see that “America First” is starting to shift toward “Trumpism First.” Trump will move to strengthen himself and those who follow. Trump’s personal interests may shape future U.S. policy in Syria, and we should remember his antipathy to NATO and the European establishment. There are complicated times ahead.
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