What have we got?
Is Trump 2.0 the genesis of a 21st century American autocracy?
James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, kept a journal of the experience. It is from this journal that a famous statement was attributed to Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the United States and the only one who signed three of America’s founding documents - the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 that formally ended the Revolutionary War and recognized the United States of America as an independent nation, and the Constitution of the United States:
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” Then McHenry added: “The Lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.”
Elizabeth Willing Powel was a woman of significant influence in Philadelphia politics and society; her father, brother, and husband were wealthy, and all three served as mayor during colonial times, and her husband again after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Ms. Powel hosted parties at her home for the elites of the day, and she counted among her guests George and Martha Washington, with whom she became close friends. McHenry’s recording of the encounter with Franklin suggests that she understood the gravity of what the members of the Constitutional Convention had done. In their discernment and wisdom, they had designed a representative democracy that, while beholden to the people, provided safeguards to ensure prudent governance that protected the rights of all people and prevented the oppression of minority rights by "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority," as James Madison wrote in Federalist 10.
As the architects of the Constitution fanned out across the country to defend it and secure its ratification, they were mindful of how fragile their design was and how susceptible it could be to demagogic forces given license by the people to impose their will on others:
When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind” (Alexander Hamilton in a letter to George Washington, 1792).
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, made it plain that the responsibility for preventing an outcome such as the one Hamilton feared rested with those who would choose our leaders:
But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
John Adams echoed this belief in his 1798 letter to the Massachusettes militia, declaring:
Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
I want to point out that when Adams refers to “Religion,” I don’t believe he is singling out a particular denomination or belief system, even though we can presume he was thinking of the Christian faith based on his lived experience. Instead, like many leaders of his day, he was a product of the Enlightenment. The principles of reasoning, critical thinking, and natural law inherent to that philosophy informed his conclusion that religion’s role as the arbiter and inculcator of morality was vital to ensuring shared values and an ethical framework within which a rational, knowledgeable populace would select its leaders.
The bottom line is that the American founders believed our representative democracy, regardless of how well-designed it was, would rise or fall on the virtue of the people, and this is where I’ve been struggling for some time now.
I used to believe there was a time in American politics when we may not have always agreed on how best to achieve human flourishing but assumed our political opposites had honorable intentions and shared the same goal of a prosperous and free society that was a beacon to the world, led by virtuous and respected men and women. I’ve mentioned in the past that, as a student of politics and history and an intelligence officer by profession, I examined the autocratic regimes of the 20th century, and my hubris led me to conclude that America was immune to the siren song of demagogues.
As I’ve looked back on the 2024 presidential election, I wonder why the electorate chose a second Trump presidency despite the warnings that his reascension to higher office posed a “threat to democracy.” His vision of the presidency has always been one where his dictates are the law and should not be questioned by citizens or society, including the media, or challenged by the checks and balances of our system of governance. Any opposition is labeled as traitorous and subject to dire consequences; he’s even opined publicly that some of his opponents should be convicted of treason and sentenced to death.
Let’s not forget that he incited a riot where hundreds of his supporters assaulted law enforcement officers, injuring 174 of them, to invade the United States Capitol and disrupt the certification of electors that has characterized the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next since the beginning of our constitutional form of government. One of the law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol that day, Brian Sicknick, suffered two strokes the day after the riot and died. The District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner said, "All that transpired played a role in his condition.”
Trump’s failed attempt to hang onto power against the people's will should have been more than sufficient to disqualify him from ever holding elected office again. The fact he’s the president once more isn’t the only affront to justice and the rule of law. He and his allies are actively attempting to revise the history of that violent day in the minds of his supporters and sycophants. Moreover, he has avoided prosecution for his actions, and pardoned or commuted the sentences of the criminals who sought to carry out his wishes, labeling them “patriots” and “heroes.” These outcomes are an insult to the intelligence and integrity of all who experienced or witnessed on television the assault on the Capitol that day.
The signs were all there, but the electorate either overlooked or ignored them. How could this occur in a nation that serves as a model for constitutional democracies worldwide? Our Declaration of Independence contains words that have inspired people longing for liberty for nearly 250 years and which historian Joseph Ellis called “the most potent and consequential words in American history.”
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Sadly, as I’ve looked more deeply into American history, not the sanitized version taught in our schools, and which the current regime seems intent on whitewashing even further, I’ve concluded that the American experiment has been fragile for most of its existence.
The South, until the end of the Civil War, was essentially an oligarchy, with white elites profiting from the ownership and labor of enslaved African people and maintaining the allegiance and submission of poor whites through an alliance based on the notion of white supremacy. Post-Civil War Reconstruction policies intended to democratize the South temporarily resulted in coalitions of poor whites and newly freed former slaves who shared political and economic interests. However, after Reconstruction and the occupation of the South by U.S. troops ended in 1877, only 12 years after the end of the Civil War, white Southern elites reacted swiftly and violently to reestablish the old social order that subjugated Black people and kept poor whites in check with the chimera of racial superiority.
According to Robert Mickey, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan, “Southern states, from the 1890s until the early 1970s, constituted pockets of authoritarian rule trapped within and sustained by a federal democracy.” Contrary to my belief that the American people were incapable of succumbing to autocratic rule, the seeds of authoritarianism had been planted and thriving in parts of America for centuries, as scholars have noted:
Studies of subnational illiberal enclaves have identified them mainly in contemporary federal states ordinarily conceived as democratically fragile, such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Russia. But the problem of subnational authoritarianism is not confined to foreign countries with young and weak democratic institutions. In fact, the most successful, powerful, and longstanding enclave of subnational illiberalism in the history of democratization is home grown: from their founding through the late twentieth century, the states of the American South “are best understood as eleven enclaves of authoritarian rule.”
I once wrote, “America’s history tells me that its good-willed citizens are always straining, stretching, and clawing toward the ideal under which our nation was founded, and we will not cease until that ideal has been reached.” This illusion of America, which I was taught and held onto for most of my life, is not unique to me.
All such accounts implicitly presuppose a common commitment, across the political spectrum, to the core tenets of democratic liberalism, and consequently assume that subnational variations in policy preferences and modes of self-governance reflect nothing more than disagreements within the shared American liberal tradition. That assumption, if it was ever valid, may be no longer. Like other federal states in which subnational “illiberal enclaves” have persisted over time, the United States may be witnessing a replication at the subnational level of what appears to be happening at the national level: a growing chasm along a cleavage between democratic liberalism and illiberal authoritarianism, in which some states remain committed to inherited forms of democratic liberalism while others cling to (or develop, or resurrect) patterns of illiberal authoritarianism.
To this day, in the words of writer Damon Linker, there is still “an abundant supply of populist anger and resentment” in America toward the federal government, minorities and women, non-white immigrants, political and cultural liberals, the media, the arts and entertainment, colleges and universities, urban dwellers, and anyone whose vision of America is inclusive of the people and institutions they despise. All it took was a man fitting Alexander Hamilton’s description to come along and fan the flames of this barely suppressed rage, unleashing it and shattering our illusions of American moral superiority.
Do I think this cohort of the outraged makes up a majority of Americans? No. I would go so far as to say that millions of people who voted for Donald Trump could point to an issue or an expectation that makes sense to them and isn’t a byproduct of illiberal authoritarianism. I would also suggest that millions of them are naive like I was and thought our politics and culture were inoculated against authoritarianism, or they didn’t believe Trump fit that label any more than any other politician.
Even so, the more I examine our history, observe this administration and its most ardent supporters, and read and hear their words, the more I am convinced that they are the 21st-century manifestation of a strain of illiberalism that has existed in this nation from the beginning and has never been entirely eradicated.
However, judging from the current administration's rhetoric and its popularity with millions of people, not everyone shares my point of view on the existential threat we face, and that’s an uncomfortable place for me and others who see where this may be headed.
During the campaign, in trying to label the exact nature of the threat Trump posed, the f-word - “fascist” - was used. The comparisons of his preferred manner of ruling to the Führerprinzip, or “leadership principle” of Nazi Germany, which made Hitler’s word the supreme law of the land regardless of the written law, led inevitably to that conclusion and given his actions thus far in his presidency, I don’t think this assessment was off-base. He even shared on social media the saying, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Although attributed to Napoleon, it is a concise description of Führerprinzip.
Still, comparisons to Nazism and Hitler, even if the empirical evidence is compelling, are fraught with landmines. Some will invoke Godwin’s Law, which the Oxford English Dictionary describes as “A law that states that as the length of a thread proceeds on a newsgroup, the probability of a comparison with Hitler or the Nazis approaches one.” Mike Godwin, an attorney and author, created the rule to highlight the frequency with which online commenters used the analogy in conversations; he felt the casual invocation of the comparison ran the risk of trivializing the Holocaust. Indeed, many take the position that the reign of the Third Reich was a singularly horrific event in human history that stands alone in its scale, brutality, and indifference to human life, and nothing compares to it.
However, Godwin himself said he never intended for his law to ban comparisons of demagogic rhetoric or behavior to that of Hitler and that Trump invites the comparison with his statements:
I’ve never said that just because you’re invoking the Nazis you’re losing the argument. If you’re going to compare somebody to Hitler or the Nazis or raise the specter of the Holocaust, be sure you’ve got your facts right. But there’s nothing categorically wrong with Biden’s — or anyone else’s — comparison of Trump calling people vermin or talking about blood poisoning to Hitler. I wasn’t a particular scholar of Hitler or the Nazis before, and I still don’t count as one, but I’ve always taken pains to know enough history to know whether a comparison was valid. And in general, dehumanizing rhetoric is a hallmark of Hitler’s rhetoric. So, Trump’s opening himself up to the Hitler comparison.
Despite all the evidence, Trump’s supporters seem increasingly numb to his dictatorial actions and pronouncements.
I would also add that calling Trump a fascist implies that the label extends to those who support him. Just as they recoil from being called racists or misogynists because of their association with Trump, they reject the fascist label because they do not perceive themselves as supporting fascism. As we know, placing unflattering labels on Trump supporters was not the best electoral strategy for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.
I read Clinton’s speech in context, and she was arguing that Trump's reckless words and actions have unleashed and legitimized harmful ideas and behaviors previously limited to the margins of American society. While that was a salient point, it didn’t matter - the inartful phrase “basket of deplorables” and her impugning of “half of Trump’s supporters” became a rallying cry for those who heard in her words the contempt they believe all progressive elites have for them and their grievances and resentments. In retrospect, Clinton recognized her error; in her book recounting the 2016 campaign, she refers to her statement as a "political gift" to her opponent.
I don’t doubt that the “fascist” label struck Trump supporters the same way, even though Vice President Harris and her surrogates attempted to confine their accusations to Trump himself and not those in the general public who supported him. However, identity politics has become a significant force in America today, making it almost impossible for supporters of a candidate, ideology, or group to view themselves as distinct from what or whom they support. As a result, they tend to take criticism of their chosen affiliation personally.
Moreover, Trump has benefitted enormously from the presumption that he shouldn’t be taken seriously and that his rhetoric is all hyperbole and performative politics. After the first two months of his presidency, which have been among the most draconian and destructive in recent political memory, I wonder if that sentiment still prevails. Granted, many like the rapid dismantling of the federal workforce and the chaos it brings, but they have yet to feel the effects of it on their lives, and I believe that time is coming.
There is a more frightening reason for why we find ourselves in this moment, and it’s not a backlash against elitist insults, the Biden economy, or a failure to take Trump seriously. In a Financial Times report on the findings of the most recent World Values Survey, which seeks to “quantify differences in the culture, norms and beliefs of people in different societies,” some disturbing trends among American Trump supporters were revealed:
…[O]n everything from attitudes towards international co-operation, to appetite for an autocratic leadership style, through to trust in institutions and inward- vs outward-looking mindset, Trump’s America is a stark outlier from western Europe and the rest of the Anglosphere.
The article by John-Burn Murdoch, the chief data reporter for the Times, said the “mindset” of conservatives in the United States today “is much closer to that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey.” He concludes:
The next four years and beyond will be a bumpy ride come what may, but it will be more navigable after accepting that the world has fundamentally changed. For decades, the US was the champion of western values. The America of Trump, Vance and Musk has left them behind.
At this critical juncture in American history, I want to highlight the public service Heather Cox Richardson, Tom Nichols, and Anne Applebaum provide to the nation. The president and his lieutenants have manufactured an alternate reality they insist is the ground truth and propagated it through millions of followers on social media, flattering network news outlets, and a supportive “new media” ecosystem. We need scholars who understand world history and the nature of authoritarian political movements to keep us grounded in reality. I read many other scholars and writers regularly, so I apologize for not crediting all of them by name. I find the long-form journalism from these three individuals extremely helpful. Their observations and analysis have helped me comprehend this moment in time.
So, to echo Ms. Powel’s inquiry of Benjamin Franklin 238 years ago, “Well…what have we got?”
For the moment, that remains an open question. Indeed, Congress has abdicated its responsibility as a bulwark against the unconstitutional exercise of executive power. Trump has attempted to remove all the watchdogs and whistleblowers in the executive branch that could hold him accountable, and he’s also trying to restrict the press agencies that are permitted privileged access to him. He’s hired agency heads whose qualifications are sketchy but whose loyalty and willingness to believe in his alternate reality are without question.
Meanwhile, the courts are moving much more slowly than the rapid-fire pace of Trump’s executive orders and Elon Musk’s DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] takeovers of government agencies . By the time the Supreme Court rules on the numerous lawsuits against Trump and Musk’s actions, significant damage will already be done to the federal workforce. As the Civil Service ages and experience and expertise are lost through retirement, the purging of young, talented people willing to devote their lives to public service will cause irreversible damage. Even if they were invited back someday under court order, their trust and passion for service are gone, and if they haven’t already found other work, many may be leery of returning because of the risk of being fired again. They would know they were unwelcome, and only the judicial system restored their jobs. Morale would be non-existent.
Trump’s removal of federal security details from people he dislikes despite legitimate threats against them, his attempt to ban law firms representing people and causes he opposes from government work, and his arrest of a legal permanent U.S. resident for expressing political views to which he objects, highlight his willingness to “bear the sword” as “an agent of wrath” (Romans 13:4) against his perceived adversaries as this privileged billionaire who has never been held accountable for his wrongdoing grouses about persecution. With loyalists who have fully embraced his false reality and thirst for revenge heading the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence, we should all be concerned.
These are discouraging signposts, but they are not the end game. Let me offer some hope.
I don’t think we will descend into the hellscape that was Nazi Germany, even if all the precursors are present. I may still be naive for believing this, but I think Americans will recoil if we ever get close to that point. Unlike the Weimar Republic after World War I, our economic and democratic foundation remains strong. We are also a much more diverse nation, and the homogeneity that a Nazi-like takeover would require isn’t present. In fact, we may be witnessing the last gasp of a fearful and fading American demographic, at least I’d like to think so. Short of using violence to make their reign permanent, I don’t see them prevailing.
I also think the movement struggles without Donald Trump at its helm. I tend to believe all the talk about Trump serving a third term is a realization that the fight to succeed him is going to be divisive and bloody. There are factions within the movement that are violently opposed to one another, and the only thing holding them together is Trump.
The irony is that no matter what rhetoric he uses, his motivations are not ideological, and he is not standing on any principle or philosophy of governance. His motivations are much more carnal.
Jonah Goldberg, a conservative commentator who once wrote for National Review and now works for The Dispatch, a digital magazine that describes itself as “fact-based reporting & commentary on politics & culture, informed by conservative principles,” opined in a recent column that understanding this current authoritarian movement requires us not just to examine what Trump is doing, but why he is doing it. He describes Trump as:
…[A] political actor who, to the extent he thinks about it at all, sees the Constitution as a relic and impediment to his desires and little more. He may adhere to its bright lines, but not out of fidelity to it or out of a commitment to an alternative theory of how it works. He stays within the constitutional guardrails—to the extent he does—solely out of political necessity. And his appointments and actions signal that he will leap over those guardrails whenever he finds it in his interest to do so.
The motives of a president matter a great deal. His politicization of government institutions is not simply a needed corrective to past politicizations, as sorely deserving those politicizations were in need of correction.
This is not normal. Trump’s program isn’t really ideological and certainly not “conservative” in any traditional sense. If Trump were overseeing the imposition of Reaganism, or even some ideological agenda I disagreed with, those arguments would have greater purchase with me. But MAGA at its best is a pretext, and more often it’s not even that. This is the faux-ideology of one person, one person’s vanity, grievances and personal glory.
Goldberg once compared Trump’s style of politics to that of a mob boss - “cursing, threatening, intimidating, but also generous to friends and allies.” He said Trump isn’t complicated, and political scientists who try to attach a philosophical or intellectual label to him are overanalyzing him:
So, again, I like this sovereigntist concept, because I think it’s a useful label for an approach to geopolitics. But that doesn’t mean that I think Trump asks himself “What would a sovereigntist do?” I think he asks himself things like, “What would be good for me?” “What would make me look strong and powerful?” “What can I get away with?” and “What’s my piece of the action?”
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie is even more direct in his assessment of what drives Trump:
There is no evidence that Trump is a figure of deep thought or serious insight. There is no evidence that Trump is anything other than what he’s been for his entire time in the public eye: an ego-driven creature of boundless envy and vicious, overlapping resentments. Those resentments have led him on a grand tour of retribution against the public.
And his envy?
Well, if Trump wants anything, it is the untrammeled authority of the world’s autocrats. He wants to be a Putin or a Viktor Orban or a Kim Jong-un. He wants to rule with unchecked power. And if his psychology tells us anything, he will do everything he can to make that a reality, American democracy be damned.
David Brooks, Bouie’s Times colleague and a long-time conservative who left the Republican Party when it gave itself over to Donald Trump, posits that, regarding our allies around the world, “America has smashed a lot of those relationships to smithereens,” for no other reason than Trump’s machismo:
Don’t overthink this. Trump is not playing four-dimensional chess and trying to pry Russia from its alliance with China. American foreign policy is now oriented to whatever gets Trump’s hormones surging. He has a lifelong thing for manly virility. In the MAGA mind, Vladimir Putin codes as hard; Western Europe codes as soft. Elon Musk codes as hard; U.S.A.I.D. codes as soft. WWE is hard; universities are soft. Struggles for dominance are hard; alliances are soft.
This is not to say that there aren’t people in this administration who see in Trump an opportunity to remake government and society to adhere to a particular ideology or worldview. However, they need to know they are dealing with a mercurial and petulant boss who will turn on them if he perceives their goals as harmful to him personally. Jonathan Rauch describes Trump’s leadership style using a term from German sociologist and political economist Max Weber: patrimonialism.
Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones. Based on individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived), it can be found not just in states but also among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.
To sum up, we have a chaotic cult of personality with aspirations for authoritarian rule. It has not yet solidified its grip on power, but the noise it’s making would lead observers to believe otherwise. What Trump likes to refer to as “America’s golden age” is, when viewed objectively, more of a disordered age. As Susan B. Glasser writes, “Trump loves uncertainty so much that you could call it the first principle of his Presidency—a side benefit, as far as he’s concerned, of the mayhem he generates wherever he goes.”
The confusion that Trump engenders every time he speaks is not a quirk but a defining feature: it serves to aggrandize his power, leaving men and markets hanging on his every twisting word. This is nothing new. Trump has been trolling the world with this approach since he first entered politics. In his début foreign-policy speech, which I attended nine years ago this spring, at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, Trump said, “We have to be unpredictable.” The difference this time is that Trump is moving much, much faster.
Speed kills, especially when it’s intended to destroy. Musk’s DOGE is a disruptive force moving through the federal government recklessly, using government technology as a weapon to destabilize and disrupt the operations of federal agencies. His technology blitzkrieg will cause pain for many Americans when they find the government unable to serve them as it did in the past. Fears of a recession have rapidly increased because of the economic impacts of tariffs, mass deportations, rising unemployment because of massive cuts to the federal workforce, and the possibility of a government shutdown. Every announcement out of Washington of increasing tariffs sends the stock market tumbling. As our trading partners respond in kind, we find ourselves in a full-blown trade war with some of the largest consumers of U.S. exports, including Canada, Mexico, and China.
The world recognizes that the United States has abandoned its domestic and global commitment to liberty and human rights. We are now on an international human rights watch list because of our declining commitment to civil liberties, and we are no longer viewed as an ally by our European partners.
Trump and his supporters believe berating and abandoning your allies, aligning with the nation that is, historically and ideologically, the most formidable adversary of the U.S. and the West against the small, independent nation they invaded, and abdicating our leadership of the international order that has prevented a world war since 1945, represent the genesis of an American “golden age.” However, in my opinion, their perspective is inherently un-American. As U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and 25-year Navy veteran, said after being called a “traitor” by Elon Musk for his support of Ukraine:
Elon, if you don't understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.
Do we have an opportunity to correct our course? Perhaps.
We have a mid-term election in 2026 in which the Democrats could regain control of one or both chambers of the U.S. Congress, not to mention two gubernatorial elections this year that will speak to how the nation feels about what the Trump administration has done thus far. Let’s not forget that over 77,900,000 Americans, a very slim majority, did not vote for Trump in 2024. He doesn’t have the mandate he claims, and the polls just 50 days into his presidency indicate growing dissatisfaction with his campaign of disorientation and destruction. David Brooks holds out hope that America can find its way again:
History is not over. As the historian Robert Kagan points out, America oscillates between periods of isolationism and interventionism. We also oscillate between individualism and communitarianism, cynicism and idealism, secularism and religiosity, irrational pessimism and irrational optimism. We are now on the extreme edge of the former of all those polarities.
Trumpian incompetence will provoke a counterreaction, which will prove to be an opportunity and rebirth. When that happens people will be ready to hear the truth that Trump will never understand — that when you turn America into a vast extortion machine, you will get some short-term wins as weaker powers bend to your gangsterism, but you will burn the relationships, at home and abroad, that are actually the source of America’s long-term might.
There is a chance to stop him from dismantling the government and international order that has kept America secure and stable for decades, or at least render him unable to enact the full scope of his plans before the next presidential election when it could be too late. Even so, how he reacts to a Congress he doesn’t control and a more skeptical public will reveal, as Mr. Franklin warned us in his response to Ms. Powel’s question where he declared us a republic, “if [we] can keep it.”
This has been a long read, so forgive me for covering so much ground. I’ve shared my attempt to understand our times from a cultural, historical, and political perspective. However, I also promised to evaluate this era from a Christian perspective, and I’ve considered how committed Christians should respond to this moment. If I were to sum it up in two words, they would be, “Be kind.”
It’s not hard to see that millions of people at home and around the world are going to be hurt by the actions the Trump administration has taken. Disease and hunger are going to overtake global populations that depended on American aid for their wellness and sustainability. People who don’t meet the Trump definition of a “real” American are going to find themselves under attack and fighting to protect their civil liberties. People who rely on government assistance for health care, education, financial security, and other services are going to find the aid they receive harder to come by or eliminated altogether. These people will need our kindness and assistance, however we are able to offer it.
However, we should also show kindness to those who supported Trump and his agenda, only to find themselves in dire straits because of his decisions. I’ve been reading a lot of stories about Trump supporters in the federal government who have lost their jobs, and the reaction of the general public has been a healthy dose of schadenfreude - a German word that combines “damage” and “joy” and is defined as “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.”
One story in particular caught my attention. Ryleigh Cooper, a federal employee who hoped to start a family through IVF - in-vitro fertilization - believed Trump’s promise during the campaign that he would make the procedure free. However, she didn’t anticipate that she would be caught up in the DOGE-driven purge of the federal workforce, and Trump’s executive order to expand access to IVF did not say anything about making it a no-cost procedure. I found her story to be particularly heartbreaking:
She did not want to vote for Trump. Cooper hated what he said about women and hated how he treated them. Her family always said the women who accused the president of sexual assault had either made it up or deserved it. Cooper heard them and kept her own experience a secret, thinking that they might feel the same way about her.
She voted for Joe Biden in 2020, her first time casting a ballot in a presidential election. But life felt more complicated these days. Her mortgage was too expensive, groceries were nearly $400 a month, and one single cycle of IVF could cost more than 10 percent of her annual household income.
Trump, at a campaign stop an hour and a half south of her, had promised to make IVF free. She knew that from a video clip she saw on TikTok. And she had believed him.
She also believed him when he said that Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration that suggested mass cuts to the federal workforce, was not his plan.
So Cooper filled in the bubble next to his name, thinking of the daughter she wanted. She planned to name her Charlotte.
She is devastated, and the pain is made worse by the fact that her extended family “supported firing federal workers like her.” On that subejct, I’ve seen a lot of comments like this: “It’s too bad that they are losing their jobs, but we can’t keep operating under trillions of dollars in debt.”
The fact is that cutting the federal workforce barely puts a dent in the deficit, and if these people are unable to find work elsewhere, we will incur other costs, such as the loss of their tax revenue and the increased need for government assistance. Moreover, there is an element of cruelty and contempt in the way they’re going about this reduction in force, particularly the suddenness and arbitrary nature of the cuts, and the lies being told about subpar job performance or “fraud, waste, and abuse” to justitfy them.
I plan to dedicate an article to this topic since I was in the federal workforce for three years as a political appointee, and I have some strong opinions about the federal workforce and their service to the nation.
Ms. Cooper is one of those Trump voters I described who couldn’t be categorized as a “deplorable” for her beliefs or actions, but who reached her decision based on an issue that was meaningful to her. Nevertheless, the article about her plight generated over 13,300 comments, and the AI-generated conversation summary is brutal:
The comments reflect a strong sentiment of criticism towards Ryleigh Cooper's decision to vote for Trump, largely based on her personal desire for free IVF treatment. Many commenters express a lack of sympathy, emphasizing that her choice was self-serving and ignored the broader negative implications of Trump's presidency. They highlight her naivety and lack of critical thinking, pointing out that Trump's history of broken promises and harmful policies was well-documented. Some commenters suggest that her decision was influenced by her environment and lack of exposure to diverse perspectives, while others urge her to learn from this experience and become more politically active and empathetic in the future.
These sentiments are echoed in several similar stories as many Trump supporters find themselves adversely affected by this administration’s actions and are remorseful over the vote they cast. I said that schadenfreude was the prevailing reaction to their plight, but I think there’s a lot of anger that these people, as the AI summary states, “ignored the broader negative implications of Trump's presidency” for others and made “self-serving” decisions that are not only hurting them individually but millions of others.
As a Christian, I understand the position of those who lack empathy for these afflicted Trump voters, but my Lord and Savior says I don’t have the luxury of responding as they do.
Jesus reminds me that He loved me so much that He died for me, even though I was a “deplorable,” and He said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:35). He didn’t just ask me to love my fellow believers, regardless of whether they voted for Trump. He also said, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), although I hasten to add that I don’t see any human being as my enemy. Frankly, one of the things that has us in the mess we’re in is the ease with which we demonize other people to the point that we aren’t just flawed human beings who disagree, but mortal foes with irreconcilable differences, and we must shun or vanquish those who oppose us or are different than us.
The next few years are going to be some of the most difficult many of us have seen in our lifetimes, and a lot of people who we could reasonably blame for putting us in this predicament are going to find themselves struggling. In an era where empathy is regarded as “toxic” or even a sin, a lot of Trump supporters will be looking for some when they conclude their leader’s decisions only benefit him. Showing them the love of Christ is not only the right and healing thing to do, if they are believers who’ve fallen into the trap so many Christians have of entwining their faith and their politics, our acts of love may be what disentangles them and brings them back to the one true Kingdom where they belong.