Photo by Igor Omilaev

Trump’s trump cards

After his first 100 days in office, Trump registered the lowest presidential approval rating in US history since such measurements began. The number of dissatisfied citizens surged, while voter support dwindled. But the president and his inner circle remained undeterred, insisting that the US people would eventually recognise the accomplishments of his administration. To many observers, the situation appeared to be a triumph of arrogance and incompetence. Yet, even if one accepts such assessments, a fundamental question arises.

In reality, it was Trump’s opponents who paved his way to power. For at least a decade and a half, starting with the 2008–10 economic crisis, when the flaws of neoliberal capitalism became fully exposed, US ruling circles (and to some extent Europe’s as well) invested enormous effort in preventing the emergence of any constructive alternative to the existing system. All political forces, particularly those on the left that were pushing for overdue and necessary reforms, were systematically marginalised or else corrupted and co-opted in exchange for abandoning any serious struggle for power.

One must admit that Bernie Sanders3 and his supporters in the US resigned themselves to this situation and essentially started playing to lose, as if engaged in a game where defeat was the condition for participation. As a result, the only remaining alternative consisted of irresponsible, incompetent and uncooperative figures characterised as “loudmouths who could never actually come to power.” At first, this was so obvious that no one took their shouting seriously. Even Trump’s first presidency between 2016-20 failed to teach the establishment any lessons. What happened was not viewed as a systemic threat but a random glitch, one successfully corrected without serious consequences.4 After all, in 2020, Trump lost the election and left the White House, having fulfilled virtually none of his promises.

Meanwhile, the situation continued to evolve, and not in the establishment’s favour. Regardless of what TV commentators, experts, intellectuals and political consultants had to say, the system’s internal contradictions revealed themselves, and unresolved problems kept accumulating, laying the groundwork for a new crisis, this time a political one.

In 2024, the Democrats lost the election not because Trump’s ideas had become more convincing, but because the liberal establishment had worn out even its own supporters. At the last moment, realising the threat, the establishment tried to mobilise voters by scaring them with the horrors that would follow a Trump victory. But by then, the public’s disgust and contempt for the old political class, combined with the demoralisation of the moderate middle, had outweighed even the fear of a Trumpist experiment. The voters who could have stopped Trump simply did not show up. Some even voted Republican out of spite — after all, with Trump, at least things would be entertaining.

And the fun began.

The sociology of Trumpism

Trump’s first hundred days in office were marked by a surprising urgency, as the new administration, without much deliberation, immediately laid all its cards on the table. This rapid-fire assault brought not so much significant change as it did sheer chaos. But an obvious question arises:

Imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands or firing thousands of civil servants based on formal criteria without evaluating their actual performance — one could chalk all this up to administrative incompetence. Or blame it on the president’s impulsiveness and emotional instability. But the reasons go much deeper.

© CounterPunch