The most authoritarian and racist campaign of my lifetime just won Donald Trump a return to the White House. It even was the most popular Republican presidential campaign since 1988. There go four decades of academic research on far-right politics, which has confidently claimed that openly racist far-right parties could not win elections. While it is too early to explain Trump’s shockingly large victory, there is one thing I know for sure: Trump 2.0 will be nothing like Trump 1.0. When Trump returns to the White House on 20 January 2025, he will bring his own people, have a clear plan and face no internal opposition.
When Trump won in 2016, he was largely a one-man band. Except for his close family, he had no powerful individuals and organizations that were loyal to him. Hence, he relied on the infrastructure of the Republican party and establishment conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation. His first administration should therefore be seen as a coalition government, between Trump and the Republican establishment – at that time, personified by Mitch McConnell, then the powerful Senate majority leader. It was mainly successful in policies that the two camps shared – notably, lower taxes, deregulation, and judicial replacement – and much less so in policies that only Trump really cared about, like “the wall” and the “Muslim ban”.
Today, Trump is in a much more powerful position. There are few powerful counterweights left within both the US right wing and the broader US political system. The Republican........