Opening a Time Capsule From Trump’s First Term
Finding novel insights in an old book while we wait for news out of the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska.
The buzz this week is all about Trump, Putin, and Alaska. I’m not holding my breath for any silver linings. When it comes to Ukraine, Trump appears intent on outdoing Neville Chamberlain’s masterclass in appeasement.
I’ll share my thoughts here and there in the leadup to the Alaska summit. But I’ll be saving my full commentary until we know exactly what the president says and does when he meets the KGB dictator on land that many Russians remain keen to reassert their “historic” claim to.
Keep an eye out for my column on the Trump-Putin meeting, releasing this Saturday, August 16.
In the meantime, I’m opening a time capsule from Donald Trump’s first term.
Back in 2018, Renew Democracy Initiative brought together our allies on the center-left and center-right to publish a book, Fight for Liberty: Defending Democracy in the Age of Trump. The collection of essays cover topics ranging from free trade and globalization to the rise of China and conditions on college campuses.
It’s always valuable to revisit your past analysis. Flipping through the pages of Fight for Liberty the other day, I found that the essays were quite prescient for a nearly decade-old work. This isn’t a “gotcha” or an “I told you so,” but a reminder that the problems Americans currently face have been right in front of them for a while now.
The Roots of America’s Domestic Disarray
Take, for instance, the parasitic relationship between the far-left and the far-right. Over the weekend, I wrote about how Democrats’ tolerance of their vocal leftist flank has, in turn, made many American voters more tolerant of MAGA abuses.
This phenomenon isn’t a recent one. In one Fight for Liberty essay, journalist and congressional candidate John Avlon observed how half a century ago:
Republicans courted the South and benefited from the left’s cultural excesses amid domestic unrest, including Vietnam War protests and urban riots, which helped elect Richard Nixon and—save for the post-Watergate interregnum of Jimmy Carter—secured the White House for the GOP from 1968 to 1992.
In 2016, Avlon notes that:
The fractured Republican coalition held together in opposition to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party’s embrace of identity politics, another increasingly divisive force in America.
All of this was written down seven years ago. In 2024, we witnessed the same dynamic that John points out in 1968 and 2016. A Democratic Party associated with a toxic radical brand loses out to a demagogue.
Now, I can already hear the protests: the Democratic Party is not so left-wing; the Republicans are more right-wing than the Democrats are left, etc. etc. All true—in 1968, in 2016, and 2024! Nevertheless, perception matters, and many mainstream Democrats have hurt their party’s image by embracing rather than challenging their leftmost colleagues.
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On a related note, Johns Hopkins President Ronald Daniels wisely noted in his essay the role of radicalization and ideological homogeneity at universities in this social-political breakdown.
Daniels asks:
Does the university leave its students with an appreciation not only for the history of the American democratic model—the ideas that animated the founders and the complex institutions they devised—but also for the mechanics and pathways of contemporary civic engagement?
Daniels was right to ask that question in 2018. And he would have been right to ask whether young Americans appreciate “the history of [their] democratic model” amid the wildly unpopular wave of self-flagellating exercises like “land acknowledgements” that entered the mainstream in 2020. And he would have been right to ask again last year whether young Americans understand “the mechanics and pathways of contemporary civic engagement” as radical protesters occupied university buildings and shut down campuses.
Let me be clear: From a strict, liberal democratic point of view and a commitment to free speech purism, I believe that the Trump administration’s crackdowns on students and college administrations are absolutely wrong. But the academy has long made itself a very easy target for a would-be authoritarian.
A Disturbingly Accurate International Forecast
Pivoting to the intersection of domestic and foreign policy, Anne Applebaum’s contribution to Fight for Liberty offered a forecast that was strikingly accurate.
The spectacle of a president in thrall to a foreign authoritarian has led to growing admiration for authoritarianism even inside the Republican Party.
That sentence could have been a quick take on Tucker Carlson’s rave reviews of Moscow supermarkets and his fawning interviews with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. But, again, this was 2018. I wish Anne had been wrong. However, as usual, she was on the mark.
Anne continues:
And if the Russians helped Trump, then that may persuade a part of the American electorate to support Russian aims in the United States and Europe too.
When Anne penned this essay, a baby-faced JD Vance was still busy comparing Trump to Hitler. However, her piece shows how the stage had long been set for the eventual Oval Office interrogation of a Ukrainian president defending his country from a genocidal invasion. Vance’s smug demand for a thank you from Zelenskyy was red meat for an audience that had been primed for years to support Russia’s aims.
The pro-Russia flavor of American isolationism that today finds a home on both extreme right and extreme left has its misplaced appeal for many people. However, as foreign policy scholar Robert D. Kaplan notes in his own essay, withdrawing from the rest of the world is a fool’s errand:
It is in America's self-interest to share the burden by operating within the context of a global community, and it is a matter of self-preservation not to retreat from this task.
We may soon see what Robert was talking about. As we await what can only be bad news out of Alaska, it is easy to feel like America is dragging the entire Free World into a black hole. Yet, reflecting on my colleagues’ observations from seven years back in RDI’s Fight for Liberty, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that half of our work—that of diagnosing the threats—has already been accomplished.
We know the challenges. The question now is one of strategies and solutions.
P.S. Whether you agree or disagree, let’s continue the discussion—in the comments, and on a Zoom call. Yes, Zoom! I’ve recently announced new Zoom calls for paid subscribers so that we can have a real conversation. Check it out and please consider joining.
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The “southern strategy” wasn’t about the overly liberal excesses of “the left,” it was about racism in states formerly run by confederate traitors. Likewise, maga isn’t a thing because of “woke,” “DEI,” “the Marxist left,” etc, it’s about a bunch of people being duped into a far right reactionary cult by traitorous charlatans playing on biases held by about 35% of the American people.
Trumpty is becoming Machiavellian is sneaky, cunning, and lacking a moral code. The word comes from the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote the political treatise The Prince in the 1500s, that encourages “the end justifies the means” behavior, especially among politicians. that is the word lev is looking for? no, yes !