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January 25, 2024 - 8:00pm
With Iowa and New Hampshire finished, Donald Trump’s candidacy in the general election appears inevitable, and a victory in a November showdown against Joe Biden is well within the realm of possibility.
Trump’s first term marked a sea change for the American Right towards populist positions on trade, foreign policy and immigration. His next term promises more of the same, but in a new political environment which could allow for a more radical application of the same core principles. Record-breaking immigration has made the border wall more palatable to the American public, and the spike in violent crime that began in 2020 has stoked concerns that the criminal justice system is too soft. All of these factors could reduce friction against Trump’s agenda.
1. Immigration and the border
In 2018, Trump pledged to end birthright citizenship, a move that the Supreme Court likely would have blocked. But under the current 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Trump could direct federal agencies to stop granting citizenship documents to the children of illegal immigrants, as his 2024 campaign has pledged he would, and the High Court might allow the move.
Trump’s campaign also pledged to wage war against drug cartels in his next term by deploying the military to block cartels’ use of US waterways, labelling major cartels as terrorist organisations and pursuing the death penalty for smugglers and traffickers. His plan involves working with the Department of Defense to use cyber warfare and special forces against cartels.
2. Foreign Policy
Trump’s isolationist streak, perhaps his most notable divergence from the GOP establishment, will play out in a very different geopolitical climate. He laid the groundwork for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan during his first term, and he is now calling for “immediate deescalation and peace” in Ukraine. If elected, he plans to ask Europe to reimburse the US for stockpiles sent to Ukraine. There’s also widespread speculation that Trump will withdraw the US from NATO, an idea he reportedly considered during his first term.
3. The Deep State
On top of reissuing a 2020 executive order allowing Trump to fire government employees, his campaign plans to monitor intelligence agencies for spying and censorship and establish a commission to declassify and publish documents on those activities, according to the campaign website. He also plans to reform FISA courts, which played a major role in federal surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016.
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SubscribeYou failed to address how these centrist policies, common throughout Western societies until very recently, constitute a “radical agenda”
In her defense…being reasonable is now considered “radical.”
It’s all relative
American Academy looking radical to me (new institutions funded by donor trust funds masquerading as educational outfits). Pulling the plug on NATO would also be seismic (mooted hitherto yes, but groundswell feeling within British defence bodies that he’ll do it if re-elected).
We shouldn’t under-estimate him. His team has spent the 2 years preparing to govern so he doesn’t make the same errors/ get blindsided as last time. He’ll be straight out of the traps.
And.of course the most radical thing about Trump is his volatile temperament – the greatest deterrance the US had pre-Biden. One can never be quite sure what will happen next
They’re spitting into the wind at this point. Their pejoratives have stopped turning people against those they accuse and the respectable terms they use for themselves and the unpopular current regime no longer gain them much respect. If people dislike the status quo enough, defending it while using terms like radical to disparage the alternatives starts to defeat itself. Words like radical start to appeal to people who don’t like the current state of things and words like ‘establishment’ start to sound like pejoratives. The media is rapidly approaching the point where they will have to seriously reconsider their use of language, whether or not their actual positions change.
In 1785 every respectable French newspaper was royalist and anyone daring to question the divine right of the King was a ‘dangerous radical revolutionary’ who should be put to the death. In 1795, every respectable French newspaper was proudly radical and revolutionary while anyone who dared to question the revolution was a dangerous royalist who should be put to death. Usually change comes slowly, but sometimes under the right conditions things can change very quickly. Most of us haven’t seen such a time of change in our lifetimes, nor even in the lives of our parents or grandparents, but we could be on the brink of such a time.
Blimey. If Trump really is a 33rd degree Freemason and is just playing, knowingly or not, his Hegelian little part in bringing about transformative global change that will reimagine politics as we know it we really are in a lot of trouble! Problem, reaction, solution.
Please could we have a more honest and open robust debate about whether or not this may or may not be the case, without the infantile name-calling and eye-rolling? And a recognition that when mega-rich people have converging interests, they might on occasion collude, tacitly or otherwise, to pursue those interests against those of the common man and woman. They have, after all, got something of a track record in that department. If there’s just a 1% or even a 0.1% chance that something like this were true, surely the impact of such a scenario on human wellbeing would justify a thorough investigation into it, even if it seems (quite reasonably) a little bit whacky and improbable at this particular juncture? Or are our journalists, even in mainstream-adjacent publications such as Unherd, lacking in the courage to even go there?
“creating a private right of action for children to sue doctors”
That’s probably the only approach that will stop, or at least slow, the trans madness. The moment doctors, and their enablers, face malpractice suits, the bar for gender-reassignment surgery will become very high.
“He has promised mass corruption-related firings throughout intelligence and national security agencies.”
This is the proposal that worries me, for Trump’s sake. I doubt any of us truly understand the depth of the intelligence community’s reach, and their ability to inflict damage on anyone. If the truth becomes known, a century from now, about who and what orchestrated the attacks on Trump’s first administration, it will likely turn out to be the intelligence community, not the Democratic party.
That opens an interesting dynamic. The normal situation in a democracy is that public officials remain and try to be loyal to whoever wins. If Trump purges the state of anyone who might be against him and replaces them all with loyalists, his side will know that next time they lose they will all be out in the dark and there will be no restraint on a Democrat successor. It will be all-or-nothing. Are they really going to risk losing, when faced with that outcome? Or will they manage a way to ‘find’ enough votes to stay in power, come what may?
I see your point, but I’m not sure Trump proposes to purge everyone who is in any way against him. I think he’ll purge those who inappropriately used their position in the bureaucracy to thwart his administration or assist efforts to target him personally. Trump, and the Republicans, will lose nothing by purging such people, nor will they further politicize a bureaucracy that has already chosen to politicize itself.
As you note, public officials should be politically neutral in their public duties. But so many officials have thrown that norm aside. There is nothing reactionary or “right-wing” about purging such people.
Well, what is inappropriate obstruction or personal targeting will be determined by Trump himself. I am sure he will claim that this is all objective and good, but then so did Josef Stalin. For certain he will get rid of anyone who inappropriately tried to obstruct his efforts to overturn the election results. After that, will he really risk a Democrat administration coming in and purging all his loyalists in turn?
As in the UK, the ‘public’ civil servants can no longer be trusted.
Or even comprehended.
This is why Vivek’s policy agenda is better.
Federal Department of Education: “Shut it down”.
FBI: “Shut it down”.
A vacuum cannot be accused of having a political bias.
Closing the FBI should be on Trump’s agenda. The damage to nation they are doing now exceeds whatever protection they ever gave us from bad guys.
That is the situation every conservative President faces now. The deep-state bureaucracy is 90%+ liberal (not surprisingly). If Democrats decided to “clean house” at the end of a GOP administration (as Trump is proposing doing now), they would just appoint all the same type of people who are there now. In short, ending those civil service protections works only to the GOP’s benefit.
Not really. A functioning democracy requires some minimal respect for laws and rules. This gives both sides a stake in the system, since it means that even when they lose they still have some guarantees. Trump is, quite openly, recruiting a cohort of people who agree that he won the last election and can be relied on to act accordingly in the next election as well. In short, the Democrats will have nothing to gain from following any kind of rule, since the Republicans will not reciprocate. The Republicans, on their side, will know that the moment they lose power, they lose everything. That kind of democracy is well known in the world, from Russia to Pakistan to most of Africa. Is that really what even the Republicans would wish for the US?
Well, if I was not gonna voter for him before this article convinced me.
You won’t get the chance, Trump is going to jail, not the Whitehouse
Very good Uncommon Knowledge interview on that topic yeaterday. Certainly Jake Sullivan pushing hard (including trying to cut straight to the supreme court). I know.little about the US legal system but a ruling may be post election rather than pre.
The conspiracy theory I’ve been following is a declaration of war, resulting in a cancellation of the election. Anything seems possible.
Extension of a President’s term is essentially impossible. That the reign of the President ends on Jan 20th is codified into the Constitution.
If no Electoral College vote has been sent to the House by that date, and thus there is no President or Vice President to swear in, the Presidential Succession Act applies. That makes the Speaker of the House acting President. If the Democrats were in control of the House, I might really be concerned, but they are not. If no election were held in Nov, 2024, there would be no changes in Congress, which means the Speaker of the House (and acting President) would be Mike Johnson.
This is one of the few parts of the US electoral process that is very cut and dried.
What did he do?
To many Democrats, it appears to not matter.
The two are not mutally exclusive. Also, very Russian to jail your political opponents.
What are the radical policies again? I just have missed them.
misleading headline. literally none of this is “radical”.
My thoughts exactly.
A lot of these are traditional centre left positions particularly on mass immigration which has always and everywhere been about deflating wages of working people. The grotesque lunatic would get my vote.
”The former president is looking to capitalise on the country’s Rightward drift”
Haha, so now you cannot get promoted in the Military if a strait white male till every other has been promoted above you, and this is the rule most places. Pronouns? Gender ‘;health’, get out of jail free cards in the Soros Prosecutor offices, de-criminalizing crime? 12,000,000 il*egal a*iens are basically unarrestable and given healthcare, school, housing, phones, clothing, food and Money. Kindergartens, schools, and Universities being brainwas*ing and not education, tossing statues of the great men who founded the Nations and defended them, being ra** replac*d – and this is not a Right Wing conspiracy thing – I am from London – I have watched it for many decades, Christianity being cance*ed, and other religions becoming almost the State religion in much of Western Europe – Not same in USA about the religion, but European descended in all the world will become minorities in their lands, this is not doubted by any who look at statistics. All the West being Bankrupted by National Debt to fund ‘Social Programs’, Government employment numbers approaching private…
But you know a hundred other modern things happening…. it is the ‘Extreme Lefting’ of the West.
A Rightward Drift? What?
pardon the * in many of my posts – the mo*eration does not like me – haha, and after a few tries and several * I sometimes get through the system.
I forgot to say
Tri*ger War*ing
haha – you do not know what it is, so have to keep trying *
God help us, if Trump’s supposed agenda in fields like education, law and order and immigration is what’s considered “radical” these days.
Regrettably Trump will not pull the USA out of NATO.
He will make the other members pay more.
As we should, NATO should be partnership not a dodgy money saving scheme for (often) feckless European governments.
I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Suddenly pulling out of the dominant security architecture of the Western world is probably not a brilliant plan. For the world or for American credibility.
However he could announce a US withdrawal date of 2030. NATO headquarters is already in Brussels. Making it clear that we are assuming a peripheral role and plan to exit would allow the EU (also in Brussels) to assert control over NATO. As a side benefit, Macron can get the EU military force he’s always wanted.
NATO was originally a good idea. Now it is just a US poodle, enforcing US Neocon foreign policy which has managed to create three major world flashpoints all at the same time.
Gone is the US elite, such as Kennan, who had sensible policies preserving peace and Western security.
Hmm: “cut federal funding for schools that teach Critical Race Theory, gender ideology or inappropriate content on race, sex and politics.” And who defines what is CRT or ‘inappropriate’? Dare I say that this is taken perfectly from the fascist/authoritarian state playbook?
I received CRT as one of my courses at an east-coast university. Here is an extract from some of the literature we had to read:
I teach college students and there is no way I would let something like this come into a lecture hall, save as an example of how the Civil Rights movement has morphed into a Fascist Ideology and why it should be removed from school and college curricula. Hopefully, not wanting to preach an ideology that demands the spilling of blood doesn’t make me a fascist or authoritarian 🙂
Thank you…..it is frightening that so many ideologues have replaced intelligent men and women on the faculties of our colleges and universities.
Hmm: “cut federal funding for schools that teach Critical Race Theory, gender ideology or inappropriate content on race, sex and politics.” And who defines what is CRT or ‘inappropriate’? Dare I say that this is taken perfectly from the authoritarian state playbook?
Someone has to do it and someone always does. CRT is pretty obvious to spot – the oppressor vs oppressed narrative. Right now, the institutions are dominated by people who choose to teach ideas most parents oppose. There are always gatekeepers and there always will be.
Out of interest, how do you know what ‘ideas’ are opposed by ‘most parents’? Have you conducted or seen convincing research among parents about their ideas and how they relate to those of their children’s teachers? And aren’t ideas disagreed with rather than opposed? I don’t know, but it’s a bit of a step to just assume that your own ideas are ‘opposed’ by a majority of parents.
Fair point. There are polls on these type of things. A You/Gov poll found 58% of Americans are opposed to CRT and 38% in favour. A recent Canadian poll found 80% of parents are opposed to schools withholding information from parents about their children transitioning.
Having said that, I don’t put a lot of faith in opinion polls. My greater point is that unelected, unaccountable groups have tremendous influence on education today. No one voted them in, but yet they are defacto education gatekeepers.
The American Library Association basically determines which books are stocked in school libraries. This is a very progressive group that has tremendous influence on education, but the vast majority of people haven’t even heard of it.
Here is a fascinating essay about this type of institutional capture and its power.
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-truth-about-banned-books
We elect govts to represent the people. The west is now dominated by govts that either support these toxic ideas or they are blind to them. As a result, there is no pushback. If we elect politicians who oppose these ideas, I expect them to cut off govt funding.
Perhaps a clue can be found in the efforts to obfuscate when informing parents about what is being taught. Dishonesty rarely engenders trust. As for ideas, disagreement rather than opposition is the correct approach, however the implementation of policy is quite a different matter, particularly in a society predicated on a democratic consensus. Requiring every individual to give individual proof of why they disagree with policies mandated by government is not only disingenuous and damaging to civil society, it has the distinct smell that comes with corruption and dishonesty in public life. It is best left to conmen and grifters.
you got to hand it to the guy, for a billionaire he seems to be in touch with what people seem to want. not sure where the radical policies are.
The former president is looking to capitalise on the country’s Rightward driftRecognizing that a border exists and should be controlled is now radical? Wanting to end the casualties suffered by combatants is also radical? My, my; when words can mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean, they become worthless. And the notion that a candidate running under the GOP would “capitalize” on a rightward shift suggests an ignorance of what Repubs claim to be.
Sounds good to me !! Pity the U K. Will be going in opposite direction about the same time!
Kennedy’s my choice, but third-party candidates have no real chance in America’s “democratic” system. I loathe Trump personally, and his dismantling of Roe was repugnant. His attitude and behavior toward women are disgustingly sexist. But at least he knows the difference between the sexes. Trump will undo Biden’s attempts to supplant biological sex in law and policy with self-declared gender identity, which are erasing historical protections for girls and women.
As other readers have noted, there’s nothing “radical” in that or many other positions herein outlined. While I won’t vote for Trump — a dangerous autocrat with no respect for the rule of law — I also won’t again vote for Biden, having witnessed his fealty to truly radical woke ideology.
A man is a man is a man. Ditto for women. Full stop. Exactly so.
I suggest you vote for Trump. If he does good things. you will have supported those good things.
I confess to liking this platform much more than his 2016 platform. It remains to be seen if he can articulate this effectively or implement it if he get elected. I can sort of understand why they’re trying to use the courts to defeat Trump this time. If this could be implemented, it would be like dropping a nuclear bomb on the globalist establishment. It might actually make him the modern day Julius Caesar the establishment always feared he was. They have to be terrified in the same way the ruling class of 1931 was terrified of FDR, maybe worse because Trump is a vengeful a** and openly advertises himself as such.
Trump is not vengeful. He only wants what is best for this country. He has no hard feelings against those who have done him wrong.
Do you also believe he was born by a virgin?
#1 is a far bigger deal than people realize. Mexico is essentially a failed state. Cartels are the de-facto govt in upwards of 1/4 of the country.
Closing the border (which is what Trump is effectively talking about) is an existential threat to the cartels, since they are financed by the drug trade. Could the US Army defeat them? Yes. Of course. We have F-16s and nuclear warheads — we can defeat anyone. Would we? That’s a harder question.
At the border, a “cartel war” would look something like the Hezbollah / Israel conflict, but spread over 1800 miles. (For perspective, Israel has a 50 mile border with Lebanon.) Right now the cartels have machine guns, RGPs (single-man level stuff) and DIY armored pickup trucks, but Venezuela and Russia could equip them with serious military hardware: MANPADS, SAMs, artillery. Given that, they could close the airspace above the Southwestern United States. We’re bleeding Russia in Ukraine; Putin would be happy to return the favor in Mexico. Would we invade and occupy Mexico? We would have to.
There’s a great Substack author on this subject (a mild-prepper but very clear eyed about the limits: https://agentmax.substack.com/p/the-coming-us-mexico-border-war )
Nor would a cartel war remain confined to the border. A significant cartel presence exists in most major US cities. (https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2021-02/DIR-008-21%202020%20National%20Drug%20Threat%20Assessment_WEB.pdf – look at page 69, and that was in 2020! )
So we are going to war with a transnational organization that has foreign state sponsorship, controls significant swathes of territory next door to us, and an underground presence within most urban areas of the United States. Could we beat them? Absolutely! But it would be “total war” in that it would impact every part of American society. We’ve gotten used to cheap stuff, cheap foreign labor, and cheap illegal drugs. Ending our addition to all 3 of those will require an “all of society” commitment, which I’m not sure we are capable of anymore.
I’m not saying Trump’s idea is a bad one. In fact, I think it’s long overdue and critically necessary. But we should go into it with our eyes open, not pretending that it’s just “station the 101st airborne on the border and we’re done.”
The secret police behavior will be reversed. After purging the deep state for illegal actions taken against him, he will tell the secret police to treat Woke democrats the same way they treated him. America needs to tell both parties that the secret police should deal with foreign spies and terrorists not the current presidents’ personal enemies. Revenge and t*t for tat just turns America into a typical banana republic.
Trump also will have to deal with the mess that Biden made of foreign policy. Biden has allowed N Korea and Iran to become nuclear powers. Diplomacy did not work but nuclear blackmail would have. Sadly, they will conquer some of our vassal states. S Korea and perhaps Japan. With our shrunken Navy we will have to let them get away with it.
Trump helped here. He gave Kim Young-un’ a summit that greatly enhanced his status, without asking anything in return, and did nothing to stop North Korea building more weapons. In fact he accepted defeat and dressed it up nicely. And Trump is planning to make the same kind of concessions to Putin if he is re-elected. If you want a strong, active America on foreign policy, Trump is the last man you should choose.
Isn’t it a crying shame that the guy is an intolerable buffoon?