Through a glass darkly: Trump Redux

He's back but nobody really knows what he is going to do.

Only an inveterate optimist could claim that 2025 has got off to an encouraging start. And the thing about inveterate optimists is that they can acclimatise themselves to anything. This is the way things are; there must be a reason why they are like this; since they are like this, the reason must be a good one. Thus all will be fine in this, the best of all possible worlds.

There is a lot of this about and not even Donald Trump’s inauguration today as president of the United States can be permitted to intrude upon, let alone shatter, the plain reality that 2025 is not going so very well. Even the briefest trot around the news demonstrates as much.

Why, the world’s richest man (at least on paper) is reported (by the Financial Times no less) to be “exploring” ways in which Sir Keir Starmer might be forced from office. That this seems an unlikely outcome - even allowing for the temper of the moment - hardly diminishes its dismal audacity.

And the thought, the reporting, is given added credence by the observable truth that Elon Musk is doing what he can to boost the fortunes of the really very right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the forthcoming German elections. Since Musk owns one of the world’s leading social media platforms and since much (too much) of the media agenda is determined by what happens on X (formerly Twitter) this seems, you know, sub-optimal.

Musk intimates that the future of western civilisation is now in doubt. If you value it, you must be prepared to fight for it. This is his core insight, if such it may be termed. From this, much else flows: should you wish to save the village, you must first be ready to risk its survival. This is an all or nothing type of analysis, a no half-measures gamble. Or so, at any rate, the bonnie truth-tellers and fighters like to believe. Only they have the ability to see what is truly at stake.

No wonder the discourse - I use the term without too much irony - feels somewhat millenarian. That is to say, humanity has been here before but not, perhaps, quite like this or so fully to this extent. Other voices join in here, notably the doom-laden green left, for whom nothing can or will ever be enough to address the looming “climate apocalypse”. The very future of the planet is in doubt and anyone who suggests this might be over-egging matters is complicit in its imminent destruction. Hysteria is not the preserve of left or right alone.

Perhaps this is the post-news world, a place where nothing is real but everything is possible. Newspapers, as we all (sadly) know are on their way out. But so is television news. Sometimes, it is true, the old gatekeepers go willingly to the scaffold. It was a sign of the times when The Washington Post declined to endorse either candidate in the most recent American presidential election. We all know why this happened: the paper’s owner (Jeff Bezos) feared reprisals should the Post endorse Kamala Harris and then watch in horror as Donald Trump win the election. Whats more, this was a wholly rational decision, albeit one confirming the Post’s looming obsolescence.

Not that the Post is alone. The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, has made it clear that he’s bored with boring old op-ed articles criticising the president-elect. If these are to be published at all they should be balanced by pieces saluting the many upsides of the Trump restoration. The news business is increasingly owned, you see, by people who hate it. (Say what you will about Rupert Murdoch but at least he actually loves newspapers. This is more unusual than it ought to be.)

All this is more craven than the tech companies rolling over for Trump. They’re in the business of making money (and you are the product) but newspapers are supposed to be about something more than just that (though, for sure, making money is important). This isn’t appeasement so much as it is acquiescence.

There’s a lot of that going on. For many, the bargaining process has moved past acceptance into a new phase: enthusiasm. Consider the historian Niall Ferguson, for instance. Four years ago, Ferguson - who has moved beyond telly don status into some new sphere of renown - was very clear: the January 6th insurrection was an attempted coup. All those involved in it should permanently besmirched themselves. Indeed, this is the view of the Justice Department too which has concluded that if Donald Trump were not president again there was sufficient evidence to pursue and convict him for his role in the rising. (You may say, I grant you, that the Justice Department would say that. Nevertheless…)

Yet Ferguson is recanting his past view for the very good reason that holding to them would make it impossible for him to get close to the new centre of power in Washington. I shall not be at all surprised if Ferguson soon write a book about Trump. As his Kissinger biography shows, power is his preferred aphrodisiac.

So here is what he now says about January 6th:

“I look back on January 6 as this combination of a genuine belief on his part that the election was stolen and a catastrophic failure of policing that doesn’t look entirely accidental,” he says. “We were all treated to a theatrical event with an amateur cast that really one would be stretching the English language to call a coup or even an attempted coup. With the passage of time, one realises that that episode really belongs, along with the George Floyd riots, in a chapter called The Madness of the Pandemic. The lockdowns created an atmosphere of near collective madness. Things were pretty crazy on both sides.”

Well, maybe. He is not comparing like with like, though, is he? The chucking of statues into Bristol harbour is not, perhaps, quite the same as storming the US Capitol building with a view to finding, and perhaps stringing-up, the Vice-President of the United States of America.

And mark how generously Ferguson judges Trump. His belief was “genuine”. Mark, too, at the slippery “failure of policing that doesn’t look entirely accidental”. Oh, really? What evidence is there for this? None is produced because the insinuation is more powerful.

Ferguson insists he is “ambivalent” about Trump, at least when “compared with all the conceivable presidents that could ever have been in the last 25 years”. Since this is coupled with the suggestion that “the right candidate won” it seems Ferguson has made a peace with his ambivalence.

He is certainly happy to subordinate any doubts to some chunky dose of wishful thinking. “I’m convinced that whatever impulses he has or has had in the past, the system can contain them as it was designed to.” Yet, come on, if the president must be restrained or otherwise contained by “the system” then, assuming the system is here acting as some kind of guarantor, we might sensibly conclude that the president must be a threat. Ideally, you see, we might prefer a president who did not need to be contained by the system. Should we be so “ambivalent” about one who must be restrained like this?

I do not mean to pick on Ferguson as an individual, so much as to use him as an example of the kind of thinking that is increasingly prevalent as Trump returns to the White House. This might be summarised as the view that, sure, it was unfortunate that Trump won once but it must mean something that he has won twice.

Hence what Ian Leslie describes as a great “vibe shift”. This isn’t just the tech bros accommodating themselves to the new president’s rougher style, it’s about American allies also appreciating that, like it or not, they cannot pretend Trump is some form of ghastly, temporary, aberration. Great Power politics is back, baby, and the trouble is western nations - Europe, Canada, Australia - cannot quite be certain whose side their ostensible leader is actually on. Could Trump be, you know, a Traitor?

There is no anti-Trump caucus within the western alliance and not just because everyone appreciates all over again that the United States remains the essential country. Putin (and Xi) have changed perceptions too and everyone also agrees that since Trump is “transactional”, flattery is the only prudent approach to take. This is acutely difficult, especially for Britain. Sir Keir Starmer’s instincts could hardly be more diametrically opposed to Trump’s. Yet here this morning is David Lammy, the foreign secretary, praising Trump’s “generosity”. This is unedifying but also, probably, necessary.

Even Democrats in the United States accept these new rules of reality. Trump’s victory cannot be considered illegitimate (unfortunate and worse than that for sure, but not a scandal or even, actually, a shock). It is, alas, what it is.

Fatalism, then, everywhere and very loudly. Politicians have to acknowledge all this but those of us not so encumbered may still insist upon pointing out the emperor’s nakedness. This isn’t just right, it’s necessary lest we otherwise all go mad.

Amidst all the talk of Greenland, Panama and even Canada (top-level trolling that one, we must accept) there remains a black hole at the heart of Trump’s second presidency. What is he actually going to do? The madman theory of politics requires us to have little way of knowing but granting even this, I think, afford Trump more agency (and clarity of purpose) than is warranted. Trumpism is a sensibility, not a set of policies. So from tariffs to “mass deportation” to foreign policy, we should not assume that what he’s said is anything like what he’ll actually do.

This, though, merely reinforces the point that everyone should be concerned by what’s coming. Trump is an aesthetic horror - and that is an under-appreciated part of his appeal too - and comfortably the worst person to occupy the White House in living memory. I do think we have to keep hold of that, for otherwise we’re left in the Fergusonian world of wishful thinking. Character is by no means defining in politics but Trump seems an outsized exception to that rule.

I wish all this were cheerier but, really, on what basis could it be? It will be bad, but the specific ways in which it will be bad are likely to surprise us.