So, I said this as an aside, but I have a few thoughts about this idea I’d like to share.
If I have one hobbyhorse in reflecting on the 2016 presidential election, it is this: there was never any such thing as Trumpism, no overarching ideology, no framework. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
He was willing, perhaps more so than any other presidential candidate, to say what people wanted to hear, and to be a tabula rasa upon which the fantasies of voters -- from SoCons to gay libertarians -- could be projected.
(And sometimes he got that wrong: remember his Chris Matthews interview on abortion where he basically portrayed what a liberal would think an anti-abortion candidate would sound like? thefederalist.com/2016/03/31/4-r…)
And the "globalist" v. "populist" debate -- in which the "Party of Davos" plays a big part -- was very much the same. For Steve Bannon, this has been a years-long argument. This Breitbart article is from January 2015. breitbart.com/big-government…
And from January 2017:
“These world elites have found out, thanks to voters.., they’re no longer the center of the universe...It’s unlikely these world elites will regain power and authority over the people who took their power away in the first place.”
breitbart.com/big-government…
“These world elites have found out, thanks to voters.., they’re no longer the center of the universe...It’s unlikely these world elites will regain power and authority over the people who took their power away in the first place.”
breitbart.com/big-government…
But Trump never cared about that, not really.
"Populism" wasn't a political destination, it was a waystation to victory. And Trump, who has spent his life simultaneously spurning and trying to gain the approval of "elites" (note how much energy he's spent decrying a book most people won't read), was never an acolyte.
He never cared about "beating back globalists." Just as his "drain the swamp" ethos went out the window pretty much the day he won. See:
It would be easy to position Trump as a hypocrite for going back on his campaign promises regarding "globalism" and the defeat of neoliberalism. But to be a hypocrite, you need to have believed in something in the first place.
