The prevailing political narrative since Trump won last November and Democrats devolved into an orgy of Biden-blame has been the collapse of the resistance in favour of the shrug of resignation. The best strategy for the 75 million Americans who didn’t vote for Trump would be to wait out the next four years in earbuds.
Then came the abomination of the Trump inauguration. The visuals alone aroused in me a technicolour replay of political agita. That dais inside the Capitol groaning with the whole trashy crew of grifters and tech oligarchs, Trump wearing his fake strongman expression with the jutting Mussolini chin. The glimpse of Lauren Sanchez’s bustier and Melania’s ridiculous Mask of Zorro hat. The trash-talking of Biden’s record as the old soldier sat only feet away. The tariff twaddle; the farcical mishmash of false information (no effort made to fight the fires in LA, China controlling the Panama Canal); royal edicts (the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America!). The Buzz Lightyear BS about planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars (cut to Elon Musk jumping to his feet with a thumbs up), and the overarching theme of the mighty Maga King himself as the culmination of all of American history. I mean, what the actual eff? If this doesn’t re-awaken Democrats from their strategic torpor, they deserve everything they get.
Ramaswamy taps out
For the next few weeks, President Trump will be at the apex of his power, but Trump World has already started feuding with itself. The traditionalist Hulk Hogan wing, led by the unreconstructed Maga pugilist (and Musk enemy) Steve Bannon, has started to wake up to the fact that the Silicon Valley broligarchs have very different views on such articles of faith as H-1B visas for the foreign-born intelligentsia. In December, the tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s Trump-appointed partner in cutting the fat out of the “deep state”, posted on X about how America “venerated mediocrity over excellence” and how “in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent….we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.” He seemed to have forgotten who he was talking to. It’s Maga itself that denigrates science, deprecates expertise, disapproves of institutional experience, and prefers wackadoodle conspiracy theories to established knowledge.
Musk, it seems, began to see him as a liability. Now Ramaswamy is off the Trump project, with the handy excuse that he is running for governor of Ohio. In the tech vs Maga slugfest, it was Ramaswamy who had his ass handed to him.
Visions of an alternate universe
I was interested to hear the science professor Adam Grant voice the heretical thought on a podcast that it might have been better for Democrats if Trump had won a second term in 2020. I am inclined to agree. When you think back to the chaos of Trump’s first term, his revolving door of humiliated cabinet appointments and apparatchiks, his cock-up of Covid, and his clown-car inner-circle of the likes of Rudy Giuliani with black hair dye running down his face, it might have been better if Trump had flailed on to a second term.
Inflation, post-Covid moroseness and the perils of the Ukraine war (which Trump assures us he’d have prevented) would have probably done him in, and Dems could have spent the time fielding a killer candidate to beat VP Mike Pence. There would have been no 6 January (or hysterical liberals talking about it on cable shows every night for four years), no “Big Lie” damage to the press and mistrust of democracy, no wasted efforts to put Trump behind bars that merely served to make him a hero who defeated all 34 convictions. Trump’s four years in exile were a godsend, giving him the political comeback story of all time. His new circle of tightly trained advisers, chosen for their fealty, know where the levers of power are and how to use them.
A cold snap in Washington
After the inauguration, as the Marine One helicopter took off in the freezing January wind with the now former 46th president, it’s hard to imagine a more bitter ending to Biden’s five-decade political career. (It didn’t help his exit press when, in the final 20 minutes of his presidency, he preemptively pardoned his siblings and their spouses, whom he feared were on Trump’s hit list.) The worst aspect of Biden’s forced exit at the age of 82 is there will be no time left for a Carteresque second act to rehab his image and work up some ubuntu with all the former colleagues he believes stabbed him in the back.
In a recent interview, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra referred to the outgoing first lady as Lady Macbiden and said she should stop harping on Nancy’s betrayal and “put on [her] big girl pants… There aren’t that many people left in America who have something nice to say about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is one of them.” It was just a whiff of what a chilly place Joe Biden’s post-presidency is likely to be.
Tina Brown is the author of the weekly Substack Fresh Hell
[See also: Donald Trump’s techno-futurist inaugural address]
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This article appears in the 22 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Messiah Complex