In the first hundred days of the Trump presidency, there is not a single positive thing to be found in this man and his administration.. Anyone who claims otherwise is mistaken. And anyone who thinks that this is merely a variant of “normal” Republican policy is deluding themselves..The political system in the US was unhinged.
After one hundred days of Trump
There is not a single positive thing to be found about Donald Trump’s presidency. Anyone who claims otherwise is mistaken.
By Ethan Young
[This article posted on May 2017 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/100-tage-trump/.]
After 100 days of Trump being US president, it is not difficult for me to make an assessment. I want to be as clear as possible: there is not a single positive thing to be found in this man and his administration. Anyone who claims otherwise is mistaken. And anyone who thinks that this is merely a variant of “normal” Republican policy is deluding themselves. In the first hundred days of the Trump presidency, the entire political system in the US was unhinged. What used to be considered far-right, conservative, moderate, liberal and far-left now needs to be reinterpreted. The country is in a panic.
Because our government is unable to ward off the consequences of neoliberalism, regardless of which party is currently in power. At the same time, both Democrats and Republicans fear an increasingly vocal public. The unequal distribution of wealth and the dismantling of the welfare state are shaking confidence in the ownership structure and the associated social relationships. In both parties, parts of the respective base are ready to go after the other side. Neither has even a rudimentary solution to offer. In the United States, we are in the throes of a severe political crisis. Both leading parties are treacherously built only on sand. They are facing the shambles of an electoral model that has brought them success since 1948. Trump’s election victory may have been foreshadowed by Nixon’s “silent majority” and later by the Reagan revolution. But the current situation is anything but “normal”. The Republican Party leadership did not expect an internal party revolt with the momentum that Trump’s election campaign developed. Donald Trump was driven by the Tea Party and fueled by the same racist and xenophobic populism that is also shaking the foundations of the political establishment in Europe. The first hundred days were characterized by a confused and disturbed figure at the helm of government and by ongoing power struggles that have not been resolved. At the same time, long-standing unwritten laws have been and continue to be broken, and lives ruined or even extinguished. Standards for political leadership that had been in place until now and that had been in disintegration since Nixon’s time no longer exist.
Why Trump won and Clinton lost
Trump’s electoral success was the result of a series of events in his election campaign. In the hot phase of his campaign, he alienated himself from almost all powerful and popular party leaders. He was and is still alienated from the majority of voters – he received far fewer votes than his opponent. Most observers thought he would fail miserably. And even he seemed shocked when he realized he had won. There is much debate about the reasons for his victory. I will limit myself to three factors. First, Hillary Clinton ran an election campaign in which she, instead of approaching the voters directly, advertised on television – and did so mainly in economically depressed states that used to be industrial regions. A majority of votes in these states would have been crucial for a majority in the Electoral College. This is because winning majorities in certain populous states is more important than the total number of votes cast at the federal level when it comes to a close race. Then, a few days before the election, FBI Director James Comey announced out of the blue that Clinton was under investigation on suspicion of having sent secret information in private emails while serving as secretary of state. Comey’s announcement came shortly after large-scale hearings had failed to produce evidence of Clinton’s guilt. Furthermore, Comey’s superior, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, had previously instructed the FBI director to follow protocol and wait until after the election to make the announcement. Since Clinton’s “credibility” was already in doubt among many voters, the announcement dealt a severe blow to her campaign at the worst possible time. Finally, in the few remaining days between Comey’s announcement and the election, the Republicans seized the moment. They set aside their reservations about Trump and mobilized their far-right base and financial resources in key states in the Northeast and Upper Midwest – which ultimately proved to be a tactical masterstroke. Even before that, Republicans in the states they dominate had taken measures to make it difficult for non-white minorities and students to vote. As a result, Trump was able to secure enough votes in the predominantly white districts of these states to make up for Clinton’s nationwide lead of three million votes with regard to the Electoral College.
Trump’s agenda
Trump’s most important achievement since taking office has been to fill the highest government posts with multi-millionaires, military officers and right-wing ideologues. The ultimate intention behind this is to cut back state social services. Without exception, Trump’s cabinet members represent the most backward, anti-democratic thinking the country has to offer in terms of human, civil and women’s rights, climate change, tax, foreign and education policy, etc. The conservative dream of turning back the clock to 1929 is closer than ever – unless a force strong enough to push back the political right emerges. Unlike their Republican predecessors, the new administration has broad leeway to roll back abortion rights. Access to clinics and doctors who perform abortions has been made more difficult or even impossible in most of the country. The new Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice who will succeed the late Justice Scalia is a well-known opponent of the landmark decision in the Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion. In the past, presidents did not want to challenge it for reasons of political expediency. Access to clinics and doctors is still a fundamental right. But today, its opponents are no longer silent about its restriction. At times, Trump’s election campaign was marked by promises not to intervene militarily abroad and to take a sharply protectionist approach to trade policy. But by the second month in office, he had already done a U-turn. This does not mean that he has changed his mind, because his mental state does not allow that. Rather, the turnaround occurred because the upstarts in his advisory circle, who had come there due to the financial pressure of crazy right-wing billionaires, were pushed aside.
The real decision-makers in the White House, on the other hand, reflect the old interests: the military, Wall Street and the sector in which Trump grew up: the East Coast rich. Beyond the wishes expressed by these interests, the members of the administration are solely concerned with enriching themselves and their clientele and alternately terrorizing or confusing the public, and they do so without any legal or moral scruples. Behind this lies the unconditional desire for the boundless rule of white men. They have not formulated their ambitions so openly and freely since the successes of the civil rights movement. For months, the far-right faction of Congress has been at loggerheads with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus and the rest of the old guard. The ideologically purist right-wing politicians and their voters are firmly convinced that the Trump campaign was about nothing less than the disempowerment of the old guard. The transfer of public funds into private coffers does not go far enough for them, nor do the devastating attacks on the state education system, Obamacare health insurance, science, democratic rights, etc. They expected much more. Trump did not act as authoritatively as he had implied with his election campaign rhetoric – still no wall, and Obamacare is still “the law of the land,” as Ryan admitted. Ultimately, Trump’s radical right-wing voter base wants to be compensated for having to live under a black president for eight years. She is only now beginning to realize what the turn to militarism means; that Trump now listens to the generals and no longer to her. Trump’s polarization of the country is particularly striking. It is so pronounced that he receives no support from any mass medium outside the Murdoch corporation. The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times do not pretend to objectivity and equidistance, and instead take the government under constant fire. This has happened only rarely since Nixon’s career ended, and never so early in a president’s first term.
Democrats: centrism or populism?
Public resentment of every move Trump makes or threatens to make is expressed in mass demonstrations and confrontations with elected officials at town hall meetings. In anticipation of next year’s congressional elections, the energies unleashed by Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign are now focusing on electing progressive candidates at the local and state level. While there is no federal structure to competently guide, support, or fund these political activities, a serious reorganization of old and new political actors is taking place to the left of the centrist leadership of the Democratic Party. Polls show a growing majority opposed to Trump, despite the administration’s hopes of improving its approval rating with bombs and missiles. At this point, I would like to take a closer look at how this new disorder is affecting the political scene, especially the American left. Here, we need to distinguish between the centrist leadership of the Democratic Party, as represented by the Clintons and Barack Obama, and the party base, which includes many progressive social movements. Many members of older organizations representing these movements – such as labor unions, NGOs, and other nonprofit organizations – had been prepared to support Hillary Clinton, the party leadership’s preferred candidate. However, the participation of left-wing populist Bernie Sanders in the primary race attracted millions of voters, many of whom were skeptical of mainstream politics. While these two camps engaged in fierce disputes during the primary campaign and still strongly mistrust each other, they have mostly stuck together in their resistance to Trump’s right-wing attacks. This was evident in the record number of participants in the women’s demonstrations in response to Trump’s inauguration and in numerous smaller and widespread protests. However, it is still unclear whether the leaders of the Democratic Party and the elected politicians will join the resistance or just play the role of “reasonable” opposition. There are a number of small socialist and left-wing populist groups in the US, but the Democratic Party, which stands for a cautiously neoliberal economic policy, dominates the strongholds of progressive politics. The tension between the needs of the party base and the party leadership, which relied on wealthy donors, came to the fore when the Sanders Democrats made their mark. Smaller parties and groups had to choose whether or not to support Sanders. Those who joined his campaign encountered increased interest in politics, especially socialist politics, at universities and in many cities and smaller communities.
New power constellations
In the past hundred days, three events have indicated the directions in which right-wing and left-wing forces have moved. Political tendencies that previously operated alongside each other are partially converging and making their policies public. This new development is a reaction to what is perhaps the most right-wing government in US history. It is well known that there have long been raids against immigrants, who are arrested and then held in detention centers or deported, usually to Latin America. Recently, Juan Manuel Montez claimed that he was deported on February 17 without being allowed to speak to a lawyer or being brought before an immigration judge. Montez was unable to provide identification to a border agent and was deported to Mexico despite being registered in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from the Obama administration. This protects people like Montez, known as Dreamers, from deportation and grants them basic rights that most “paperless” immigrants are denied. People who crossed the border as children and grew up in the US are considered Dreamers. The DREAM Act, on which DACA is based, was the result of years of protests and political pressure from immigrant organizations and families. Immigrants have always been close to the heart of the American left. But they have also been the target of racially tinged political repression by the police, courts, military and vigilantes. While many immigrants who missed re-registration with DACA were deported under both the Obama and Trump administrations, Juan Manuel Montez is the first known deportation of a registered DACA participant. In fact, it is the policy of the current administration to use federal resources to the fullest extent, even when previous administrations have legally restricted the use of those resources. In this case, we are talking about the immigration police, who are supposed to arrest and deport people of a certain skin color and nationality. Another important event occurred on April 15. A bunch of fascists, armed and ready for a fight, had gathered in Berkeley, California, for a demonstration. Since the November elections, the number of such demonstrations by white supremacists has been on the rise. In the past, the rightwingers almost always outnumbered the counter-demonstrators. Furthermore, it rarely came to direct physical confrontations. This time, however, the fascists, who had come from the entire West Coast to a considerable crowd, managed to provoke violent clashes. In the university town actually dominates a pluralistic left-wing political culture, including the Black Bloc, from whose ranks the police are often provoked and macho boasts are made. This time, the fascists not only managed to hold their position in enemy territory, but also to overwhelm the anti-fascists. Only then did the police intervene.
The audacity of the fascists is a direct consequence of the political climate that Trump created and that is perceived as normal after the elections. There has not been anything like this in the US for a long time. In addition to a government, legislature and judiciary dominated by the far right, opponents of the government, who may outnumber the government supporters, now face an openly fascistic movement that openly embraces violence. There is significant overlap between white supremacists and law enforcement officers throughout the country. Brutal police violence has reached epidemic proportions, killing thousands, yet it continues unabated, a fact that is not addressed by politicians. Trump’s attorney general promises to protect the police from lawsuits for assault. His hostile attitude towards non-whites has been known for a long time. In order not to sound fatalistic and to round off the picture with a positive impression after all, an event on the weekend in Berkeley that has already been mentioned should be mentioned. The East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which had campaigned for Bernie Sanders, called together a large group of members at short notice to do “phone banking”: they called thousands of people to ask for their support for a bill that would provide Californians with free state health insurance. The broad-based initiative has become quite popular beyond California since Bernie Sanders, supported by the DSA, made it a nationwide demand in the primary campaign. At first glance, the phonebanking would not be worth mentioning. But a year earlier, the DSA local group would probably have been able to mobilize only a handful of people for it.
In fact, DSA membership tripled last year, to over 20,000. Waves of young, politicized people are joining the group with the aim of organizing against Trump. They are creating new chapters across the United States and offering their support to local political reform initiatives and candidates. And this in a country where socialists were until recently considered political lepers. The day after, the powerful California senator Diane Feinstein, who, like Hillary Clinton, now describes herself as “progressive” instead of “moderate,” appeared at a town hall event in San Francisco. She showed up there under pressure from the left-wing populist group Indivisible, which has also grown rapidly. When Feinstein refused to support the bill, she suddenly found herself confronted by a large, unexpectedly angry crowd. These were all Democratic voters who knew exactly what they wanted and did not want, and they had come to make their demands. In short, while the election handed an undeserved victory to the radical right, the crisis of the Clinton Democrats, coupled with the rise of the Sanders wing, conceals a golden opportunity. For the center of gravity of populism may well shift from the right to the left. None of this was predicted or expected, and nothing is inevitable. Trump’s victory was a sad reminder that no candidate is inherently going to win, and that politics sometimes undergoes a radical change. Now it is a matter of fighting for better politics and for the survival of US democracy as a whole, using every means possible.
Ethan Young is a journalist and publicist. He heads the Left Labor Project in New York and is editor of the online magazine Portside.
Trump and the new scoundrels
Who is following the right-wing populist to the White House?
By Max Böhnel
January 2025
Just before Donald Trump takes office again as US president, the posts in the White House have also been distributed. Unlike his first cabinet, which originally consisted mainly of proven establishment figures, this time Trump is putting together a team that is ideologically further to the right and ideologically coherent. However, one thing has hardly changed: the class from which the team comes and which it serves. Because it is made up of various multimillionaires and billionaires.
This very special capitalist faction can be described as a “lumpen bourgeoisie” in reference to Marx. Their “instinct” teaches them that while democracy allows them access to power, it “at the same time undermines its social basis,” as Marx said in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. So away with democracy! These “rags” have no productive project. Instead, they try to tear down all barriers to the exploitation of people and nature and, if necessary, seize wealth by force. Robbery or “accumulation by dispossession,” as David Harvey called it. The new position of the lumpenbourgeoisie is thus itself an expression of the crisis of capitalism and the liberal democracy associated with it.
Elon Musk is certainly the most colorful figure in this circle. The tech billionaire has already given us a taste of the new government practice. He waged war against the British government through his channel X, supported the radical British right with millions – and now openly supports the election campaign of Alice Weidel and the AfD. Beyond Trump’s super-rich followers, however, there are also lesser-known faces in the new government in this country. Some of Trump’s closest advisors are right-wing intellectuals and are considered to be the masterminds behind his agenda. Max Böhnel takes a look at these “lumpen”.