Joe Biden gets it. In the current issue of the New Yorker, he tells Evan Osnos that, even if Donald Trump is soundly defeated on November 5, as he was in 2020, that will not be the end of the matter. “If – and when – I win,” the president says, “I think he’ll contest it. No matter what the result is.”
Which is why, I gather, discreet preparations are already being made by law enforcement agencies to pre-empt insurrectionary disorder modelled on, or even worse than, the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Inevitably, the period between election day and the inauguration ceremony on January 20 will be overshadowed by such anxieties, necessitating a high level of security measures.
After his barnstorming State of the Union address last week, Democrats are freshly optimistic that Biden might, after all, be able to win a second term. Perhaps he will. But just as the president is correct that Trump would reject such an outcome, so it is a mistake to assume (as many do) that the MAGA phenomenon would fade away if he loses again.
That movement is certainly a cult of personality, rooted in unquestioning allegiance to its leader. But it is now much more than that and has a vitality independent of Trump himself. Last week, after his victories on Super Tuesday, the Republican National Committee was swiftly colonised by MAGA bosses: it is now headed by Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, with the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as his co-chair. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s aggressive co-campaign manager, is now the committee’s chief operating officer.
This is what the former president means by “getting rid of the Romneys” – literally so in the case of Ronna McDaniel, ousted as RNC chair and, as it happens, the niece of Mitt Romney (who is standing down as senator for Utah). At every level, the Republican Party is being purged of its old guard and replaced by MAGA loyalists.
The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, seated behind Biden during the State of the Union speech, grimaced performatively throughout. Announcing last week that he is stepping down as Republican leader in the Senate after 17 years, Mitch McConnell finally kissed the ring and endorsed Trump – a man who has made racist comments about his wife, Elaine Chao, and who McConnell himself said in 2021 was personally responsible for the January 6 uprising. Now, the main candidates for his position in the Senate are competing furiously to prove their MAGA credentials.
Simultaneously, a whole new cohort of Republican candidates is arising: ferociously conservative on social issues; strongly opposed to foreign entanglements such as America’s support for Ukraine; conspiracist by temperament; fixated on the supposed “invasion” of migrants across the southern border. The most egregiously offensive is Mark Robinson, new nominee for the governorship of North Carolina, who has called gay and transgender people “filth”, dismissed Covid as a “globalist” plot and denied the Holocaust as “a bunch of hogwash”.
The transformation of the party is vividly dramatised by a shift in its primary role models. In her speech announcing her exit from the presidential primary race, Nikki Haley drove home the point that she was not endorsing Trump by quoting Margaret Thatcher: “Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.’”
Naturally, the Iron Lady is still respected in Republican circles. But she is no longer the figure from this side of the Atlantic, living or dead, who most compels party activists. That distinction now belongs indisputably to Viktor Orbán, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary, who visited Mar-a-Lago on Friday and dined with Trump and his wife, Melania.
Twice, Tucker Carlson has relocated his show to Budapest. In April, the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference will convene its third gathering in Hungary. Trump has praised Orbán as “one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world”, and shares with him an admiration for Vladimir Putin, hostility to “globalists” and the “deep state”, and an uncompromising anti-immigrant nationalism.
More to the point: the Trump-Orbán axis is only part of a much greater international network that is growing in scale and ambition. Witness, for example, last year’s National Conservatism summit in London, at which Suella Braverman delivered a keynote address. In April, the NatCon project will host another conference – “Preserving the Nation-State in Europe” – in Brussels.
Meanwhile, a court in Rome last week cleared Benjamin Harnwell, a close associate of Steve Bannon, of fraud charges, clearing the way for them to proceed with their planned “gladiator school” for MAGA-inspired politicians at Trisulti Charterhouse, a 13th-century monastery in Collepardo, central Italy. Now a relentless podcaster, Bannon – formerly Trump’s chief strategist – is a key force in the transatlantic spread of MAGA values and, never forget, has been an unofficial adviser to Boris Johnson.
He once described Trump as the “very imperfect instrument”: a vessel for an ideology, rather than its architect or copyright-holder. That remark makes ever more sense as the international hard right network expands and strengthens its grip upon the next generation of conservative politicians.
Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential run may have fizzled out but it was significant in two respects: first, the biotech investor was explicit that his allegiance was not to the Republican Party but to the MAGA movement which, he said, “is bigger than Donald Trump, it is bigger than me, it is bigger than any one of us. This is a movement that will outlive Donald Trump”; and second, he is only 38. Ambitious young Republicans have seen the future, and it wears a red baseball cap.
As Ezra Klein writes in Why We’re Polarized, it is those who will come after Trump that should worry us most: “the world also produces clever, disciplined demagogues. They are the ones who truly threaten republics, and they are watching”.
They are indeed. It is absolutely essential that Biden wins in November. But it is not sufficient. This election is only the latest chapter in a saga that, unfortunately, is only just beginning.
