What Happens Next?
A trilogy of chilling newsletters and articles hit my inbox today, causing me to think about what happens when Trump loses power or dies. It is not going to be a fun transition, and no, MAGA will not die with Trump.
The acceleration of the decline of Trump, both his health, and his mental acuity is bringing into focus some pretty bleak items that can't be ignored.
This morning, three pieces dropped in my lap that have got me thinking about this eventuality. First is an outstanding analysis on Trump's mental and physical condition by Garrett Graff. Follow that up with one of Thomas Edsall's outstanding pieces on the fragments of MAGA within the coalition, and the stresses and balances therein. Lastly, Rick Wilson writes about the "end of autocratic leaders" and the chaos that inevitably ensues.
Let's dive in, shall we? Let's begin with Garrett Graff...
Trump's health and mental degradation
Mr. Graff's post this morning, titled: It's Time to Talk About Donald Trump's Health Again:
Garrett Graff
This is largely related to the recent history, especially the disappearance of Trump in September, and the speculation. We never got a really satisfying accounting of that weekend out of view.
This led to the "routine" MRI that was done, which we also never got any clarity on, besides the bullshit that Karoline Leavitt drooled out.
But, as Garrett notes:
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
Look, I know that what usually spews forth is akin to a dam bursting and flooding the downstream population, but this is notable.
Garrett also notes that around that early September incident, there had been symptoms of medical issues, particularly the poorly masked bruising on the hands, and the swelling of the ankles, leading to the admission of some circulatory issues.
But, as Billy Mays would say, "Wait, there's More":
He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
I would just like to say that as a heart attack survivor, one who had an emergency angioplasty, and several stress-echocardiograms post event, I have never had an MRI of my torso. CAT Scan, and dye assisted X-rays sure, but an MRI for cardiac health? I am not buying it.[1]
While that is bad, Garrett points out that there are more serious reasons to have this conversation now:
Trump has never been what one would call a linear thinker and speaker — he’s always meandered — but anyone who has paid attention to his speeches this fall can sense that something feels less connected and tethered in his mind. During that Asia trip, he rambled in a speech to the Navy through a long digression about magnets and water. At the end of September, his speech to the nation’s assembled generals and admirals went on for some two hours and the word most used to describe it was “rambling.” Rambling. Rambling. Rambling. Rambling.
...
The president’s “information diet” seems to be getting worse. There are an increasing number of social media posts that bear little resemblance to the real world and that leave US officials scrambling to understand or act upon them. Remember the weird night a month ago where we almost went to war with Nigeria? Or over the weekend, as we lurch toward an unexplained and unnecessary war with Venezuela, Trump announced he was closing the airspace over Venezuela — a power he doesn’t really have and that there was no sign anyone was ready to implement. Or walking into his meeting in Asia with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he made some sort of announcement about nuclear weapons testing that even a month later, no administration figure has really clarified what he meant.
I bet you forgot about the Nigeria thing, I sure did. And the N-Testing.
Still, there are symptoms, and finally the media is beginning to cotton on to it:
The first of those pieces came just before Thanksgiving: The New York Times ran a front-page investigation that concluded Trump is slowing down: “Still, nearly a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips. He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.”
It was a useful piece, in part because it was data driven: Among other findings, the Times investigation found that the average public start of his scheduled events has slipped from 10:31 a.m. in 2017 to 12:08 p.m. today.
Trump responded with a Truth Social post: “There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (“That was aced”) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now!”
Garrett then hits us in the face with this:
I’m a longtime student of presidential succession and “continuity of government” protocols and one of the big questions I think about is that in the personality cult of MAGA would any set of Cabinet officers ever be willing to move to invoke the 25th Amendment in the event of a major health episode of the president? Think Marco Rubio and JD Vance would be the profiles in courage to declare the president incapacitated, even if he was? Would Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi take away the nuclear keys if they had to?
Like Garrett, I have my doubts. Let's get to the warring factions that comprise MAGA inc. today, and what to expect...
Life after MAGA - Thomas Edsall
In this morning's NY Times, there is the weekly column by Mr. Edsall, titled: "Is there Life for MAGA After Trump?" (gifted link)
He begins by accurately noting that the rise of Trump in 2016 broke the back of the globalist "Chamber of Commerce" Republican establishment that had dominated policy and candidates.
There has always been a restive sea of Republicans that were OK with this, as long as the correct hosannas were said about cultural touchstones (Abortion, Gays, Guns) that gave the coalition enough heft to be competitive.
But Edsall quickly veers into the "what if..." territory when Trump either departs, or shuffles off the mortal coil.
Before more clips from the Edsall piece, I want to spend a moment on something that bothers me about both the left and the "Never Trump" center-right cohorts.
For years now, I have heard mumbling that MAGA is a cult of personality, that absent Trump, it will implode and become at best a rump party, but more than likely it will fizzle, and the Republicans will once again veer back to the Chamber of Commerce "norm".
That was always bullshit, and hopium of the highest sort. The MAGA genes were ALWAYS there in the Republican coalition, it is just that until Trump descended that golden hued escalator in 2015, they had been held in abeyance. Once that Pandora's box was opened, it was never going away.
And Edsall's piece explains the four key consituencies, and how JD Vance is trying to tie these groups to a cohesive "post Trump" worldview.
Thomas' two questions are:
First, can a MAGA movement that coalesced around Trump — based on a shared hatred of the left — continue without Trump?
Second, can Trumpism be institutionalized in a way that makes it a sustained, if not permanent, political force dominating the Republican Party and the right more broadly?
Vance is determined to prove that the answers to both questions is yes.
To describe the main tribal elements to MAGA, let's dive in:
National Conservatives (Yoram Hazony, Josh Hammer, Christopher Rufo, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation, R.R. Reno of First Things magazine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, and Vance himself). They “tend to lead with a nationalist vision of politics, one modeled on Israeli Zionism, and to view liberalism as a form of ‘imperialism’ out to conquer dissenters at home and abroad.”
Postliberals (Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Gladden Pappin and, once again, Vance). They “have a much more jaundiced view of the U.S. and its history, which they treat as fundamentally liberal and therefore in need of serious reform to bring the country into alignment with the Highest Good. Basically, they loathe liberalism and all its works, at home as well as abroad.”
The “Claremonsters” (Michael Anton, Thomas Klingenstein, John Eastman and Charles Kesler, who are affiliated with the Claremont Institute; Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, and, yes, Vance). “These figures insist on a vision of the American founding and statesmanship that makes much of what has happened in and to the country since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson more than a century ago appear to be a moral and political abomination. The progressives, the New Deal, the Great Society, political correctness, wokeness — it’s one damn anti-American heresy after another.”
The “Hard Right Underbelly” (Curtis Yarvin; Costin Alamariu, better known by his online name, Bronze Age Pervert; Charles Cornish-Dale, the Raw Egg Nationalist; Darren Beattie). “They are united by demagogic, reactionary extremism and delight in playing with outright fascism or worse, all with an ironic twinkle in their eyes. I’d therefore also put Nick Fuentes here, as well as Steve Bannon, and maybe even the latter-day Tucker Carlson.”
Yikes, there's a lot of recognized names of shitbirds in there. But this feels right, from all the rhetoric I have seen. MAGA is not a single thread, but these four categories cover the makeup pretty well.
These 4 archetypes are described in a book by Laura K. Field, titled "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right", and in typical Edsall fashion, he drops snippets of his interchanges with authors and outside input into his work. Here is one from an exchange with Ms. Field:
My sense is that these groups are far more radical than much of the voting public, including within the G.O.P. The G.O.P. base is loyal to Trump, but I do not think they are loyal to these background intellectuals and activists.
In 2024, much of the public refused to believe that Project 2025 was real because it sounded so radical. Now everyone can see the radicalism and they don’t like it. The president is polling very badly. The people I write about are largely responsible for the extreme policies of this second administration.
She points out that the wider Republican base, whilst there might be loyalty to Trump the man, these four horsemen of the apocalypse and their schools of thought are not so much venerated in the wider population.
Regardless, this is a mess, and I do recommend that you wade through it.
I will leave you with this paragraph from Mr. Edsall:
Vance, in turn, has adopted a strategy to win the Republican nomination that in certain respects is the antithesis of Trump’s approach in 2015-16 — the people versus the powers that be — and more reminiscent of George W. Bush’s top-down campaign in 2000, when he first won over what were then the major conservative interest groups, governors and senators, members of the Republican National Committee, major donors and Christian evangelical leaders.
...
If he wins the 2028 nomination, Vance will not only have to defend his alliances with MAGA groups well to the right of the American electorate, the so-called median voter, but he will also inevitably be pressured to renounce some of the more contentious stands adopted by his supporters.
Sounds about right.
Ok, now let's get to Rick Wilson...
When Trump Dies
Rick Wilson has a banger of a post today. Alas it is paid, so here's a link to a PDF. It is worth reading in its entirety.
Rick Wilson
In this piece, Rick describes the process by which an autocrat slides from power, and how it will be messy.
And chaotic.
And likely very violent/dangerous.
The leader dies, weakens, is defeated politically or militarily, or even loses a step, and the entire structure that pretended to be a unified movement reveals itself as what it really was all along: a feeding frenzy for sycophants who think they were born to inherit the throne. The pressure cooker of autocratic systems rewards fealty, loyalty, public and private obeisance.
This feels right.
He goes into depth on ancient Rome after Nero killed himself, and the mad scramble that led to 4 emporers in one year. But Rome isn't the only exemlar:
In medieval and early-modern Europe, the death of a king was less a constitutional process than a high-stakes reality show. Every court had its factions around sons, nephews, queens, favorites, and warlords. The Wars of the Roses in England were one long, bloody reminder that once “divine right” is attached to a bloodline instead of an office, every cousin with a sword and a herald (the medieval equivalent of a TikTok influencer on staff) has an argument for the throne.
And, of course, the 20th century wasn't void of this strongman transition shit-show:
Stalin’s death in 1953 did not produce a smooth, dignified transition to the next “wise leader of the working class.” It produced a cage match in the Politburo. Stalin left no clear successor, only a terror machine and a room full of men who had survived him by being ruthless and cautious in equal measure. For a brief moment Malenkov, Beria, and Khrushchev fronted a “collective leadership.” Then Beria was arrested and shot, Malenkov was sidelined, and Khrushchev clawed his way to the top by rebuilding the party apparatus around himself. (Wikipedia)
Rick then summarizes that when a charismatic, autocratic or strong leader leaves the scene (dies, usually), there are three outcomes that are likely:
- They fracture into rival factions, each claiming to be the true heirs of the Leader’s mission. This is coming fast, with the Vance/Cruz/Rubio/DeSantis knife fight creeping out of the shadows.
- They convert the cult into a dynasty, sliding the crown onto a son, wife, or crony, and pretend nothing has changed. You don’t think the Trumps are giving up all this money, do you?
- They are forced into a much larger transition because the institutions are too weak to carry on without a human idol in the center. That’s, frighteningly, the best case.
What does this look like with Trump and MAGA?
Donald Trump has spent almost a decade turning the Republican Party from a political party into a cult. The party platform literally dissolved into “whatever Trump says.” Candidates run on loyalty to him more than any coherent ideology. The conservative media ecosystem revolves around his moods, his grudges, and his need for constant adoration. If that is not a proto-cult, it is a full-dress rehearsal.
Alas, it will not be pretty, expect there to ba a war of the roses between the factions, with JD Vance trying to be the heir-apparent, a man who is about as charismatic as a toilet brush.
It's gonna be bad. Normally, I would be popping popcorn and settling in for the scrum, yet this time, it is going to have a huge blast-radius.
1 - my one and only MRI was to look at my thyroid and pituitary gland, as I had some interesting symptoms that they wanted to rule those out as culprits.
