Political Parlor Games :: Trump's 'Third' Term
2028 Will Be A Fight, But Not The One We're Ready For
I’m on an airplane (again) so let’s indulge in a political parlor game. Today’s edition: Donald Trump running for a ‘third’ term. I use the quotation marks intentionally. We shouldn’t give an iota of credibility to this delusion. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take his musing seriously.
Since we’re in the parlor today, let’s work backwards.
In a normal world (which we no longer inhabit) two years from today (April 2, 2027) the race for the 2028 Republican nomination would be ramping up. Candidates would be forming exploratory committees, hoovering up staff in early states, knighting consultants and campaign managers, and sitting down with donors to make their case, all the things that are extremely time consuming, expensive, and only marginally (at best) useful.
Wannabes and Also Rans
My dad used to say when US Senators shave in the morning, they admire their reflections to the tune of “Hail to the Chief.” Though Vice President JD Vance (R-Nuuk) is doing all he can to be ubiquitous, neither Trump nor the broader MAGA base has anointed him as successor. Historically, personality-based authoritarian regimes don’t feature neat and tidy succession plans. Trump’s will be no different.
Cynical raccoons like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, and Ron DeSantis believe they can balance on the rusty razor’s edge between MAGA primary votes and the oligarchs they need to fund their ambitions. They can’t, but each of them will learn that the hard way.
What if, just for funsies, Trump decides he wants Don Jr. to be the Republican nominee? He controls the Republican National Committee, all the state chairs and most of the national committee drones. Despite his Logan Roy-like loathing of Kendall Junior, we’re living through an era where the president might float it just to keep everyone guessing and in stasis.
You Serious, Clark?
Everyone not named “Trump” must include the leader’s crackpot utterances in their campaign calculus. If he’s serious, their ambitions will have to survive not just a Republic-ending crisis, but whatever comes after Trump shuffles off his mortal coil. In that scenario, none of their planning matters (nor does much of anything else.)
If he’s just screwing with everyone, it still presses the pause button on the next generation of Republican ‘leaders.’ They won’t want to get out in front of him, as Trump’s endorsement and Elon Musk’s billions (more on him below) will be the two most valuable assets in the 2028 campaign.
Now, it could be that Trump is so unpopular, his would-be successors are willing to buck him and begin their runs regardless. This would also require all of us to ignore their behavior in the last decade. You’ll recall immediately post-January 6th, the GOP had the chance to send Trump into political history and they refused. Even a weakened Trump could marshal the hardest core of the MAGA base. He could also use his office to make their lives harder.
As I noted above, he’ll also still control the political and financial mechanisms of the party, throwing up roadblocks to those he doesn’t like and pushing those he favors, further entangling all of them in his web of personality disorders. Imagine with me, after every debate Trump personally tweeting his assessment of each candidate’s performance. They’ll know he’s watching so their answers will all feature praise of the leader.
For all we know they’ll hang a giant portrait of him in the debate hall.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves.
A Political Tesseract
Despite his loss in Wisconsin last night (good on ya, Cheeseheads!) Elon Musk is not going away. Yes, he said he’ll leave government service by the end of May (no breath holding) but he’s fully into his Dr. Evil-era so he won’t go far.
Any Republican candidate will have to navigate Musk as well as Trump. What promises will they make him? How much will he commit.
Enter Peter Thiel. A very smart friend of mine and I mused about this over lunch.
JD Vance is Thiel’s boy. He poured money into Vance’s bogus ‘venture capital’ firm and millions into his Ohio US Senate campaign. It was a combination of Thiel and Don Jr. that convinced the head lizard to choose Vance as a running mate, over the objections of his campaign staff.
2028 may be a proxy war for control of the world between Musk and Thiel in the guise of a presidential primary campaign. Thiel, though a billionaire, doesn’t have Musk’s limitless resources. What he does possess, though, is the philosophical and spiritual foundations of a post-democratic America; one predicated not on republican ideals but on survival of the fittest (we’re already seeing it in its earliest form) espoused by ‘CEO monarchists’ like Curtis Yarvin and the proto-fascists at the Claremont Institute.
In a war for America’s power and wallet between two geeked-out non-American-born freaks, Thiel’s ability to sway the faithful to his worldview might trump Musk’s billions. As we’ve learned, money doesn’t buy victory in politics, it buys options. Thiel is happy to splash the pot in the direction of the think-tanks, podcasts, weirdos, militias, sportos, motorheads, wastoids, and dweebies. They think he’s a righteous dude.
Both dangerous for different reasons.
Musk represents the standard Bond villain: I want to be as rich as I can so I can tell people what to do.
Thiel, though, espouses an ethos, an ideology, and worldview that is fundamentally at odds with most of the country, but happens to be backed up by billions of dollars, millions of voters, and various heavily armed groups willing to do his bidding for the Cross and the White Man.
How Did This Rabbit Hole Get in Here?
Trump’s return to power and talk of a ‘third’ term should remind us, again, that everything we’ve known about our country is gone, that we’re fully into a new epoch, and we’re all on this roller coaster together. Through that prism, none of what he says about never leaving should be a surprise. What we don’t know, and even my rather vivid imagination still struggles with, is what it all really means for our collective future.
The path ahead is dark and full of terrors. What they are and what form they’ll take are yet unknown. We will, however, must confront each of them in our own way, individually and collectively. Recent events have illustrated that institutions will not save us, they’re in resource-hoarding mode and hoping the storm passes them by.
It never does.
News and Notes:
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This is a very dark thought piece (Musk v Theil). I’m going to hope that after more of our current madness, the blowback will be fierce sweeping Trump and his allies to the dustbin of history.
Our window of opportunity to fight back against the technofascists and the dominionists is narrow.