The Family Annihilator Presidency

In January of 2024, we were treated to the grotesque spectacle of elite capitulation, as institution after institution groveled and kissed the ring. Universities, law firms, newspapers and television channels, all bent to the new regime. The cruel kids' table, the vibe shift, the mandate of heaven: they were with MAGA, we were told.

Now the blue tsunami has arrived. Democrats have routed Republicans from Georgia to Texas to, of all places, Mississippi. We have swept away Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. The American people have spoken: whatever this is, they do not want it. Texas, the heartland of the conservative imaginary, the realest of Real America, has given us not just a Democratic senator but a clean sweep of state offices, including a new governor named Gina Hinojosa.

And yet for all that, Donald Trump is still president, and the presidency still retains extraordinary powers. We are still dealing with the consequences of the 2024 election. We have handed the Presidency vast discretion and handed the Presidency to a madman. We were fools to do it, but we did it. 

What then shall we expect from the next two years?

Nothing good.

Donald Trump is not well. His hands are swollen and discolored. He brags about "acing" a cognitive test that is used as an instrument to detect dementia. He appears to have suffered from a stroke which led to visible irregularities on his face. He regularly falls asleep during press conferences and shits himself on camera.

Donald Trump is not well. But he still retains his power to terrorize his own closest supporters. He demands that "artificial intelligence" be renamed "super intelligence;" days later billionaire Jeff Bezos leaps up to insist that this is a very good idea, sir. As do most personalist rulers, Trump subjects those closest to him to routine rituals of humiliation and supplication.

These rituals are revealing. Early in the second era of Trump, I wrote an essay originally titled "Gorilla Channel Governance." In it I assessed that Trump would pursue a personalist style of rule, and made several predictions on that basis.

At the core, the theory was simple. Personalist rulers are typically ineffective. They prioritize tyrannizing elites, including their own closest supporters. Their obsession with loyalty comes at the price of efficacy; they struggle to construct the large, professional, bureaucratic agencies that are necessary to remake modern societies.

On the other hand, Trump inherited the numerous large such bureaucracies that previous generations had built. As such, I predicted he would succeed most in areas where such bureaucracies already wanted to achieve certain ends, but had previously been prevented by executive discretion. Immigration and mass deportation was the cardinal example.

In these predictions I was entirely correct. I will note that my largest mistake was in the area of foreign policy, where I failed to recognize the immense latitude presidents retain to make policy. The destruction of USAID and the war with Iran are key examples here.

As his agenda has stalled out, where does Donald Trump turn? Perhaps we would be better off if he did spend all day talking to Claude—watching the gorilla channel—subject to some form of heavenbanning, retired to a Truman Show-style White House replica where all the polls are golden.

This is not the case. Donald Trump is not well, but he is well enough to retain his personal viciousness and instinct for weakness. Indeed, he appears deeply conscious of his own mortality. 

The most consistent theme of his actions today is his obsession with legacy. He has renovated the Oval Office in his own disgusting style, and now speculates about making it a national historic landmark to prevent anyone who comes after from changing his interior decorating. He is obsessed with remaking our nation's capital into some sort of pharaonic tomb, with various disastrous results: a rotting reflecting pool, a torn-up golf course (???), the world's greatest "Military Complex/Triumphal Arch." When he remodeled the Rose Garden, he included a series of plaques detailing the achievements of every previous president, written in his own distinctive style. 

"[Andrew] Jackson was often called 'The People's President' for championing the common man, but was unjustifiably treated unfairly by the Press, but not as viciously and unfairly as President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald J. Trump would, in the future, be."

One can only conclude he is obsessed with what his own plaque will one day read.

It is this obsession with legacy that has driven his territorial ambitions against Greenland and Canada. These are disgusting betrayals of our longtime allies, vicious and evil. But Trump is convinced—as have been many dictators before him—that if he redraws the map, he will be remembered. "If I make America bigger, they can never forget my greatness."

(Ask yourself: which president added Alaska to the national haul?)

Trump's ambitions have stalled out—again, because personalist rulers struggle to achieve ends, lacking the discipline, consistency, and professionalism necessary to achieve them. And now, Trump has dragged the entire Republican Party into the tomb with him. They struggle to escape him. 

Last year, columnist Jamelle Bouie coined the concept "family annihilator presidency" to describe the likely course of Donald Trump's reign, an idea which has subsequently been elaborated on by Alan Elrod here at Liberal Currents. At the time Bouie made this remark, my greatest fear was that Trump would apply this mindset to the American nation, issuing as much destruction and evil upon us as he might. Unable to create, he destroys.

This may yet happen.

But Trump's aura is broken. The aura of power is what let him push our Constitution and our republic to the breaking point in that first year of his second term. That aura of inevitability led far too many elites to concede far more than they had to. That aura is what let his informal power so radically exceed his formal power: "Can he do that? I guess!"

That aura broke on Tuesday night. The American people spoke, and when the American people speak our voice can be very, very loud. So here is another prediction: over the next two years, Donald Trump will find his ability to destroy America ever more curtailed. An aggressive Democratic Congress will hound his every initiative. Investigations. Impeachments. Budget fights and failed appointments. New Democratic state governments will stand up to Trumpian overreach.

So where will Trump's malign energies turn? Where every family annihilator's angers do: on those closest to him.

JD Vance, who has always been a vicious, opportunistic little shit, is attempting to pretend that he was always against the president's signature achievement, the disastrous Iran war. Internet misogynist Joel Webbon, long a MAGA sycophant, now distinguishes between "MAGA" and "the Woke Right," and directly criticizes Donald Trump and calls him a "fool" who "put Israel over America." Already the cracks are showing in the Republican coalition. Already they are trying to escape the monster they once so unreservedly embraced.

He will not let them. As long as Donald Trump retains his Titan-hold on the hard core of the hard core, the evangelical Republican base, he will retain his horrible power over the Republican Party. We have already seen the disastrous result: out of pique and spite, Donald Trump endorsed the odious Ken Paxton over incumbent Texas senator John Cornyn, and in so doing radically smoothed James Talarico's path to the Senate. Even though he personally will not be on the ballot in 2028—age and last Tuesday have seen to that—Trump will meddle in Republican politics and primaries, reminding every voter of JD Vance and Marco Rubio's close association with his disastrous regime, smothering their attempts to run and elevating whatever latest maniac most slobbers on his feet at Mar-a-Lago. 

The dying hand of Donald Trump will retain its grip on the Republican Party, and strangle any attempt to rebuild the party until he finally shuffles off the national scene. They will struggle to sort out their factional mishegas and struggle even harder to find candidates that speak to ordinary Americans about real issues. In his house at Mar-a-Lago Trump lies Truthing, not dead but dying, and still vigorous enough to drag all in reach down with him.

This is my prediction for the next two years: the family annihilator mindset, applied to an entire nation. "If I can't have you, no one can."

Featured Image is Saturn, by Peter Paul Rubens