Donald Trump is creating a cabinet of grotesques

Around 10:30 on election night, I found myself denying the consequences of a political reality I've been hurling at indifferent liberals for more than twenty years. With the crucial swing states of Florida and North Carolina falling to Donald Trump, the Europe One radio host interviewing me wanted to know whether the furious working-class revolt against the Clintons and the Democratic Party was finally coming to fruition. Was Trump really going to win? So horrified was I by the prospect of the White House being occupied by a Mad Hatter dressed in full metal jacket that I momentarily went blind. I weakly replied, 'No, look at Virginia—Hillary's still in the lead.' She did wind up prevailing in that state, as well as in the popular vote, but Trump won what in the end was a referendum. The No—to Hillary and Bill's 'new Democratic Party'—carried the day over the No to Trump's blustering idiocy.

I regret having lost my analytic cool, but this temporary lapse jolted me into a new respect for common sense: if you push people far enough, they hit back. No matter how hard liberals try to classify the Trump vote as racist, sexist and ignorant, they cannot deny the importance of the damage inflicted by the 'free' trade deals pushed through Congress by Bill Clinton with help from his Republican allies.

The New York Times, Washington Post and Barack Obama tried to pretend that NAFTA and trade normalisation with China didn't matter that much—indeed, Obama foolishly continued to goad angry whites by pushing for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—but Trump understood that NAFTA perfectly encapsulated all the pent-up rage responsible for getting him elected. That this rage also generated ugly feelings toward minorities and illegal immigrants is unfortunate, but it doesn't nullify the fact that Clinton-style economics caused genuine and widespread job losses.

I covered the gradual shutdown of the Autolite spark-plug plant in Fostoria, Ohio; by 2012 the plant's production had moved almost completely to a new facility in Mexicali, Mexico. Fostoria lies partly in Wood County, which in the 2012 election voted 51.3 per cent for Barack Obama against Mitt Romney's 46.5 per cent. This year Wood County went 50.9 per cent for Trump and 42.4 per cent for Clinton. Get it?

But now we're all stuck with a pathologically narcissistic bully as President. Unfortunately, America's surprise election was not the equivalent of Brexit, despite the facile comparisons. The Leave campaign had articulate spokesmen, alongside some who weren't. We had Trump, who evidently hasn't read a book in a very long time.

Around him is forming a cabinet of grotesques that makes George W. Bush look like Disraeli. The three biggest stooges behind the president-elect, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, are themselves bullies of the first order.

Christie is reportedly now being sidelined because of his involvement in 'Bridgegate', the scandal involving the closure of Manhattan-bound lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in retaliation against the local Democratic mayor, who had refused to endorse Christie for re-election in 2013 and had the most to lose from the gargantuan traffic jam that resulted.

Possibly the next Secretary of State, Giuliani has been on slow burn since he left City Hall, outraged that his self-proclaimed courage and brilliance in responding to 9/11 didn't catapult him to higher office. His proclamations over the years in favour of repressive government astonish: 'Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.'

Gingrich is a nasty piece of work overall, but his political hypocrisy and opportunism in particular boundless: in 1993, without Newt's heavy lifting as Republican minority leader, Clinton's NAFTA bill never would have passed the House. Without NAFTA, there would be no Trump presidency.

Trump himself is trying to appear statesmanlike and sober since his unexpected victory. But it’s hard for him. The most absurd quote I've seen about his newly calm demeanour came from Patrick Caddell, a pollster who once worked for Jimmy Carter. Trump, according to Caddell, needs to 'get away to Mar-a-Lago for a few days to rest and think.' As if such a thing were possible for a man who prides himself on his spontaneous thoughtlessness.

Worse than Trump's inner circle in some respects are the two Republican leaders of Congress, Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who clearly resented the Clown Prince’s intrusion on the Republican Party inner circle even more than they disliked his vulgarity. On 'free' trade policy and public-works spending, Ryan, in particular, is an adherent of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and therefore could be expected to clash with Trump. But counterweights to reckless executive power they will not be.

With a little horse-trading, Trump will get to dismantle NAFTA and expel a lot of illegals while the two party barons hack away at Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The first victims will be the Environmental Protection Agency (created by Richard Nixon) and the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. The first beneficiaries will be the richest one percent and the big banks, since Trump, Ryan and McConnell agree that personal income taxes should be cut, along with capital gains and corporate tax rates. Obamacare, unfortunately, will likely be eliminated, not reformed—even though Trump indicated recently on 60 Minutes that he would keep key elements of it. It is a failing mess, as well as an undeserved subsidy to greedy private insurance companies. But to replace it with nothing will be a cruel blow to millions of poor people who have nowhere else to turn.

And what of the opposition, the humiliated Democratic Party? Clearly, Bernie Sanders had a better chance of beating Trump than Clinton had. In late May he was polling ten percentage points ahead of Trump, while Clinton was running even against Trump. The biggest shocks on election night were Michigan and Wisconsin tilting to Trump, two rust-belt states where Sanders beat Clinton in the Democratic primaries. You don't have to be a business 'genius' like Trump to do the electoral math and understand why.

Sanders and Trump shared important territory—opposition to NAFTA, to big-money financing of political campaigns, and to an overreaching, arrogant and self-defeating foreign policy. They both said the system was rigged. But Sanders was sane. The party regulars, who anointed Hillary, were not. With the insatiable Clintons, they still control the entrances to the theatre, even if it’s now just a sideshow.

John R. MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine