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The Boss Wants His Money: Trump and The Transactional Presidency

By

On August 10, 2026

In Politics

Donald Trump has never been shy about asking for money, but the scale and personal involvement of his second-term fundraising is genuinely new. According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal published in late July 2026, Trump has raised more than $800 million from corporate donors and wealthy individuals since returning to office in January 2025. Donations have been spread across the White House ballroom, a planned presidential library, a super PAC, and various political committees. What makes the operation unusual is not just the total raised, but how hands-on Trump has been. The Journal describes him calling his lead fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, from the White House on a near-nightly basis to review a running tally of who has paid and who hasn’t, sometimes pushing her to ask specific donors for far more than she’d planned to request.

Where the Money Is Going

Four distinct pots have absorbed most of this money, and it’s worth keeping them separate because the ethical and legal questions differ for each.

The White House ballroom

Trump’s roughly $300 million ballroom project, which required demolishing the White House’s East Wing, is funded through the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that normally partners with the National Park Service on Mall upkeep. Corporate donors named publicly or in congressional correspondence include Apple (reported around $25 million), Microsoft (about $10 million), Amazon (about $5 million), along with Altria, Caterpillar, NextEra Energy, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, Comcast, Reynolds American, and Carrier, which donated an air-conditioning system in kind. Alphabet’s Google contributed $22 million to the ballroom fund as part of a settlement over Trump’s YouTube suspension. The Trust itself could collect as much as $10 million in fees for managing the fund, according to Senate Democrats who have pressed the organization for more transparency.

The presidential library

Trump’s future library has become the default destination for money tied to legal settlements. SoftBank reportedly pledged $50 million. Disney’s ABC and Paramount’s CBS each paid $16 million to settle lawsuits Trump filed over news coverage, with most of each sum earmarked for the library. Meta paid $25 million and X’s owner, Elon Musk, $10 million, to resolve similar suits over his removal from their platforms. Trump has also said he intends to redirect leftover inaugural committee funds toward the library once his term ends.

The super PAC and political committees

MAGA Inc., the main pro-Trump super PAC, entered 2026 with close to $300 million on hand after raising about $102 million in the second half of 2025. Recent large checks include $25 million from OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, $20 million from Foris DAX (the parent of Crypto.com), and $11 million from private equity investor Konstantin Sokolov. Meta separately gave $10 million to a Trump-aligned political committee, on top of its ballroom and library contributions. A separate nonprofit, Securing American Greatness, is also raising money but does not have to disclose its donors.

Legal settlements framed as donations

This is the category that has drawn the sharpest criticism. Because Paramount, Disney, Meta, and X all resolved lawsuits Trump filed against them by directing money toward his library rather than his personal accounts, the payments read simultaneously as litigation settlements and as political tribute. Several First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden, have argued that at least the Paramount and Disney settlements function as disguised payments for favorable regulatory treatment, since both companies had matters pending before agencies Trump oversees, including Paramount’s merger review at the FCC.

A Separate Stream: Trump’s Own Businesses

Everything described so far involves money flowing to entities Trump controls politically but does not personally own. A different and arguably more direct channel runs straight into Trump’s personal finances, primarily his family’s cryptocurrency ventures. It deserves separate treatment because the money there isn’t a donation to a cause; it’s revenue to a business he and his sons own.

World Liberty Financial, launched in 2024 by Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. along with several partners, issues a stablecoin called USD1 and a separate token called WLFI, and takes a majority share of net revenue from token sales. Trump’s own financial disclosures show he personally earned more than $57 million from the venture in its first several months, and by mid-2026 CBS News reported his total crypto-related income, including proceeds from a separate TRUMP meme coin, had passed $1 billion for the year, the largest single component of his roughly $2.2 billion in disclosed 2025 income. Forbes has separately estimated his stake in World Liberty at around $240 million and his share of WLFI tokens at roughly $175 million, with his sons’ individual stakes each estimated near $133 million.

Two transactions illustrate how this business has intersected with people who also have legal exposure to Trump’s federal government. In May 2025, an Abu Dhabi state-owned investment fund used $2 billion in USD1 stablecoins to take a stake in Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Binance also holds the large majority of all USD1 in circulation. Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, had pleaded guilty in 2023 to a money-laundering-related charge and served a four-month sentence. In October 2025, Trump pardoned him. When asked about the connection, Trump told CBS News he didn’t know who Zhao was. World Liberty’s lawyers have said the company played no role in the pardon and had no contact with the president about it, while acknowledging Binance provided the venture with free technical assistance.

Separately, the crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun invested $75 million in WLFI tokens and another $100 million in the TRUMP meme coin in 2025. This made him World Liberty’s largest outside holder and a featured guest at a Trump dinner for top meme coin buyers. At the time, Sun was fighting a 2023 Securities and Exchange Commission fraud lawsuit alleging he manipulated trading volume in his own Tron-based tokens. That case was paused within months of his investment and formally settled for $10 million in March 2026, without an admission of wrongdoing. The current SEC chairman has wound down crypto enforcement actions brought by the previous administration. Sun and World Liberty later fell into a bitter and still-unresolved legal dispute after the company froze his tokens, which is a separate matter from the SEC case but worth noting because it shows the relationship soured even as the earlier regulatory question was being resolved in Sun’s favor.

In a more recent example, Truth Social, controlled by Trump, has established a paid tier for early access to Trump’s posts. Subscribers will receive notice of the content of Trump’s posts prior to them being made available to the general public. The fee is $100,000 a month. Since his posts routinely send stock markets soaring or plunging depending on his announcements, this could be considered insider trading by those willing to pay the price to beat the market.

Pardons, Donors, and Business Partners

The crypto pardon is not an isolated data point. NPR identified at least fifteen former officials convicted or charged with public-corruption offenses who received Trump pardons or commutations after he returned to office, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, former Nevada official Michele Fiore, and former Congressman Michael Grimm. Beyond that corruption-specific list, several pardons have gone to significant Trump donors whose giving preceded or closely followed their clemency. Nikola founder Trevor Milton, convicted of securities and wire fraud, had donated close to $2 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign before receiving a pardon. Former Republican Congressman George Santos, expelled from the House after a fraud conviction, was pardoned after having donated to and supported Trump. And in July 2026, Republican megadonor Adam Kidan, convicted in 2006 in the Jack Abramoff fraud and lobbying scandal, received a pardon just three days after donating to the leadership PAC of a Pennsylvania congressman Trump had campaigned alongside days earlier. This is a sequence Democratic critics called corruption in plain sight, though the congressman’s office said he had no role in the pardon decision.

In May 2026, congressional Democrats sent letters to seventeen pardon recipients asking whether their clemency involved any pay-to-play arrangement, estimating that the group had given Trump-aligned committees roughly $250,000 combined.

It’s worth noting a structural point raised by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent from the Supreme Court’s 2024 immunity ruling Because the Court held that a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for official acts, including the pardon power, a pardon exchanged for a bribe would, on her reading, be effectively unreviewable by the criminal justice system even if the exchange were provable. Whether that reading will be tested in a real case is itself uncertain, since the ruling is relatively new and no prosecutor within this administration would be likely to bring such a case.

Enthusiastic Donors, Reluctant Donors, and the Ones Who Said No

The donor pool is not uniform, and the differences are informative. Some money looks genuinely enthusiastic: Musk was already the largest Republican donor of the 2024 cycle before adding a further settlement payment, and newer entrants like Crypto.com, which had made almost no prior political donations, gave $10 million to MAGA Inc. with no apparent reluctance. Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence firms in general, an industry seeking friendly regulatory treatment on digital assets, have been some of the most eager givers.

Other donations look more like compliance than enthusiasm. Microsoft told congressional investigators it was approached by a fundraiser working on the ballroom project and simply followed the instructions it was given on how to contribute, a description that reads as accommodating rather than eager. Comcast, by contrast, stated explicitly that its donation carried no conditions and was not intended to secure anything in return, a formulation that looks like an attempt to draw a clean legal line around the gift. Meta and Nvidia, when directly asked by lawmakers whether their donations were connected to a quid pro quo, notably declined to deny it, which is its own kind of data point.

At least one major institution appears to have refused outright. JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said publicly that his bank had not donated to the ballroom fund because of the risk to its reputation of anything that could look like buying favors. That is a useful data point: it shows that at least one important financial institution judged the risk of giving to outweigh whatever access it might buy.

Fundraising, Bribery, Extortion, or Tribute? A Speculative Look

Here I want to be explicit that I am speculating, not reporting settled fact, because the honest answer is that these categories overlap and the law hasn’t caught up with the phenomenon.

Ordinary fundraising describes money given voluntarily to support a cause or campaign the donor genuinely favors without expectation of a specific official act in return. Some of this money likely fits that description, particularly gifts from ideologically aligned donors like Musk or crypto-industry executives who would probably give even without pending business before the administration.

Bribery, in the legal sense, requires something that a voluntary donation doesn’t, an explicit link between a payment and a specific official act, sometimes called a quid pro quo. That’s a high bar, and it’s exactly the bar that federal prosecutors would need to clear, and that the current Department of Justice, led by Trump appointees, is unlikely to pursue. Legal scholars quoted in outlets like NPR have used the word bribery to describe the corporate legal settlements, but no bribery charge has been filed, and it is difficult to imagine one being filed by this Justice Department against this president. I’d rate the likelihood of a legal bribery label being applied here as low, not because the underlying facts are unclear, but because the label depends on intent and that is something we cannot observe from outside.

Extortion is the word used most often by critics of the media settlements specifically, on the theory that Trump filed lawsuits many legal experts considered weak, then used the threat of protracted litigation and regulatory friction, such as a pending merger review, to extract payment. That framing has real support—multiple press-freedom organizations and legal commentators have used the word extortion to describe the CBS and ABC settlements in particular, and the underlying pattern, filing suit and then collecting money tied to a business approval the target needs, matches the ordinary meaning of the word reasonably well. It fits for the media settlements specifically, but less so for donations that were solicited without any accompanying lawsuit or investigation. Although it is possible there may have been sub rosa threats. 

Tribute is the least legally precise of the four words but may be the most descriptive for a meaningful slice of the ballroom and library money: recurring, expected payments from parties who depend on the goodwill of a powerful figure, offered less because of any single transaction than to maintain an ongoing relationship. The nightly tally, the personalized dollar targets, and the pattern of companies giving again shortly after a prior gift all resemble tribute more than either standard fundraising or a one-time bribe. This is my own interpretation rather than a term used by reporters or lawmakers and is offered as one plausible view rather than a conclusion.

My overall speculation is that all four are in play, unevenly distributed across roughly $800 million in payments. A portion is conventional political fundraising from true believers. A portion, concentrated in the media settlements, looks close to what most people would call extortion even if it never meets the criminal-law bar. A portion resembles tribute from companies managing an ongoing relationship with a powerful regulator. And very little of it will likely ever be provable as bribery in the narrow legal sense, whatever the appearance.

The crypto and pardon pattern arguably adds a fifth category that doesn’t fit neatly into fundraising, bribery, extortion, or tribute at all, because the money in that channel isn’t going to a political cause or a public-facing project; it’s going directly into a business that Trump’s family owns. Calling Sun’s $175 million in World Liberty and meme coin purchases, or Zhao’s earlier assistance to the venture, a donation understates what’s happening. It may look like ordinary commerce between a business and its customers, except that one side of the transaction also happens to control pardons and regulatory enforcement. I’d describe this as closer to direct personal enrichment than to any of the four original categories, and I’d flag it as the pattern most analogous to classic bribery in structure, a private benefit flowing to the officeholder personally rather than to a cause or nonprofit.  I do need to admit, again, no bribery charge has been filed, and Trump and his family have denied any connection between the business dealings and the pardons.

Is It Transactional? Does Trump Require Donations for Policy Decisions?

This is the most speculative question I’ll address, and I want to flag it clearly as speculation rather than something I can document. The circumstantial case for a transactional relationship is strong. Multiple donors with active antitrust, merger, or enforcement matters before the administration have given large sums with some companies winning federal contracts after donating. Trump’s own team has reportedly offered donors special access as an incentive to give. The Washington Post reported in June 2026 that a group of ballroom donors collectively won roughly $50 billion in federal contracts after their gifts, though a correlation of that kind does not by itself prove the contracts were awarded because of the donations rather than for unrelated reasons.

What I cannot responsibly claim, because no reporting I’ve found demonstrates it, is that Trump has made a specific, identifiable policy decision that would not otherwise have been made, in direct exchange for a specific payment. That kind of explicit linkage is exactly what would be needed to prove a transactional arrangement rather than merely an environment in which donors reasonably believe giving improves their odds. My honest opinion is that the relationship is transactional in a soft, ambient sense, donors give in part because they believe it helps, and the administration’s fundraisers have sometimes implied as much, without there necessarily being an explicit ledger where a specific check buys a specific ruling. That is a meaningfully different claim from the harder allegation being made by some of Trump’s critics.

The pardon cases and the crypto business narrow that gap somewhat, because the timing there is tighter and easier to observe than in the corporate donation cases: a pardon three days after a donation, an SEC settlement a few months after a $75 million investment, a pardon of a business partner’s founder shortly after that partner’s exchange helped anchor a Trump family stablecoin. Timing alone still isn’t proof of illegal, or even unethical activity and in each case the administration or the family business has offered a nonfinancial justification, that a prosecution was political, that a settlement reflected the merits, that a business relationship was coincidental to a legal one. I believe it likely that the pardon pattern reflects some degree of donor and business partner favoritism, based on the sheer number of cases and their consistent direction. At the same time, I recognize that in any single case establishing a quid pro quo is unlikely, since proving intent behind one discretionary pardon or one enforcement decision is difficult even with favorable timing.

Image generated by author using ChatGPT

Sources

1. Wall Street Journal reporting summarized in Politico’s Political Wire, “Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation,” July 30, 2026 — https://politicalwire.com/2026/07/30/inside-trumps-unprecedented-fundraising-operation/

2. Mediaite, “Trump Reportedly Demanding Companies and Donors Pay Up,” July 30, 2026 — https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/the-boss-wants-this-money-trump-has-reportedly-been-demanding-companies-and-donors-pay-up/

3. Common Dreams, “‘Keep Bribing Him Forever’: Critics Appalled at New Details of Trump’s Corporate Shakedowns” — https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-corruption-corporate-shakedowns

4. Election Law Blog, summary of WSJ “The Boss Wants This Money” report — https://electionlawblog.org/?p=157699

5. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Dave Min, joint release on corporate ballroom donation responses, January 12, 2026 — https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-min-release-new-details-on-trump-ballroom-donations-by-giant-corporations-with-business-in-front-of-trump-admin/

6. Sen. Ron Wyden and colleagues, letter on the Trust for the National Mall and ballroom fundraising — https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-colleagues-trumps-ballroom-is-a-political-fundraiser-for-big-corporations-to-earn-backroom-favors

7. Sen. Elizabeth Warren et al., October 24, 2025 letter on East Wing demolition and ballroom fundraising — https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-blumenthal-wyden-van-hollen-markey-slam-trump-ballroom-vehicle-for-politicized-fundraising-influence-peddling-and-donor-access

8. HuffPost/AOL, “All The Donors Financing Trump’s Ballroom As He Demolishes The White House” — https://www.aol.com/articles/donors-financing-trump-ballroom-demolishes-211705192.html

9. Washington Post, “Donors won $50B in contracts after giving to Trump ballroom project, report says,” June 4, 2026 — https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/04/donors-won-50b-contracts-after-giving-trump-ballroom-project-report-says/

10. MSNBC/MS NOW, “Trump’s unprecedented fundraising highlights what’s different in his second term” — https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-unprecedented-fundraising-operation-corruption

11. Reuters via AOL, “Trump-aligned MAGA Inc super PAC enters 2026 with $300 million stockpile,” January 2, 2026 — https://www.aol.com/articles/trump-aligned-maga-inc-super-031233625.html

12. Brennan Center for Justice, “Unprecedented Big Money Surge for Super PAC Tied to Trump” — https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/unprecedented-big-money-surge-super-pac-tied-trump

13. Axios, “Paramount agrees to settle Trump lawsuit for $16 million over ’60 Minutes’ interview,” July 2, 2025 — https://www.axios.com/2025/07/02/trump-paramount-cbs-harris-interview-lawsuit-settlement

14. CNN Business, “Paramount settles Trump’s ’60 Minutes’ lawsuit with $16 million payout and no apology,” July 2, 2025 — https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/media/cbs-trump-60-minutes-paramount-settlement

15. NPR, “CBS bends to Trump’s power with $16 million settlement,” July 2, 2025 — https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5454790/cbs-settlement-trump-60-minutes-harris-interview-analysis

16. The Dispatch, “The Paramount Settlement Is Plain Extortion,” by Robert Corn-Revere, July 4, 2025 — https://thedispatch.com/article/paramount-settlement-trump-60-minutes-extortion/

17. Deadline, “Elizabeth Warren Says Paramount’s Trump Lawsuit Settlement ‘Could Be Bribery In Plain Sight'” (via Yahoo) — https://www.yahoo.com/news/elizabeth-warren-says-paramount-trump-155245906.html

18. Variety via AOL, “Democrats to Intro ‘Presidential Library Anti-Corruption’ Bill After Paramount, Disney Lawsuit Settlements With Trump” — https://www.aol.com/entertainment/democrats-intro-presidential-library-anti-153000822.html

19. IBTimes UK, “Amazon, Apple and Meta Donated Millions to Trump’s Ballroom Before Their Federal Investigations Were Quietly Dropped,” June 5, 2026 — https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/corporate-donors-trump-ballroom-federal-contracts-1800963

20. Rep. Dave Min, “Min, Warren, Lawmakers Question Giant Corporations On Trump Ballroom Donations,” December 2025 (includes Jamie Dimon quote) — https://min.house.gov/media/press-releases/min-warren-lawmakers-question-giant-corporations-trump-ballroom-donations

21. Fox News, “Warren-led inquiry draws new details on Trump ballroom donations from major corporations,” January 13, 2026 — https://www.foxnews.com/politics/warren-led-inquiry-draws-new-details-trump-ballroom-donations-from-major-corporations

22. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office, “Trump’s fundraisers asked Microsoft for its White House ballroom donation” — https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/news-coverage/trumps-fundraisers-asked-microsoft-for-its-white-house-ballroom-donation

23. Quartz, “Nvidia, other tech giants grilled over money for Trump’s ballroom,” December 2025 — https://qz.com/trump-ballroom-nvidia-meta-apple-microsoft-amazon

24. TIME, “Who Is Paying for Trump’s $250 Million Ballroom—and Why,” October 23, 2025 — https://time.com/7327752/trump-white-house-ballroom-funding-donors/

25. Yahoo News, “Major corporate interests and megadonors gave $239 million to fund Trump’s inauguration” — https://www.yahoo.com/news/major-corporate-interests-megadonors-gave-160337585.html

26. CBS News, “Trump made over $1 billion on crypto ventures last year, financial disclosure shows,” July 2, 2026 — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-over-1-billion-on-crypto-ventures-financial-disclosures/

27. Forbes, “Trump’s Stablecoin USD1: Binance Holds 87% After Founder’s Pardon,” February 9, 2026 — https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2026/02/09/trump-stablecoin-usd1-binance-holds-87-percent/

28. Public Citizen, “Conflict Coin: How the Trumps’ Billion-Dollar Crypto Stake Depends on a Company That Helped Iran Evade Sanctions,” May 1, 2026 — https://www.citizen.org/article/trump-crypto-world-liberty-financial-binance-iran-sanctions/

29. CBS News, “Trump on Binance cryptocurrency tycoon he pardoned: ‘I don’t know who he is'” — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-binance-cryptocurrency-tycoon-he-pardoned-dont-know-who-he-is/

30. CBS News/60 Minutes transcript, “Trump pardon of crypto billionaire sparks concerns over his use of the pardon power” — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-pardon-of-crypto-billionaire-sparks-concerns-over-use-of-pardon-power-60-minutes-transcript/

31. PBS NewsHour/AP, “Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao” — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/trump-pardons-binance-founder-changpeng-zhao

32. Forbes, “Billionaire Justin Sun Sues Trump-Linked World Liberty Financial After He Invested $45 Million,” April 22, 2026 — https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/04/22/crypto-billionaire-justin-sun-sues-trumps-world-liberty-financial-after-investing-45-million/

33. CBS News, “Crypto billionaire Justin Sun sues Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, alleging fraud,” April 22, 2026 — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justin-sun-sues-trump-world-liberty-crypto-tokens/

34. Fortune, “Trump’s World Liberty Financial countersues crypto billionaire Justin Sun for defamation,” May 4, 2026 — https://fortune.com/2026/05/04/trump-world-liberty-financial-countersuit-justin-sun-defamation-allegations-of-fraud/

35. Finviz/Benzinga, “SEC Drops Charges Against Tron’s Justin Sun For $10 Million Civil Penalty” — https://finviz.com/news/332048/sec-drops-charges-against-trons-justin-sun-for-10-million-civil-penalty

36. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “Warren Statement on the SEC Dropping Its Case Against Justin Sun,” March 5, 2026 — https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/warren-statement-on-the-sec-dropping-its-case-against-justin-sun

37. GovTrack Insider, “Corruption Concerns: A recap of official White House actions raising red flags in 2025,” January 16, 2026 — https://substack.govtrack.us/p/corruption-concerns-a-recap-of-official

38. IBTimes UK, “‘Corruption in Plain Sight’: Trump Pardons Convicted Fraudster Three Days After Campaign Donation,” July 30, 2026 — https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/corruption-plain-sight-trump-pardons-convicted-fraudster-three-days-after-campaign-donation-1811532

39. NOTUS, “Megadonor Received Trump Pardon Three Days After Donation to Pennsylvania Congressman,” July 29, 2026 — https://www.notus.org/pennsylvania/donald-trump-pardon-adam-kidan-ryan-mackenzie

40. NPR, “Trump pardons, DOJ moves hurt fight against public corruption,” May 13, 2026 — https://www.npr.org/2026/05/13/g-s1-121485/trump-pardons-public-corruption-justice

41. Forbes, “Democrats Investigate Whether Trump’s Pardons Were Pay-to-Play — Here Are the Big-Time Donors and Business Allies He’s Sprung Free,” May 7, 2026 — https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/05/07/democrats-investigate-whether-trumps-pardons-were-pay-to-play-here-are-the-big-time-donors-and-business-allies-hes-sprung-free/

42. Yahoo News/The New Republic, “Trump’s Pardons Since Jan 6 Spree Show an Infuriatingly Corrupt Trend” — https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-pardons-show-infuriatingly-corrupt-162134383.html

Trump, MAGA, and the Politics of Permission

By

On July 18, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

Donald Trump did not invent a new American bigotry. He did something more subtle—and perhaps more consequential. He transformed long-standing resentments into a political identity and gave many people permission to express views they had previously kept private.

The central question surrounding the Make America Great Again movement is: has it created a new ethical worldview, or has it simply exposed attitudes that have long existed beneath the surface of American society? The answer is probably: both.

The resentments themselves are not new. Long before Trump entered politics, historians and political scientists documented the enduring influence of racial resentment, nativism, religious nationalism, and cultural anxiety. Many Americans believed their country was changing too quickly and that immigration, globalization, and shifting social norms threatened a way of life they once took for granted.

American history offers countless examples. Anti-immigrant movements flourished in the nineteenth century. Segregation and white supremacy were embedded in law for generations. George Wallace’s “law and order” campaigns, Pat Buchanan’s culture-war speeches, and the Tea Party’s reaction to Barack Obama’s presidency all reflected recurring fears that “real America” was slipping away.

Obama’s election encouraged hopes that the nation had entered a post-racial era, yet research continued to show that racial and cultural anxieties remained powerful undercurrents. Trump did not create those sentiments. He recognized them, embraced them, and gave them a simple narrative.

“Make America Great Again” is more than a campaign slogan. It tells a story of loss, restoration, and retribution. It suggests that something valuable has been taken away and that reclaiming it is both necessary and morally justified. For many supporters, it became less about policy than identity.

Trump’s most significant innovation was not ideological but cultural. Previous politicians often relied on coded language while preserving at least the appearance of restraint. Trump discarded those conventions. He mocked opponents, encouraged inflammatory chants, proposed banning Muslims from entering the country, and described immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of America. Many supporters interpreted this not as recklessness but as authenticity—a rejection of what they viewed as the constraints of political correctness.

That shift changed more than political rhetoric. It altered the boundaries of acceptable public behavior. Conduct once viewed as disqualifying became, for many supporters, evidence of courage and honesty. Loyalty increasingly outweighed character. Offending critics became proof that one was willing to stand up to elite opinion.

Political scientists describe this process as norm erosion. Laws remain the same, but the unwritten rules governing public life gradually weaken. Loyalty becomes more important than truth, institutions are trusted only when they favor one’s own side, and democratic restraints come to be seen as obstacles rather than safeguards.

Trump did not invent this dynamic. Populist movements throughout history have divided society into virtuous insiders and corrupt outsiders. His contribution was to make that style of politics a daily spectacle. Political conflict became a struggle between patriots and traitors, real Americans and dangerous enemies. Once politics is framed in existential terms, compromise becomes betrayal and restraint begins to look like weakness.

It would be inaccurate to say Trump created prejudice from nothing. A more persuasive argument is that he reduced the social cost of expressing it. Social norms matter because they define the boundaries of acceptable conduct. When prominent public figures use inflammatory language or repeat conspiracy theories without losing support from their followers, those boundaries inevitably shift.

Supporters who might once have hesitated can now dismiss criticism as media bias or political correctness. The line between prejudice and plain speaking becomes increasingly blurred.

This may prove to be Trump’s most enduring legacy. Even if his personal political influence fades, the standards governing public discourse may not return to where they once were. Future politicians can imitate the style—its confrontation, norm-breaking, and appeals to grievance—even if they reject parts of Trump’s agenda.

That is why the distinction between creating prejudice and legitimizing it matters. If Trump merely invented these impulses, defeating one political leader might solve the problem. But if he tapped into deeper currents already present in American society, then the challenge extends far beyond one election.

Trump is best understood as both symptom and accelerant. He gave shape to existing resentments, transformed them into a powerful political identity, and lowered the barriers against openly expressing them. The prejudices themselves were not new. The confidence with which they could be publicly displayed—and sometimes celebrated—was.

Whether that change proves temporary or enduring may become one of the defining questions facing American democracy.

The House That Trump Built: Is MAGA a Political Movement or a Cult of Personality?

By

On July 7, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

The word “cult” is often tossed around in American politics as little more than an insult. But dismissing it outright may obscure something real. When political scientists and psychologists begin applying the term with specificity—pointing to identifiable patterns of behavior and belief—it deserves more than a reflexive eye roll. The question is not whether “cult” is too strong a word for the MAGA movement. The question is whether the label, used carefully, helps explain what we are actually seeing.

Start with the basics. Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton’s early work on cults emphasized three elements: a charismatic leader, mechanisms for sustaining loyalty, and a degree of devotion that overrides independent judgment. More recently, Steven Hassan’s “BITE” model—Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control—has attempted to map how high-control groups shape members’ reality. Critics are right to note that these frameworks can be stretched too far. Not every cohesive political movement is a cult. But when multiple criteria begin to align, the comparison becomes harder to dismiss.

Consider first the role of Donald Trump. Charismatic leadership, as Max Weber described it, is not mere popularity. It is authority rooted in personal magnetism so strong that followers treat the leader as a primary source of truth. Trump’s political durability rests precisely on this dynamic. His supporters routinely absorb claims—about elections, public health, or crime—that have been widely discredited, not by rejecting evidence outright but by reinterpreting his statements as strategic, symbolic, or justified. When factual accuracy becomes secondary to loyalty, something deeper than conventional partisanship is at work.

Equally telling is how dissent is handled. Political movements always enforce boundaries, but MAGA does so with unusual speed and severity. Figures once central to Trump’s orbit can be recast as enemies almost overnight for the crime of deviation. This is not simply hardball politics; it is a system of social discipline that rewards conformity and punishes independence. The effect is to narrow the range of acceptable thought until disagreement itself becomes suspect.

The movement’s identity reinforces this dynamic. Its symbols—hats, flags, slogans—and its tightly aligned media ecosystem create a sense of belonging that goes well beyond policy preferences. Again, that is not unique. But what is unusual is how consistently that identity orbits a single individual rather than a consistent set of ideas. Positions that were once staples of conservative ideology—on trade, foreign policy, even the role of government—have shifted as Trump’s own positions have shifted. That kind of ideological fluidity is less characteristic of a political program than of a personality-centered movement.

None of this settles the question definitively. There are good reasons many scholars resist the “cult” label. MAGA is not a secluded sect cut off from society; it is a mass political force with institutional power and millions of participants who live ordinary lives. Applying the term too loosely risks draining it of meaning. But rejecting it entirely risks ignoring the extent to which loyalty to an individual has, at times, eclipsed loyalty to institutions, principles, or even observable reality.

What is harder to dispute is the movement’s psychological core. MAGA is not primarily a policy agenda; it is an emotional alignment organized around grievance, distrust, and a sense of cultural dispossession that is channeled through a single dominant figure. Whether one calls that a cult or an extreme form of political tribalism may be, in the end, a matter of vocabulary. The underlying structure is what matters.

That brings us to the more consequential question: what happens when the figure at the center is gone. History offers three broad paths for movements built on charismatic authority: succession, fragmentation, or decline. Durable movements typically have two things MAGA lacks—a clear heir and a body of doctrine that can survive the founder. Trump has cultivated neither. His dominance depends on being singular.

There is, however, another possibility. After death, leaders of personality-driven movements often grow more powerful as symbols than they ever were as individuals. Freed from the constraints of real-time controversy, they become vessels for projection. In that sense, Trumpism could outlast Trump even if no successor can replicate his particular hold on the electorate.

The safest conclusion is also the least comforting. MAGA is not an aberration but a familiar pattern in American political life. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to the Tea Party, waves of populist, personality-driven politics have risen before, each fueled by similar currents of anxiety and resentment. They recede, but they do not disappear.

So the debate over whether MAGA is a “cult” risks missing the larger point. Labels matter less than patterns. And the pattern here is clear: a movement defined less by ideas than by allegiance, less by persuasion than by identity, and less by institutions than by one man. That combination is unlikely to vanish when Trump does. It will adapt, rebrand, and return. The only real uncertainty is in what form and how prepared we will be to recognize it.

Is the Roberts Court Biased? The Pattern Speaks for Itself

By

On May 19, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

Chief Justice John Roberts keeps telling Americans the Supreme Court is not political. He recently complained that people “view us as purely political actors,” and insisted that’s just not how the Court works. That might have been plausible twenty years ago. After the decisions of the past decade, it sounds less like reassurance and more like spin.

The Roberts Court started out conventionally conservative. Then came the turning points: Anthony Kennedy’s retirement in 2018 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in 2020. Donald Trump replaced them with Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, locking in a 6–3 conservative supermajority. Since then, on the biggest fights of our time—voting, money in politics, reproductive freedom, presidential power—the Court’s answers have marched almost uniformly to the right.

One analysis of the Court’s work through 2018 found more than seventy cases where the conservative bloc formed a majority in areas like voting rights, campaign finance, corporate accountability, and civil rights where the conservative justices either bent precedent or quietly shelved their own stated doctrines to get where they wanted to go. That is not happenstance. That is a method.

Look at the decisions that define this era.

In Citizens United, the Court announced that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money in elections, destroying what remained of campaign finance law and supercharging the power of wealthy donors and corporate interests. In Shelby County, it gutted a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, inviting a wave of state-level restrictions that predictably hit minority voters hardest. In Rucho, Roberts openly acknowledged that partisan gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic principles”—and then declared the federal courts powerless to stop it. The Court saw a threat to democracy and chose to shrug.

Dobbs went further. For nearly fifty years, Roe v. Wade recognized a constitutional right to abortion. In 2022, that right vanished in a single 6–3 decision that tracked partisan lines.  The majority did not just reject Roe; it rewrote the understanding of liberty in a way that puts other long‑standing rights on shakier ground.

Then there is Trump v. United States, which discovered sweeping criminal immunity for presidents found nowhere in the Constitution’s text or structure. Contrast that with New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, where the same Court insisted modern gun laws must mirror 18th‑ and 19th‑century regulations. History is mandatory when it narrows gun regulation. History is optional when it might constrain a president. The “neutral” principles somehow keep landing on the same ideological side.

The real indictment of the Roberts Court is not that the justices are conservative; conservative legal thought has serious intellectual roots. It is that the Court’s philosophy behaves like a trapdoor: originalism when it helps, textualism when that works better, “judicial restraint” when restraint freezes progressive policies, and muscular judicial power when restraint would get in the way. The tools keep changing. The destination does not.

The shadow docket has only deepened the concern. Using unsigned, unexplained emergency orders, the Court has green‑lit sweeping policy changes—on immigration, civil rights, and executive power—while lower courts were still sorting out legality. Normally, dramatic changes to national policy come with full briefing, oral argument, and written opinions. Under Roberts, some of the most consequential decisions arrive in the dead of night, with no reasoning the public can read and no guidance lower courts can follow.

To be honest, the story is not all one-way traffic. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion which held that federal employment law protects LGBTQ workers. Roberts has occasionally voted to preserve precedent he personally disliked. There are a handful of high‑profile cases where the conservative justices have broken ranks or rejected expansive claims of presidential power, but those cases are rare.

In the high‑stakes political questions of the last decade the line is brutally clear: when democracy is at stake, money wins; when voting rights are at stake, restrictions win; when women’s bodily autonomy is at stake, state power wins; when presidential accountability is at stake, the president wins. That is not a random walk through neutral legal doctrine. It is a pattern.

Roberts is right about one thing: it is simplistic to call justices “politicians in robes.” Asking whether the Roberts Court is “biased” is not the point. Regardless of label, we have a Supreme Court whose decisions on the most contested issues overwhelmingly favor one political side.  The law requires consistency and when the Court keeps changing its rules but not its results, the public is not fooled.

The Chief Justice can insist that is just how the law shakes out. The rest of us are entitled to look at the record and draw our own conclusions.

The Persecution Brand: How Trump Turns Grievance Into Political Currency

By

On May 14, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

“They’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” —Donald J. Trump

Introduction

Donald Trump has turned political victimhood into something remarkably durable: a brand. Since his first term, Trump has consistently advanced a narrative that he is the unfair target of a corrupt establishment — not because of anything he has done, but because of who he is and the threat he poses to entrenched power. That narrative, far from fading, has deepened and accelerated in his second term, propelled by a relentless series of legal maneuvers, institutional confrontations, and rhetorical provocations that seem engineered to keep the grievance machine running. Whether the cause is a leaked tax return, a photograph of seashells on a beach, or a comedian’s joke at a press dinner, Trump and his allies have shown a remarkable ability to recast every controversy as evidence of persecution. The result is a political identity built less on policy than on shared victimhood — one that has proven more resilient to contradiction than almost anything else in modern American politics.  I first wrote about this several months ago, but recent events have motivated me to update the topic.

The Anatomy of a Persecution Story

At the heart of Trump’s messaging is the claim that nearly every major American institution is rigged against him: the judiciary, the press, federal agencies, social media companies, and even fellow Republicans who fail to show sufficient loyalty. He doesn’t stop at personal grievance. His signature rhetorical move is to project that persecution outward — to his supporters — insisting that the forces targeting him are really targeting them, and that he alone stands in the way. Strongmen throughout history have used this populist inversion to build fierce loyalty, but Trump has refined it for the digital age, where every legal setback can be instantly monetized through fundraising appeals and turned into rally fodder before the ink is dry on a court filing.

Suing His Own Government: The IRS Lawsuit

Few episodes illustrate the paradox of Trump’s persecution narrative more sharply than his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Department, agencies he controls as president. Filed in January 2026, the suit alleges that a government contractor wrongfully leaked his tax records to the press during his first term — a legitimate grievance in isolation, since the contractor did plead guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. But the spectacle of a sitting president suing his own executive branch for a payout that would come from taxpayers has raised serious legal and ethical flags. Florida District Judge Kathleen M. Williams questioned whether Trump and the agencies are “sufficiently adverse to each other” for the case to proceed at all, noting that Trump’s own executive orders require the Justice Department to follow his legal interpretations. In plain terms: the president would be suing the government he runs, defended by lawyers who must take his side, with any settlement check written to him by American taxpayers. Trump’s lawyers and the IRS have meanwhile entered settlement talks, requesting a 90-day pause in proceedings. Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill to prohibit the president, vice president, and their families from collecting any such settlement. The episode is vintage Trump — a genuine underlying grievance amplified into a high-profile conflict that simultaneously reinforces his victimhood and generates favorable headlines.

The Pursuit of James Comey: Retribution as Policy

The Trump Justice Department’s second criminal indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, announced April 28, 2026, reads like a case study in how prosecution can become an instrument of political narrative. The charges stem from an Instagram post Comey made in May 2025 showing seashells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47” — a formation Comey said he simply found and photographed. Prosecutors interpreted it as a threat against the 47th president, an argument that First Amendment scholars have called legally dubious. Stanford First Amendment expert Eugene Volokh told CNN: “This is not going anywhere. This is clearly not a punishable threat.” The indictment is the second attempt to prosecute Comey; the first, built on allegations that he lied to Congress, collapsed when a judge ruled that the prosecutor handling the case had been unlawfully appointed. Trump had publicly urged then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to move against Comey, and Bondi was fired in April 2026 after reports that the president was frustrated that she wasn’t pursuing his critics aggressively enough. Her successor, Todd Blanche — Trump’s own former personal defense attorney — moved quickly. The pattern is hard to miss: an allegation, a prosecution, a dismissal, another allegation, a second prosecution. Whether or not the charges succeed, the process itself delivers the message Trump wants delivered.

Perhaps his fear of seashells has caused him to forget that he posted a picture of then President Biden bound and gagged on the back of a pickup truck. Certainly, that was more of a threat than someone’s beachside graffiti, yet Trump was not prosecuted. I wonder why.

The Ballroom and the Bullet: Security as Metaphor

On the evening of April 25, 2026, shots were fired near the security screening area outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton, where Trump was attending his first such dinner as a sitting president. The suspect, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, was arrested; no attendees inside the ballroom were struck. It was, by any measure, a frightening episode, and the third reported attempt on Trump’s life. What followed, however, quickly illustrated Trump’s talent for turning crisis into confirmation of his narrative. Within two minutes of beginning his press briefing that night, Trump pivoted to arguing that the incident proved the wisdom of his plan to build a new ballroom on White House grounds — a project historic preservationists have challenged in court as unlawful. His administration immediately pressured the National Trust for Historic Preservation to drop its lawsuit, with the acting attorney general writing that the preservation group’s case “cannot possibly justify delaying the construction of a secure facility for the President.” Critics pointed out that Trump’s own administration had given the Correspondents’ Dinner a lower security classification than other events he attends — a detail that complicated his argument. But in Trump’s telling, the shooting was simply the latest proof that enemies lurk everywhere and that his foresight is perpetually vindicated.

The Widow Joke: Melania, Kimmel, and the Media Enemy

Two days before the Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, comedian Jimmy Kimmel delivered a mock roast on his late-night program that included the line: “Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.” Kimmel later said it was an obvious joke about the couple’s age difference. The timing — the joke aired before the attempted shooting — became fuel for a firestorm after the incident. First Lady Melania Trump, called on ABC to “take a stand” against Kimmel and President Trump wrote on social media that Kimmel should be “immediately fired by Disney and ABC,” calling his comments “beyond the pale.” FCC Chair Brendan Carr had previously threatened ABC affiliates over Kimmel’s coverage of an earlier controversy. Kimmel pushed back on his Monday night broadcast, calling the joke a “light roast” and denying any connection to the shooting, but the episode had already served its purpose in the persecution playbook: a comedian’s punchline reframed as an incitement; the president and first lady as targets of a corrupt, hostile media; and a federal regulator positioned to remind a broadcast network of who holds the license.

The Nobel Grievance: Peace Prize as Persecution

Trump’s relationship with the Nobel Peace Prize offers perhaps the purest distillation of his persecution aesthetic: a prestigious honor he was not given becomes evidence of institutional bias against him. In January 2026, Trump sent a text message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre that, as reported by PBS and confirmed by Norwegian officials, declared: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” The message was sent in the context of Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland by force and his tariff pressure on Norway. The factual problems were substantial.  PolitiFact reported that the prize is awarded by an independent Norwegian committee, not the Norwegian government — a distinction Støre himself spelled out in a public statement — and Trump’s claim to have “stopped 8 wars” was not supported by evidence. The Nobel Committee separately clarified that a medal gifted to Trump by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado did not legally transfer the prize to him. None of these corrections appeared to land with Trump’s base, for whom the image of a deserving president snubbed by a foreign establishment is emotionally resonant regardless of the technical details or even the truth.

THE BOARD OF PEACE: TRUMP’S PERSONAL PEACE PRIZE

The Board of Peace offers perhaps the most grandiose expression of Trump’s persecution narrative — not a complaint about being snubbed, but an institutional response to it. When Trump texted Norway’s prime minister in January 2026 linking his Greenland threats to the Nobel Committee’s failure to award him the prize, he was voicing a grievance he had already begun to act on. The Board of Peace, formally established at the World Economic Forum in Davos that same month, designated Trump as chairman for life  — an arrangement that inverts the Nobel dynamic entirely: rather than waiting for an independent body to recognize his peacemaking, Trump created his own institution where recognition is structural and permanent. On the anniversary of his inauguration, Trump cited the United Nations never having helped him as a justification for the Board’s existence, suggesting it might eventually replace the UN altogether.  The persecution logic runs cleanly through both episodes: the institutions that should have honored him failed him, so he built alternatives he controls. That no other G7 nation joined the Board, including Norway — the very country Trump blamed for the Nobel snub — will almost certainly be absorbed into the same narrative as further proof of establishment resistance to a leader they refuse to recognize.

Why the Narrative Works

Trump’s persecution story endures because it performs several functions simultaneously. It flips accountability into loyalty — every legal charge or critical headline becomes not evidence of wrongdoing but proof of how threatening Trump is to the establishment. It mirrors the genuine anxieties of his base, many of whom feel overlooked by media and government institutions. And it delegitimizes opposition before opposition can speak — if the system is rigged, then any ruling, verdict, or investigation against Trump is by definition corrupt. The narrative also has deep theological resonance for evangelical supporters who see Trump’s legal and political battles as a form of spiritual warfare, reinforcing the language of martyrdom that has surrounded his campaigns since 2016. For many supporters, belief in Trump’s victimhood has become identity, not analysis — and identity is far more resistant to factual challenge than any ordinary political position.

The Profitable Persecution

Trump’s persecution narrative is not merely persuasive — it is a business model. Every new indictment, investigation, or hostile media segment has historically triggered an immediate fundraising surge. His platform, Truth Social, serves simultaneously as megaphone and monetization engine. He has sold branded merchandise and Bibles invoking themes of embattlement and martyrdom. And now, with his IRS lawsuit, the grievance machinery has potentially come full circle: a complaint about institutional victimization that — if settled favorably — would result in a taxpayer-funded payout to the president himself. The architecture is durable precisely because it converts every attack into a resource, every setback into a rally cry, and every enemy into a fundraising opportunity.

After the Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, Republican senators moved to authorize $400 million in federal funding, with Senator Graham suggesting private donations could remain in play for furnishings or other expenses. What will happen to the hundreds of millions already raised and sitting in a private nonprofit shielded from standard conflict-of-interest review? That has not been addressed by the legislation or the White House and given the lack transparency in the ballroom fund it is reasonable to speculate on the probability of diversion to other uses.

Trump transferred $1.2 billion of US funds to the Board of Peace. He has pledged to transfer a total of $10 billion. These are taxpayer funds that will be totally under his personal control and can be used at his discretion. There is no public accountability for these funds.

For those who wonder about Donald Trump’s motivation for his persecution narrative, his personal wealth has almost doubled in little more than a year since his inauguration.

The Authoritarian Parallels

Scholars of democratic backsliding have noted that Trump’s strategy tracks closely with patterns seen in other countries where elected leaders have gradually dismantled independent institutions. The elements are recognizable: vilify the press as the enemy of the people; claim that legal proceedings against you are politically motivated; replace career officials with personal loyalists; and promise retribution against those who prosecuted or opposed you. In Trump’s second term, those patterns have sharpened. The firing of an attorney general perceived as insufficiently aggressive toward critics, the second indictment of a former FBI director on a legally thin — some say imaginary — theory, the use of regulatory threats against a broadcast network that aired an unflattering joke, are not isolated incidents. They form a coherent approach in which the persecution narrative both justifies and accelerates the consolidation of power.

Critiques and Contradictions

The persecution narrative has real vulnerabilities. Legal scholars have consistently argued that Trump mischaracterizes how due process works and overstates the degree to which prosecutions against him were politically directed. Fact-checkers have documented numerous false claims woven through his victimhood rhetoric — including the Nobel Peace Prize claim, the “8 wars” assertion, and the repeated charge of a “weaponized” Justice Department that, critics note, he now controls and is actively using against his own perceived enemies. The second Comey indictment, built on a social media photo that First Amendment experts regard as clearly protected speech, has drawn criticism even from some conservative legal commentators. The IRS lawsuit’s fundamental conflict of interest — a president suing the agencies he runs for money from taxpayers — has no obvious precedent in American legal history. Whether these contradictions ultimately matter to Trump’s political standing is another question entirely.

Conclusion

Donald Trump’s persecution narrative has outlasted every legal challenge, every fact-check, and every prediction of its imminent collapse. In the spring of 2026, it is more operationally central to his presidency than ever. The narrative is the brand. It galvanizes supporters, raises money, provides cover for the use of government power against political adversaries, and makes every institutional constraint on presidential authority look like persecution rather than law. For many Americans who support Trump, his legal fate matters far less than the story his victimhood tells — and in that story lies a political power that has proven remarkably difficult to dislodge.

Illustration generated by author using ChatGPT

Assessing the Trump-Orwell Comparisons: Warning, Not Prophecy

By

On January 23, 2026

In Commentary, Politics

The comparison between the Trump administration and George Orwell’s dystopian works has recently become one of the most prevalent political metaphors. one I’ve used myself. Following Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025, sales of 1984 surged once again on Amazon’s bestseller lists, just as they did during his first term.

These comparisons are rhetorically powerful, but their accuracy depends on how literally Orwell is read and how carefully distinctions are drawn between authoritarian warning signs and fully realized totalitarian systems. But how accurate are the comparisons? Let me walk you through the key parallels, the evidence supporting them, and the critical questions we should be asking.

Understanding Orwell’s Core Themes

Before diving into the comparisons, it’s worth revisiting what Orwell was actually warning us about. In 1984, published in 1949, Orwell depicted a totalitarian state where the Party manipulates reality through “Newspeak” (language control), “doublethink” (holding contradictory beliefs), the “memory hole” (historical revision), and constant surveillance by Big Brother. The novel’s famous slogans—”War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”—exemplify how the Party inverts the very meaning of words.

Animal Farm, written as an allegory of the Soviet Union under Stalin, traces how a revolutionary movement devolves into dictatorship. The pigs, led by Napoleon, gradually corrupt the founding principles of equality, with Squealer serving as the regime’s propaganda minister who constantly rewrites history and justifies Napoleon’s increasingly authoritarian actions.

The Major Parallels

The most famous early comparison emerged during Trump’s first term when adviser Kellyanne Conway defended false crowd size claims with the phrase “alternative facts.” This triggered the first major 1984 sales spike in 2017. According to multiple sources, critics immediately drew connections to Orwell’s concept of manipulating language to control thought.

In the current administration, commentators have identified several Orwellian language patterns. The administration has restricted use of certain words on government websites—including “female,” “Black,” “gender,” and “sexuality”—reminiscent of how Newspeak aimed to “narrow the range of thought” by eliminating words. An executive order on January 29, 2025, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” has been criticized as doublespeak, using the language of educational freedom while actually restricting what can be taught.  Doublespeak has evolved as a way of combining the ideas of newspeak and doublethink.

Perhaps the most concrete parallel involves the systematic deletion of historical content from government websites. The Organization of American Historians condemned the administration’s efforts to “reflect a glorified narrative while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups”. Specific documented deletions include information about Harriet Tubman, the Tuskegee Airmen (later restored after public outcry), the Enola Gay airplane (accidentally caught in a purge of anything containing “gay”), and nearly 400 books removed from the U.S. Naval Academy library relating to diversity topics. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History also removed references to Trump’s impeachments from its “Limits of Presidential Power” exhibit, which critics including Senator Adam Schiff called “Orwellian”.

Trump’s repeated characterization of political opponents as the “enemy from within” and the media as the “enemy of the people” parallels 1984’s Emmanuel Goldstein figure and the ritualized Two Minutes Hate sessions. One analysis suggests Trump leads Americans through “a succession of Two Minute Hates—of freeloading Europeans, prevaricating Panamanians, vile Venezuelans, Black South Africans, corrupt humanitarians, illegal immigrants, and lazy Federal workers”.

Multiple sources document that new White House staff must undergo “loyalty tests” and some face polygraph examinations. Trump’s statement “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty” echoes 1984’s declaration that “There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to the Party”. Within weeks of his second inauguration, Trump dismissed dozens of inspectors general—the internal government watchdogs. According to reports from Politico and Reuters, several have filed lawsuits claiming their removal violated federal law. An executive order titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” placed previously independent agencies like the SEC and FTC under direct White House supervision.

The Animal Farm Connections

While 1984 gets more attention, Stanford literature professor Alex Woloch argues that Animal Farm might be more relevant because “it traces that sense of a ‘slippery slope'” from democracy to totalitarianism, whereas in 1984 the totalitarian system is already fully established.

There are echoes of Animal Farm in the way populist rhetoric has framed liberals, progressive institutions, and the press as enemies of “the people,” while power was being consolidated within Trump’s narrow leadership circle. Orwell’s pigs do not abandon revolutionary language; they repurpose it. The “ordinary” supporters are exhorted to endure sacrifices and to direct anger at opposing groups, while political insiders consolidate authority and wealth—echoing the pigs’ gradual move into the farmhouse and adoption of human privileges. Critics argue that Trump’s sustained use of grievance-based populism, even while wielding executive power, fits this pattern symbolically if not structurally.

Other parallels being drawn to Animal Farm include Napoleon’s propaganda minister Squealer and the administration’s communication strategy of inverting reality and the gradual corruption of founding principles while maintaining revolutionary rhetoric like “drain the swamp”. They also are scapegoating political opponents and immigrants much as Napoleon blamed Snowball for all problems. They also are taking credit for others’ achievements just as Napoleon did with the other animals’ work. In the novel, Napoleon demands full investigations of Snowball even after discovering he had nothing to do with alleged misdeeds, much as Trump demanded investigations of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Letitia James, and Jerome Powell while avoiding scrutiny of his own conduct.

As in Orwell’s farm, where the constant invoking of enemies keeps the animals fearful and loyal, the politics of permanent crisis and blame are being used to normalize increasingly aggressive behavior by those in power.

Critical Perspectives and Limitations

These comparisons raise several important concerns that deserve serious consideration. Orwell was writing about actual totalitarian regimes—Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany—where millions died in purges, gulags, and genocides. The United States in 2026, despite concerning trends, still maintains functioning courts, elections, a free press, and a civil society. Some observers are warning against trivializing real authoritarian regimes by making overstated comparisons.

The Trump administration’s frequent attacks on the press, civil servants, and election administrators do resemble early warning signs Orwell would have recognized—not as proof of totalitarianism, but as a stress test on democratic norms.

Conservative commentators argue that these comparisons are exaggerated partisan attacks that misrepresent Trump’s actions. They point out that some court challenges to administration actions have succeeded, media criticism continues unabated, and political opposition remains robust—none of which would be possible in Orwell’s Oceania. The question becomes whether we’re witnessing isolated, though concerning actions or rather a systematic pattern—what Professor Woloch calls the “slippery slope” question.

One opinion piece suggested Trump’s actions resemble the chaotic, rule-breaking fraternity culture of “Animal House” more than the calculated totalitarianism of Orwell’s works—emphasizing bombast and spectacle over systematic control. This view argues that the MAGA movement is more “Blutonian than Orwellian,” driven by emotional appeals and personality rather than systematic thought control.

Where the Comparisons Are Strongest and Weakest

Based on my analysis, the comparisons appear most accurate in several specific areas. The pattern of language manipulation and redefinition—calling restrictions “freedom” and censorship “transparency”—closely mirrors doublespeak. The documented systematic removal of historical content from government sources directly parallels the memory hole concept. The dismissing of senior officials such as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after an unfavorable jobs report, the wholesale firing of agency inspectors general and signaling that neutral experts should conform to political expectations mirrors the Orwellian demand for loyalty.  The assumption of control of previously independent agencies, and pressure on courts to allow the administration’s consolidation of power have parallels in the total party control. Unleashing ICE agents on the general public and excusing the murder of protesters are chillingly similar to the thought police and the “vaporizing” of citizens in Oceana. Perhaps most strikingly, Trump’s 2018 statement “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” nearly quotes Orwell’s line: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”.

The comparisons are most strained when they overstate the current reality by suggesting America has already become Oceania, while democratic institutions that were lacking completely in Oceania are still functioning in America. Unlike 1984’s Winston, Americans retain significant ability to resist and organize. There is no single state monopoly over information. State and local governments, and civil society remain vigorous and are often hostile to Trump. Additionally, some comparisons conflate authoritarian-sounding rhetoric with actual totalitarian control, which aren’t equivalent.

Speculation: The Trajectory Question

The pattern of actions I’ve documented—systematic information control, loyalty purges, attacks on institutional independence, and explicit statements about seeking a third term—suggests a consistent direction rather than random actions. If these trends continue unchecked, particularly combined with further erosion of electoral integrity, increased prosecution of political opponents through mechanisms like the “Weaponization Working Group,” greater control over media and information, and weakening of judicial independence, then the slide toward authoritarianism could accelerate. As I am writing this article, Trump continues to promote what he calls the “Board of Peace,” a proposed international organization that is an attempt to create a U.S.-led alternative to the United Nations. The scholar Alfred McCoy notes that Trump appears to be pursuing what Orwell described: a world divided into three regional blocs under strongman leaders, with weakened international institutions.

However, several factors may counter this trajectory. Strong civil society and activist movements continue organizing opposition movements. Independent state governments push back against federal overreach and robust legal challenges have blocked numerous executive actions. The free press continues investigative reporting despite attacks. Congressional resistance still exists—even Senator Booker’s 25-hour speech on constitutional abuse entered the Congressional Record as a permanent historical marker.

My speculation is that the most likely outcome is neither complete Orwellian dystopia nor a comfortable return to democratic norms, but rather what political scientists call “competitive authoritarianism” or “illiberal democracy”—where democratic forms persist but are increasingly hollowed out, opposition exists but faces systematic disadvantages, and truth becomes increasingly contested. The key question isn’t whether we’ll replicate 1984 exactly, but whether enough democratic safeguards will hold to prevent sliding further into authoritarianism. One observer standing before a giant banner of Trump’s face in Washington noted that “Orwell’s world isn’t just fiction. It’s a mirror—reflecting what happens when power faces no resistance, when truth bends to loyalty, and when silence becomes the safest response”.

The Bottom Line

The Orwell comparisons aren’t perfect historical analogies, but they’re not baseless partisan rhetoric either. They identify genuine patterns of authoritarian behavior that merit serious attention—the manipulation of language to distort reality, the systematic rewriting of historical narratives, the demand for personal loyalty over institutional integrity, and the rejection of shared factual reality. I am concerned about the increasing use of Nazi inspired phrases and themes by members of the Trump administration. Most recently, Kristy Noam’s use of the phrase “one of us-all of you”. While not a formal written Nazi policy, it reflects their practice when dealing with partisan attacks in occupied countries and can only be viewed as a threat of violence against American citizens.

Whether these patterns represent isolated troubling actions or the beginnings of systematic democratic erosion remains the crucial—and still open—question. As Orwell himself noted, he didn’t write to predict the future but to prevent it. The value of these comparisons may ultimately lie not in their precision as historical parallels, but in their power to alert citizens to concerning trends before they become irreversible.

Key Sources

  • Organization of American Historians statements on historical revisionism
  • Politico and Reuters reporting on inspector general firings
  • The Washington Post and Axios on executive order impacts
  • Stanford Professor Alex Woloch’s analysis in The World (https://theworld.org/stories/2017/01/25/people-are-saying-trumps-government-orwellian-what-does-actually-mean)
  • World Press Institute analysis (https://worldpressinstitute.org/the-orwell-effect-how-2025-america-felt-like-198/)
  • Adam Gopnik, “Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Trump’s America,” The New Yorker, Jan. 26, 2017.
  • “Trump’s America: Rethinking 1984 and Brave New World,” Monthly Review, Sept. 7, 2025.
  • “False or misleading statements by Donald Trump,” Wikipedia (overview of documented falsehoods).
  • “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo, an Authoritarian Playbook,” The New York Times, Aug. 3, 2025.
  • “Trump’s 7 most authoritarian moves so far,” CNN Politics, Aug. 13, 2025.
  • “The Orwellian echoes in Trump’s push for ‘Americanism’ at the Smithsonian,” The Conversation, Aug. 20, 2025.
  • “Everything Is Content for the ‘Clicktatorship’,” WIRED, Jan. 13, 2026.
  • “’Animal Farm’ Perfectly Describes Life in the Era of Donald Trump,” Observer, May 8, 2017.
  • “Ditch the ‘Animal Farm’ Mentality in Resisting Trump Policies,” YES! Magazine, May 8, 2017.

Full disclosure: I recently bought a hat that says “Make Orwell Fiction Again”.

Don’t Cut and Run on Ukraine

By

On March 5, 2025

In Commentary, Politics

Like many Americans, my wife and I were both embarrassed and disgusted by the Oval Office ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Donald Trump and JD Vance.  We were so upset by this disgraceful treatment of the visiting president of a sovereign nation, that we followed the lead of a friend and immediately ordered “I Stand With Ukraine”  T-shirts.

The oval office meeting held on February 28, 2025, was ostensibly intended to finalize a mineral rights agreement between the United States and Ukraine. The deal was seen as a strategic move to reduce US dependence on Chinese rare earth minerals and to support Ukraine’s economy amidst its ongoing conflict with Russia.

In what appeared to be a planned attack, Vice President Vance berated President Zelenskyy, making false claims of ingratitude on the part of Ukraine. President Trump quickly escalated the situation by criticizing Zelenskyy’s approach to the war and asserting that the Ukraine was “gambling with World War III.”   He then demanded that President Zelenskyy admit that he was responsible for the war and could end it at any time by making a deal.  Trump further demanded that Zelenskyy admit that it was Ukraine that was responsible both for initiating and prolonging the war.

If there is any doubt this was a planned and likely scripted meeting on the part of the Trump administration, you only have to look at Donald Trump’s closing statement for the meeting.  “I think we’ve seen enough. This is going to be great television.”

The fallout from this event has significant implications for international diplomacy and the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe. The suspension of U.S. military aid to Ukraine following the meeting has raised concerns about Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian advances. Ukrainian officials expressed disappointment but remained defiant with one military official stating, “we will fight with or without their help.”

President Trump has labeled Zelenskyy a dictator who is unwilling to negotiate peace. He claims that the Ukraine initiated hostilities against the Russian speaking population, requiring Russia to intervene. These claims have long since been debunked, yet Donald Trump continues to repeat them. It has been interesting this past week to watch Trump nominees try to avoid saying whether they believed Russia has invaded Ukraine. They evaded questions by saying they didn’t have all the facts, or it wasn’t appropriate for them to respond, when obviously they did not want to lie under oath and claim that Russia had not invaded Ukraine.

Russian officials and state media reacted with approval to the Oval Office clash.  China, Syria, North Korea and Iran also supported the Trump administration’s approach. 

The French President and the British Prime Minister both reaffirmed their commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty and condemned the manner in which the meeting was conducted.

Decide with whom you prefer to have the United States aligned, our long-standing allies and other democratic governments, or with autocrats and dictators. 

We invite you to join us and proudly proclaim “I STAND WITH UKRAINE.”

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