America’s hard right

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘America’s hard right’

Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. Our subject this week is American politics, and in particular, the future of the bitterly divided Republican party. My guest is Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest magazine in Washington, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an expert on American conservatism. So are Donald Trump and his followers still in control of the American right?

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News clip
The Honourable Kevin McCarthy of the state of California, having received a majority of the votes cast, is duly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. (Applause)

Gideon Rachman
After 15 ballots and days of agonised debate and deadlock, Kevin McCarthy was finally elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

News clip
(People chanting “USA! USA! USA!”)

Gideon Rachman
But his route to this key job was blocked for days by members of his own party on the radical right, many of them devoted followers of Donald Trump. Trump himself has recently declared that he will once again run for the presidency.

Donald Trump
Together, we will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable. Our country is in a horrible state. We’re in grave trouble. This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement.

Gideon Rachman
Some see the recent fight in Congress as a sign that the forces of Trumpism are on the wane. But another interpretation is that the Republicans are moving even further to the radical right. So when I got Jacob Heilbrunn on the line from Washington, I started by asking him what he thought the battle in Congress tells us about the current state of the Republican party.

Jacob Heilbrunn
It suggests that the party itself will be wholly opposed to the Biden administration in the next two years, including not simply investigating the Biden administration as far as possible, whether it’s Afghanistan, Hunter Biden, or any other scandal that the GOP seeks to concoct, but also that they will fiercely resist him, perhaps even in considering raising the debt limit. And there are widespread fears in Washington and in the financial community that this hardline faction of the GOP will seek to trigger a new Great Depression in the name of reducing the deficit, but in reality, in tarring Biden as someone who destroyed the American economy. The other interesting thing is that there is now a symbiotic relationship between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump. You may recall that McCarthy criticised, if not denounced Trump in the wake of January 6th, in the week following it, but then traipsed to Mar-a-Lago, where he embraced Trump. In essence, McCarthy resurrected Trump. But his gamble has proven correct. Trump came through for him at the end and managed to persuade the recalcitrant members of the GOP that they should and must vote McCarthy as Speaker. Now the question is, will McCarthy be the cat’s paw of Trump? Has Trump’s authority over the Republican party, in fact, increased in the past week?

Gideon Rachman
So there’s a lot to unpack in there. But let me start by, if not challenging it, just sort of probing a bit because the faction that was holding up McCarthy — the real ultras — were about 20 people. So does that suggest that the whole Republican party will be as bitterly recalcitrant as you suggest, up to the point of refusing to raise the debt ceiling?

Jacob Heilbrunn
No. And the Democratic play would be to try to peel off some of the moderates that were elected in so-called Biden districts. In New York, for example, where a number of moderate Republicans were elected. And if they want to be re-elected, then they can’t follow the ultras or the “Taliban 20”, as they’re called in the United States, over the cliff. However, it is telling that the rules that the Republicans passed were opposed by the moderates, but ultimately they capitulated to the far right. So far, the far right has the whip hand in the Republican party. They represent what the base truly wants and their intention is to grind the federal government to a halt, which is exactly what their constituents are hoping for.

Gideon Rachman
So when might this crunch on the debt ceiling arrive and would they really allow the US to default on its debts?

Jacob Heilbrunn
I have no reason to believe that they would not. Certainly, the ultras and a number of other Republicans see the debt ceiling at a minimum as a weapon to extract huge concessions from Biden. And it worked once against Barack Obama. But then the next time Obama did not capitulate and the Democrats have held tough. I think that Biden is gonna seek to put the onus on the Republicans as much as he can over the debt ceiling. But if you look at the extremism of Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and the others, there’s no question that they would relish burning the US financial system to the ground.

Gideon Rachman
When might they get their opportunity?

Jacob Heilbrunn
We don’t know exactly, because the Treasury department is very good at fudging this and has fudged in the past. The common consensus so far is that we have about four, maybe six months until this becomes a real crisis. In a strange way, though, now that we’re all talking about it so much, we are in fact enhancing the power of these 20 Republicans.

Gideon Rachman
But as I say, I mean, they are already 20 of them. And in a sense, didn’t the whole McCarthy battle reveal that they’re a minority, they’re pretty isolated?

Jacob Heilbrunn
They are a minority, but they have figured out how to game the system and they’re operating in a Bolshevik style as a vanguard. And it’s not the first time in history that a small faction can take advantage of the debilities of a democracy and force its will through. And that is precisely what they’ve done so far. I mean, Kevin McCarthy right now is a hostage of this faction. Without their votes, he would not be House Speaker. He significantly diminished his powers, including that one member of the House of Representatives among the Republicans can call for ousting him. It used to be at least that it would take five. He has simply eviscerated the powers of the House Speaker. We may well be looking at several years of chaos in the House of Representatives.

Gideon Rachman
You painted a very nihilistic picture of people like Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene and so on. What’s really driving them, though? I mean, if they were able to run America, what would they want?

Jacob Heilbrunn
Well, I’m not sure that they actually do want to run America. That’s the interesting thing about them. At one point, Matt Gaetz said that he would prefer Hakeem Jeffries — the Democrat — to be House Speaker to McCarthy because then he would have someone to oppose. They are nihilists and they thrive on opposition to what they depict as a demonic, woke-liberal enemy. Absent that, they may somewhat lose their bearings. Now, someone like Kevin McCarthy or Trump, who has exercised power, they do have somewhat of an agenda. And that would be, I think, in the case of Trump, if he were to become president again, it would be to create an Orban-style authoritarian regime in the United States. And that’s probably about as close as you’re gonna get if you talk to Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz.

Gideon Rachman
So it’s fair enough to say that these people are not Democrats. I mean, not Democrats with a small D. They’re obviously not Democrats with a big D, but they are devotees of a kind of soft authoritarianism.

Jacob Heilbrunn
Absolutely. And someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, she owned a gym that did physical fitness and she only hit the big time as Robert Draper of the New York Times shows in a recent book about the Congressional Republicans when she started embracing QAnon theories. Then she found a following on the internet. So to call them Democrats, no. They have made a calculation, which is probably in Machiavellian terms, correct, that the Republican party faces huge, if not insuperable, difficulties in winning future elections because of the changing nature of America and the loss of suburban voters. So they want to game the system.

Gideon Rachman
And gaming the system would be what, as you say, Orban-style, would be packing the courts. It would be gerrymandering to allow a minority to win elections. And it would be at some point trying to gain control of the institutions of state by putting loyalists rather than independent civil servants in charge, essentially. Would that be the agenda?

Jacob Heilbrunn
Exactly. And that’s precisely what Donald Trump is already planning to do. There are blueprints that have been drawn up for him by his followers in Washington for decapitating the civil service. I also think that he would need to put loyalists in at the FBI and CIA. I think he would go after the Joint Chiefs of Staff who opposed him in his first term. Trump has learned where the levers of power were after four years in office, and he has made no secret of his admiration for Vladimir Putin. Everyone keeps wondering, why are you so enthusiastic about him? I think in many ways he sees him as a role model.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. But Trump, some optimists say, well, he’s a kind of a busted flush, that the midterms did not go that well for him. Some Trump loyalists were elected — JD Vance in Ohio and so on — but a lot of them weren’t. And that the key positions at state level that would allow him to challenge elections and so on did not go to Trumpists. And that therefore, we may be past the worst with Donald Trump. What do you think?

Jacob Heilbrunn
I think that’s correct. I think he will try to exploit the House Republicans, but it may not redound to his benefit. The reason why is that Joe Biden is doing a superb job as president, and I feel vindicated. You may remember that you and I did a similar podcast about a year ago. You looked at me somewhat sceptically, if not quizzically, about my enthusiasm for Biden in the wake of the Afghan pullout. However, Biden’s approval ratings are going up and he, too, now has a foil. So I feel like I should flip the script a little. I didn’t mean to sound too dire in our opening remarks. I think that it is quite useful for Biden to have the House Republicans in power, and he will run for the next two years against Kevin McCarthy.

Gideon Rachman
Much as Bill Clinton ran against Newt Gingrich.

Jacob Heilbrunn
Exactly. And I also think it’s true. We should not overestimate Trump. He seems to be running a Potemkin campaign for the presidency. He really has not been very active. He is old and he is floating ever more baroque conspiracy theories.

Gideon Rachman
Give me a flavour. Tell me what kind of conspiracy theories is he floating these days? I haven’t been following as closely as I should.

Jacob Heilbrunn
Well, for example, he has been going after Biden on the issue of the classified documents that were found. He’s claiming that Biden has taken $4mn from China when it was Donald Trump, who we now know from his income tax reports, which were just disclosed by Congress, who actually had a bank account for the first two years of his presidency, in China. So Trump does not appear particularly vigorous. He hasn’t held any rallies recently. He is grousing about Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who actually did very well in the midterms and is positioning himself to run as Trump 2.0.

Gideon Rachman
But, of course, I mean, I think one of the things I’ve learned is that it’s often been a mistake in the past to write off Donald Trump. He is a very resilient figure with a lot of people who do support him. And so to pose a counterfactual to you, what if he runs? He has the support of this base and he runs against several candidates, not just DeSantis. And they split the anti-Trump vote. Couldn’t he get the nomination? And if he gets the nomination in a very divided America, he’s got to have a shot at coming back and winning the presidency.

Jacob Heilbrunn
He definitely would have a shot. I can’t disagree with you there. But the widespread feeling which I share is that the one man who could definitely get Joe Biden re-elected is Donald Trump. You talked about Trump’s resilience. Yes, he won in 2016. He ran a shrewd campaign and he hit the jackpot that night. It was a bit of a fluke. But ever since then, the Republicans have steadily been losing elections. The House, the Senate, then the presidency. And then again, in this last midterm, they lost the Senate. And it’s clear that the principal reason that they lost the Senate was because Trump’s candidates flamed out in the midterms. The Democratic party has been the greatest beneficiary of Donald Trump over the past six years.

Gideon Rachman
But is the Republican party itself in something of a trap? Because although Trump is clearly a problem when the whole of America votes, when it’s just the Republican party, we may yet discover that he still controls the loyalties of 50 per cent or more of their voters.

Jacob Heilbrunn
I’m not sure it’s 50 per cent. I think it’s about 30. But he still retains very high approval ratings generally in the GOP because of the polarisation that exists in the US. But it’s not enough to win the presidency. I think he would be a catastrophic candidate for the GOP in 2024, and the Democrats would welcome a run by him. Ron DeSantis is seen as a far more formidable candidate than Trump.

Gideon Rachman
OK, so let’s talk about DeSantis. I mean, some of my liberal friends say to me, oh, he’d be even worse because, you know, he’s kind of Trump with a brain. He’d be organised. But he has many of the same anti-democratic instincts.

Jacob Heilbrunn
I disagree. I think you have to remember that Trump is a character on the scale of a Berlusconi. He is a wild man. He has experiences in New York with celebrity culture that no other candidate possesses. And that is the reason that he was so formidable, at least in 2016. And he remains a galvanising force in American culture. DeSantis would be much more conventional. Yes, he has adopted a number of Trump’s authoritarian mannerisms and would no doubt seek to expand his power as president. But I don’t think you have the same volatile personality. Put bluntly, Donald Trump is a maniac. DeSantis is a crafty Machiavellian.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, and I suppose one question I’ve asked myself in sort of trying to weigh this up is would DeSantis have done January the 6th? Would he have encouraged his followers to storm Congress or refuse to accept defeat in the election? I mean, my guess is probably not.

Jacob Heilbrunn
I would say, “No way”. This was a product of the megalomania of Trump. You’re dealing with something way beyond a conventional politician. This is someone who truly believed that he has been anointed with a historical mission. The level of narcissism, the gilded palaces that he lives in and has constructed for himself, all of this is something out of Citizen Kane.

Gideon Rachman
But let’s say Trump loses. DeSantis is the nominee. Do you think the Republican party and America in general can say, well, that was a really weird episode, but now it’s back to politics as we kind of knew it before? Or do you think Donald Trump would have left a lasting impact on the Republican party through people like the ones we were discussing — Matt Gaetz, et cetera — who will have shifted it towards the conspiratorial anti-democratic right forever?

Jacob Heilbrunn
Absolutely. I think Trump has left a lasting mark not just on the GOP but actually around the world. We haven’t talked about the events in Brazil, but they are a uncanny replay of January 6th, only a few days later. The same balderdash about rigged elections, the same storming of federal institutions. So, Trump has left a mark on the Republican party here. He’s pivoted on foreign policy. Let’s look at the House. What did Kevin McCarthy promise? Apparently he promised, among other things, that he would push to cut aid to Ukraine and to reduce the US military budget. Unthinkable for a mainstream Republican.

Gideon Rachman
Do you think any of that will actually happen?

Jacob Heilbrunn
I think there will be a push to reduce aid to Ukraine. The difficulties won’t occur this year because the Senate Republicans went along with the Democrats in December, knowing precisely that the House Republicans would be this volatile. So the funding is secure over the next year. The real problems could develop if the Ukraine war goes on for another year, then you could see a real brouhaha over aiding Ukraine and you could see Republicans even more vociferously endorsing Russia and Vladimir Putin and arguing that his imperial aspirations are fully legitimate, justified. There’s no question that Trump will take that line.

Gideon Rachman
Really? I mean, that does sound extraordinary. Even from across the Atlantic. So, again, give us a flavour of the arguments, I guess. Would you say it’s the kind of Tucker Carlson line, the famous Fox News host who does seem openly sympathetic to Putin, both in territorial terms and maybe it all starts with the culture war stuff on the war on woke that they seem to like to emphasise.

Jacob Heilbrunn
Well, Tucker has explicitly said, why shouldn’t I back Russia? You know, why shouldn’t I be allowed to do that? There are several angles to this. One is that they see Putin as a defender of traditional Christian values and an opponent of LGBTQ, an opponent of transgender, an opponent of the weakening of the masculine virtues that were responsible for the rise of the West. So that’s what they transpose on to Putin. Then when it comes to Ukraine, they know that Trump is antipathetic to Ukraine. So they argue that, well, maybe Ukraine is fighting valiantly, but it’s a corrupt society. They’re welfare cheats. They’re taking our money, they’re spending it irresponsibly. Why aren’t we spending it on roads and bridges in America rather than helping these moochers over there in Ukraine who we don’t know anything about anyway?

Gideon Rachman
But do you think that the Republican party is so divided? I mean, after all, you’ve written a whole book on the neocons and there are still a few in the Republican party who would be, you know, very pro even more aid to Ukraine, that the votes will somehow be their kind of coalition of Democrats and enough Republicans who take the traditional hawkish line to keep America as a pretty firm backer of Ukraine and more generally of issues like Taiwan and a sort of forward-looking posture for the US in the world. Or do you think the isolationist forces actually are going to make progress?

Jacob Heilbrunn
I think they’ll make progress in the media. But Mike Rogers, for example, who tried to physically attack Mac Gates last week, he is Head of the Armed Services Committee. He fits right into what you’re talking about, staunch supporter, both of Ukraine and of Taiwan. I think there will be a battle royale inside the GOP. For Biden, interestingly, this could actually be a good thing. If Ukraine continues to win on the battlefield, it will cement Biden’s legacy. His presidency, to a large degree, rides on victory in Ukraine. If Ukraine wins, Biden is the new Ronald Reagan. He’s the man who restored the American economy and who defeated Russia.

Gideon Rachman
So let’s just end then with a discussion of Biden. I mean, “if Ukraine wins” is still quite a big “if”. But it does feel like Biden is going to run again, even though he would be 82 when he was next sworn in. Do you think that can really happen? And isn’t that a bit of a well, a gamble with the actuarial tables?

Jacob Heilbrunn
It certainly is. But there’s something to be said for the wisdom of the elderly, Gideon. And Biden has proved it in spades over the past several years. I don’t think that if Barack Obama had been president now, that he would have handled the Ukraine crisis as deftly as Biden has. Biden has the experience from the Cold War and he had the attachment to Nato and the Atlantic Alliance. And both of those have been restored under his watch. So Biden, I think, has done a superb job. His presidency will ultimately ride on the economy. Inflation looks like it’s going down. If the economy rebounds and we’re doing well abroad, I think that Biden is a shoo-in to win the next election and could potentially win in a landslide.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interest magazine and the Atlantic Council in Washington, ending this edition of the Rahman Review. Thanks for joining me and please join us again next week.

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