The Orange Titan
by Max Ronquillo and Michael Greenwald
Do you remember where you were when Donald J. Trump won the 2016 presidential election? I remember hearing my mother utter the words: “this doesn’t feel real.” In many ways I agreed, but her reaction was real. Chills ran down my spine. I had never seen her so utterly grief-stricken. I could handle the outcome of a stupid election, but seeing my mother in visible agony broke me. My political science classes offered me no consolation, but an Italian born diplomat and philosopher by the name of Niccolo Machiavelli offered an explanation over 500 years ago. We can use Machiavelli’s best known work, 1513’s The Prince, to better understand the outcomes of the 2016 and 2020 elections, and why Trump’s 2024 bid is even more alarming than his first.
The Right People
Before we dive into Trump’s role in Machiavellian theory, we must identify two key groups: the people and nobles, and the voter demographics for the 2016 election. The Prince essentially maps out how one can attain and maintain power, and the biggest component is acknowledging the dichotomy between the people and the nobles and their role in a “Prince” achieving power. For this writing piece’s sake, we must agree that typically the people are the 99%, and that the nobles are the political AND media elites. In Chapter IX of The Prince, we are introduced to the tale as old as time that the people and the nobles will have endless animosity; aka the people just want to be left alone, and that the nobles want to oppress the people. This standard is intuitive to our understanding of Trump’s political run because of his ability to rally “the people.” Now you might be sitting here saying “Hey, I am a broke liberal and voted for Hillary/Biden and I would consider myself a part of ‘the people’ community.” Don’t you fret, you are a part of the people!… but just not the right people. An article (a lovely one just sayin) by the Pew Research Center examined the 2016 election based on validated voters. While there are many nuanced similarities and differences between the Clinton and Trump voter demographics, the relevant distinction is Trump’s voter population tended to be from more rural communities (by 16%), more white (88% vs. 60%), and WAY (no disrespect) less educated [1]. As an individual who (also considers himself as a part of the BOTTOM 99%) identifies as mixed white, very much educated, and who also lives in San Francisco; by comparison, I must look inwardly to understand where I lie on the social pyramid. There are people in the midwest who don’t have wi-fi, running water, are less educated, and live in very rural places. On the flip side, I complain about the cost of university, all the streaming subscriptions I own, plus all while living in a big city. We both have monumental problems, BUT, Trump wasn’t after my vote. He was never going to win my vote. He knew if he wanted to be the Prince of America, he had to rally the right people. The “right people” in Trump’s sense are Americans that stand for conservative ideology (or just hate liberals) OR those represented in the voter demographics. Even though collectively we are the 99%, it doesn’t mean we were the right people. FLASH FORWARD to the 2020 election: Biden only received 51% of the popular vote. Without taking the electoral college into account [2], this shows that you only need to rally certain people to win the presidency. If Donald Trump wanted to be Prince, then he knew he had to rally the right people.
A Noble Venture
During the Republican primaries, Trump demolished the integrity of his opponents. From Ted Cruz and his wife, to Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, anyone and everyone who faced the orange titan found themselves shellshocked time after time after every debate. It was a comedy show for the rest of the world, but for his soon to be voters: it was a battle royal, and Trump was winning. Since the turn of the century, the Democratic party has been pegged (by its opposition) as the party that raises taxes, goes to countless and meaningless wars, and over spends the national budget. In this narrative, the Democratic party drains the resources from the people to create a principality that benefits the nobles. During the debates, Trump reinforced and legitimized this narrative by calling Hillary and the Democrats a bunch of crooks, differentiated himself from his competition by branding all of the Republican nominees as phonies. In doing so he was able to unionize conservative voters and their needs. The conservative community (“the people” in this example) were drawn to Trump because “they cannot resist the nobles, [so they will] also cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority” (51).
Trump himself is an elite: cemented in the public eye through his business ventures and television persona. Despite this, to the people across the political spectrum, he didn’t come off as a political elite. He battled against the elites in BOTH parties to gain power. Just think about it, which noble was ever ACTIVELY on his side before he won the presidency? Barstool President Dave Portnoy? Mitch McConnel (this snake stays switching his stance on Trump)? Who else? The point is that Trump didn’t have many NOBLE establishment allies on his rise to the top besides Kanye (whenever Ye felt like it) and FOX news (gross). The Democratic party had ALL the public elites on their side. Obama, the Jimmys (Kimmel and Fallon), huge music artists, actors, Bernie (my man)… the list goes on and on. Hillary, and especially Biden, had an arsenal of nobles to deploy in their quests for power. This isn’t inherently a good OR bad thing, but through a Machiavellian lens, Trump made himself an enemy to the nobles and an ally to the people. When phone-banking during the 2020 election in the conservative midwest, I heard Machiavelli in “the people’s” voice. Their grievances with the elite mirrored Trump’s relentless attacks against the political establishment. Their collective despise formed a coalition populous enough to overthrow the elites and thrust Trump into the presidency.
Give the People What They Want… To Hear
Machiavelli preaches that respect is invaluable when one reaches for power. In Chapter XXI: How A Prince Should Conduct Himself As To Gain Renown we learn “A prince is also respected when he is either a true friend or a downright enemy, that to say, when, without any reservation, he declares himself in favour of one party against the other; which course will always be more advantageous than standing neutral.” Trump seriously took this to heart, he couldn’t even remain neutral on white supremacy. Trump didn’t come for peace, he came to win by any means necessary. He called Hillary crooked and the Dems evil every day of his 2016 campaign. Even his own republican adversaires felt the wrath of the orange titan. Despite this man being tried for impeachment TWICE, Trump was the headliner at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (literally as Elite as it gets). It was filled with “Joe Biden and the Democrats” or “Joe Biden and those lousy Democrats going back to Afghanistan for endless wars:” the same lines that pitted him against the Elites and got him to the White House in the first place [3]. He became the People’s Champion in order to win, and the Elites played right into his hand by casting him as the villain. It was as grandiose a battle as the one playing out in his supporter’s minds. The fiction he wrote became reality.
In Chapter XVIII: Concerning The Way In Which Princes Should Keep Faith of The Prince, we are taught, “it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.” *NEWSFLASH: TRUMP SAID A WHOLE LOT OF HOOPLA ON NATIONAL TV AND TWITTER* From injecting bleach, to his nuclear button, and even Kellyanne’s deranged loser of a husband Moonface; he just said things to give the people what they wanted… to hear. Trump rarely if ever had a plan, and even more rarely stuck to it. Yeah he did some policy stuff like NAFTA and Paris Accord and Travel Ban (just stating historical facts whether you agree or not), but none of that has changed the lives of people living in this country. The rich continue to get richer, while ALL THE PEOPLE continue to get screwed. The point is that people are so used to short term interests; meaning that if someone is able to pretend and offer them fake solutions that would fix their interests, by default the people will be deceived. He would go on to have fancy and lavish speeches lying to his constituents just to get their approval. Some short term policies did come, but where’s the wall that was supposed to be paid by Mexico? What about all those stock buybacks? I thought Obamacare was going to be repealed? “Kungflu” would just magically go away? None of his promises were EVER intended to be fulfilled. Their only function was to pave his way to power. And it worked.
The Fall
Trump was Democratically elected to the highest position of power in the largest economic country in the word; but oh my, how the mighty have fallen. We look back at Chapter IX one more time to learn that “he who builds on the people, builds on the mud.” The foundation of Trump’s principality was too weak to win again. The nobles came up in arms to unite against the orange titan. The nobles won this election. The Democratic party could have thrown up any sleepy Joe Shmoe (literally) to duke it out against Donald Trump (see, not so sleepy!). It didn’t matter who it was because the elites rallied together to take down The Orange Titan. Machiavelli continues to add that “he who reaches sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and has none around him.” Trump made enemies out of everyone by the end of his term, including his own White House staff and GOP allies. At this present moment even Mitch’s public support is wavering. We can have Machiavelli confirm this when he said: “but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him; for they, being in these affairs more far-seeing and astute, always come forward in time to save themselves.” The political and media elites could feel Trump slowly stripping them of their power. 2020 was their opportunity to take action.
Revelations
HE LOST!! Party like it’s 2021! But if the capitol insurrection is any indication, this circus show is not over for this orange clown. He is STILL the most influential person in the Republican party. He had the CPAC crowd eating out of the palms of his tiny, orange hands. Trump is most powerful when he plays the victim, and he’ll be using The Big Lie and his impeachments to position himself as a bulletproof underdog with a vengeance. He is still a Prince to the people, a menace to the nobles, and Machiavelli’s worst nightmare.
Trump has a fresh start and 4 years to reinvent his identity. He can once again hide in Mar-a-Lago and bash political institutions as an outsider. The media elite refuse to cover him for the sake of limiting his exposure; yet this only further aligns him with the people against the nobles. If the past is prologue, then 2024 will be THE ORANGE TITAN’s climax.
Endnotes
[1] As of 2019, the United States population consisted of 60% white people, AND if we include a white/hispanic mixed person (like myself), then that number grows to 76% percent of the entire population. (Michael’s note: That’s a HUGE coalition if someone can unify it. But the only shared characteristic all white people share is their race. If a politician were to unify white people, race would have to be a major part of their platform. Trump failing to denounce white supremacy and constantly dunking on racial equality groups might seem like unchecked racism or sheer idiocy, but is in reality a political calculation to keep race relevant.)
[2] Electoral College reform would go a long way to leveling the playing field in presidential elections and would have prevented Trump from winning the presidency in 2016, but even a pure democracy is susceptible to a Prince. We can’t rely solely on changes to our voting system to prevent Princes from rising to power. Inevitably PEOPLE determine the outcome of elections, and as Machiavelli has taught us, PEOPLE are easily exploited.
[3] It was a LOT harder for Trump to attack the people in power when he was the one in power. His attacks are much more effective when he isn’t the one running the country. This makes his position stronger in the 2024 election than his position in 2020. You scared yet?
