Is the Trump bus headed for a crack-up?

The wheels have not fallen off the MAGA bus yet, but the lug nuts are coming loose.

Last Sunday, Dec. 22, Oaklandsocialist published an article (Can Trump institute fascism?) which analyzed the tensions within the MAGA coalition. We discussed the tension between the MAGA populist base vs. Elon Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy, especially (although not exclusively) around the budget issue. These tensions make a one-person absolute dictatorship more difficult, and such a dictatorship is absolutely necessary for fascism to rule the land. This time the tensions have erupted over immigration. Trump himself will not be immune to this conflict.

Let’s start at the beginning:

MAGA’s contradictory appeal
MAGA’s appeal is based on several themes. One is pure racism and ethno-nationalism. This is expressed in the “great replacement” theory, which warns that immigrants of color are replacing “real Americans”, meaning white people. This is the major basis of much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric. It also mixes with the theme that Latino immigrant workers are taking “American” jobs at substandard wages. Another MAGA theme is adulation for any rich capitalist. Trump is admired because he’s supposedly a successful “business man”. This also has been the basis for welcoming both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy into the MAGA coalition. The fact that Ramaswamy is brown skinned and has Indian ancestry is a strike against him, but the MAGAites could overlook that, at least until now.

Just a sampling of the racist tweets from Laura Loomer and her followers

Now, these conflicting appeals are exploding to the surface. Musk and Ramaswamy have come out in support of the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign skilled workers on work permits. Hi tech companies have used this program extensively to hire computer engineers from India (where English is extensively spoken). The hard core racist MAGAites are going ballistic. Laura Loomer, who has 1.4 million followers on X/Twitter, sent out a series of tweets. “The elephant in the room is that @elonmusk, who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition. He’s a stage 5 clinger who overstayed his welcome at Mar a Lago…” she wrote. She denounced “big tech that [is trying] to slither into Mar a Lago.” She followed that up with: “tech bros… didn’t donate to Trump to Make America Great Again. They donated to Trump so they could influence immigration policies for their tech projects. Is there a compromise? Can we deport the third world invaders and the ‘me no speak English’ best and brightest to Mars?”

Musk responded by temporarily blocking and then decertifying Loomer’s X account so she can’t make money off of it.

Nikki Haley is now criticizing Trump again after he refused to accept her back into the fold. She jumped into the fray, talking about how when she was governor they trained South Carolina workers rather than accept foreigners on the H-1B visa program. Haley, who is of Indian descent, and Loomer, who is Jewish, had better look out since neither of them will ever be fully accepted by the ethno-nationalist MAGAites!

Maybe most significant of all is the ethno-nationalist leader of leaders, Stephen Bannon. As the NY Times reported he “hosted a series of influencers and researchers on his popular “War Room” podcast who critiqued ‘big tech oligarchs’ for supporting the H-1B program and cast immigration as a threat to Western civilization.”

Trump weighs in – sort of
After several days’ silence (which is a lifetime for him), Trump gave implicit support to Musk et al. He claimed he’d been a frequent user of workers who were working under that program. As with so much else Trump says, that is a lie. He has been a frequent user of the H-2B and H-1A programs. These are for relatively lower skilled (and even lower paid)  agricultural and hospitality industry workers.

Trump is also drifting away from the white supremacist anti-immigrant base regarding another aspect of the anti-immigrant campaign: Earlier on in his election campaign, he called for deporting up to 15 million “illegal immigrants”. Since the election, he’s backtracked on that. Now, he’s calling for deportation of undocumented immigrants who have a criminal record. Tom Homan, Trump’s “border Czar” explained: “This isn’t going to be neighborhood sweeps and military vehicles going through the city…” The same WSJ article that quoted Homan also reported: “Trump said in a recent interview with NBC, for example, that he wanted to work with Democrats to come up with legislation to protect Dreamers, immigrants in the U.S. illegally, who were brought as children, from deportation.”

The number of “illegal immigrants” Marjorie Taylor Green expects to be deported.

The backlash against this retreat is being prepared. “Trump’s hard-line immigration backers say they have noticed a retrenchment. They say they are holding their fire to attempt to influence the incoming president before they criticize him openly,” the Washington Post reports. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the least controllable Representatives, has published a map with the number of “illegal immigrants” in each state and the demand to deport them all.

Trump backpedaling
In fact, the Washington Post reports Trump is backpedaling on a number of issues. This includes the issue of vaccinations, where he indicated he’d give RFK jr. free reign to stop them, but then Trump turned around and praised Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine. This will conflict with Trump’s science denialist anti-vax base. It also includes the all-important issue of prices, where he’s now admitting he won’t be able to bring prices down.

Up next could possibly be the biggest crisis in the Trump/Musk bromance: A likely strike of the East Coast dock workers (International Longshoremen’s Association or ILA). As Oaklandsocialist reported, Trump has already staked out support for the union, and Musk certainly won’t be happy about that if it comes to pass.

Trump’s basic problem is this: As a private business man, he was able to get by through lying, cheating and being one of the greatest con men ever. He had everybody from his own employees (Michael Cohen!) to the media bowing and scraping. Lacking any foresight and any in-depth thinking, he just assumed he could operate the same way as president. In 2016, he came into office on his own and then thought he could count on the old line conservatives like Jeff Sessions and then Bill Barr, corporate executives like Rex Tillerson, and military men like John Kelly and Mark Milley to carry out his orders. When, unexpected by him, his road led him to trying to overturn the U.S. Constitution, they abandoned him. He learned a lesson from that and wielded his popular base to turn the Republican Party into a Trump cult, routing any Republicans who stood up to him. But it’s one thing to build a populist movement, even a party, and it’s something else to be able to “govern”, as they put it – in other words, to be able to administer capitalism. For that he needed a wing of the capitalist class, and he turned to the tech entrepreneurs, first and foremost, Elon Musk. Having brought down and then reshaping the old communication and entertainment industries, these capitalists think that they can do the same with the entire way of governing capitalism in the United States. They have that in common with Trump, but they also have their own interests, which to an extent conflict with Trump’s ethno-nationalist and racist base. That is what we see in this conflict.

Basis of MAGA problem
Lying underneath this contradiction is the fact that US capitalism has no need for one person dictatorship, no less fascism. And therefore Trump cannot completely bend the capitalist class to his will. That makes the prospect of Trump establishing outright fascism all the more unlikely, although given the completely unprecedented nature of this situation in the United States, hardly anything can be ruled out entirely.

Can Trump be replaced?
One detail: Trump’s shallow thinking and extreme shortsightedness in one way has severely limited his effectiveness. However, it is also exactly these personality traits that have made him so very popular. Some think that a replacement for Trump, first and foremost, J. D. Vance or even somebody like Senator Josh Hawley, would be more dangerous because they are capable of strategic thinking. In one way that is true, but on the other hand, they would not command the personal loyalty that Trump does from his followers. None of this means that there is no major difference between the Trump cult (AKA the Republican Party) and the Democrats, nor that MAGA in power is not more dangerous than MAGA out of power. Trump’s election has already energized his racist and ethnic nationalist and male supremacist base even further. It does mean that any effort to try to prevent Trump from taking office that is organized and led by representatives of US capitalism, are futile at best.

Future turmoil and chaos
As to the future, we can expect enormous chaos, and turmoil. This could come from any direction. Maybe most immediately could be a new crisis over the House Speakership. Possibly further down the road could include a bird flu pandemic equal to or even worse than Covid was. That would happen while RFK jr. is in the driver seat as far as that issue is concerned. Another crisis could include lunatic foreign policy adventures, such as a possible special forces assault on the drug cartels in Mexico. That would lead probably to actual pitched battles with Mexican forces, especially the police force. It is hard to imagine that even some of his Mexican and Mexican-American MAGAites would not rebel against such an adventure. As far as tariffs, it seems likely now that they will be “strategically placed“. This means simply that whoever gives the best bribes to Trump and his administrators will be the ones that are exempted from tariffs. That, in turn, means confusion and chaos in US international trade.

The huge issue of global warming and environmental chaos, which is already developing, looms ahead. If that issue turns U.S. capitalism into absolute chaos, then the capitalist class will find a need to overturn its so-called democratic method of rule and turn to a one person dictatorship or even worse. That makes it all the more important to look for and encourage any tendencies for any sector of the US working class to start to develop its own independent movement, a movement that would inevitably lead towards building its own independent political party and towards socialism.

Is the Trump bus headed for a crack-up?