Is Trump a Prisoner?

Every president is a prisoner in some ways, but Trump's apparently erractic behavior may be his attempt to navigate his way through the impossible.

My books recently received highly favorable attention in two interviews. First, with the podcast A Male Space, hosted by Bradley Grunner:

This interview was picked up by Instapundit, where a lively discussion continues: https://instapundit.com/730508/.

Mr Grunner also gave his own thoughtful interview to a podcast called Raymond — Thoughts and Mind, where he repeatedly recommended my book, Who Lost America? (at 8:30 and 40:00). Remarkably, he even understood the argument and its implications, citing specific points from throughout the book. He also elucidates several other books that deserve more attention: Daniel Amneus’ The Case for Father Custody, and Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia in Power.

---

---

Is Trump a Prisoner?

President Donald Trump’s unpredictable behavior — starkly manifested during the Iran debacle — perplexes the best commentators, disappoints his supporters, and strings along his enemies.

But what if it is rational? MAGA apologists like to spin it (not always unconvincingly) as another manifestation of Trump the “master negotiator”. But what if he has no choice?

This is a hypothesis. I cannot prove it. It makes sense (and is defensible) only if we assume that Trump is under much greater pressure than we generally realize. It could then be interpreted as the manoeuvers of a man with a gun to his head.

Every president — every president, prime minister, king or queen — is to some extent a prisoner. He is not like the rest of us. He does not stroll down the street, stop in shops to buy a newspaper, ring up friends, or surf channels on the TV or YouTube. He does not have that freedom.

Everything he does and sees and hears is controlled: his schedule, appointments, information, and who is permitted access to him. Sure, he can demand to receive any information or any person he wishes, but what if he does not know that they exist? Whoever controls his blinkers has power.

Both foes and friends describe Trump as quasi-monarchical, and here we might revisit the old monarchical principle, “The King can do no wrong.” For if he does do wrong, it is attributed to “evil counsellors”. The literary personification is Iago, who poisons Othello’s mind with evil suggestions that turn him against his truest friend and precipitate his downfall.

We saw this dynamic played out in the Watergate scandal, where the chief villain was said to be the White House Chief of Staff, the “gatekeeper” who controlled access to the president. After Watergate, President Jimmy Carter pledged not to have a Chief of Staff, but he soon found the chaos impossible.

Historian David Starkey offers a characteristically provocative illustration of this principle. Studying the court of Henry VIII, he determined that the key variable determining power was who had, and who controlled, access to the king. Starkey concluded that the most powerful figure was the Groom of the Stool (he might have been called the Lord of the Loo), because he had brief but unobstructed access to the king every day at a time when the king’s attention was focused on certain delicate necessities.

Trump in his first term showed more independence than most, using social media to initiate his own public communications. But now, arguably, he is more a prisoner than other presidents. He knows what the security services did to the Kennedy brothers. Now it appears that they engineered the removal of Vice President Spiro Agnew and then President Richard Nixon for threatening to blow the whistle. In our youth, my generation relentlessly mocked both men, and yet now they may turn out to have been heroes. (Such optical illusions are common in politics.) And we all know what they have already attempted against Trump himself. Thwarting the globalists directly could be impossible.

Trump has incorporated as a microcosm within his administration the struggle represented by MAGA versus the globalists. Perhaps he has no choice, or perhaps he thinks that gives him more control over the competing factions, where he can use his negotiating skills to manoeuver. (Another old principle of monarchical statecraft: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”)

Again, I do not know. But to the extent that this may be the case, the proper response for us is to focus less on Trump’s personality and that of others, which is a prescription for frustration. Instead, we should be asking ourselves why the globalists and neocons have acquired such power over him. This question has stymied even the best commentators.

Before I am accused of pushing “conspiracy theories”, my point here is that we should be examining not what the “conspirators” did to acquire such power, but what the rest of us did (or failed to do) that allowed them to get it.

In my latest book, I identified critical factors which have been overlooked by others. I tried to avoid venting my pet peeves and substituting my own wish list of remedies. The factors I identified are less obvious than the standard explanations and therefore their harm is not perceived by the standard pundits; that is why they were allowed to arise in the first place. By the same measure, they are also ignored even by those who benefit from them, such as the neocons and globalists themselves, and therefore I believe they might be rectified — much as they now fester — without serious opposition.

The following points are not disparate or disconnected from one another. They form a unity that has allowed recent “conspiracies” to gain control over us and make us feel helpless:

• The displacement of citizens by professional political operatives and activists: The Left long vilified profit-making “corporate lobbyists,” and during the 1960s, they invented the “public interest” lobbying group supposedly to defend the interests of “the people”. Rightists answered with their own versions. But these new professional lobbies did not replace corporate interests: They displaced citizens and usurped their citizenship. Professional lawyers, not amateur citizens, would now determine what is in the “public interest” and how to secure it. Today these firms (“NGOs”) have grown and become hegemonic.

• The parallel displacement of churches, in essential civic roles, by law firms and pressure groups: The right-wing versions of these “public interest” firms may have been more pernicious than the left-wing ones. They seldom defeated the leftists. What they did do was eclipse and marginalize the organizations that had not only defended traditional values but also checked the power of the state and organized irected citizen involvement in public affairs, allowing citizens to make their collective voices heard: churches. As law firms took over, churches withdrew from civic involvement and became Sunday social clubs, with no spine and no stomach for any fight or controversy.

• Intrusive government control over the private lives of millions of law-abiding citizens by quasi-penal machinery under the guise of providing for their “welfare”: This was the first “Deep State” and served as the blueprint for the rest. The invasive powers of the security services: FBI, CIA, Homeland Security — all this came later and was modelled on the first one. Tyranny always enters by manipulating the poor, as the Marxists understood.

• The intentional abandonment of justice as the sole legitimate purpose of the judiciary, allowing legal proceedings and legal punishments against legally innocent people: This long predated the “judicial activism” of federal courts that has the conservatives’ knickers in a twist, and it takes place in the state courts, not federal. It began with the creation of irregular courts with irregular — supposedly more “humane” and “flexible” — procedures, like juvenile courts, and spread out to probate courts and family courts, and eventually poisoned criminal courts too, that follow no rules but operate as they please, beneath the media radar screen.

• The abolition of marriage as a legally enforceable contract: The oxymoron of “no-fault” justice debased the integrity of not only the family but also the judiciary, civil service agencies, and government generally.

• The continuing immiseration of the African-American community: OK, so it is not caused by “racism”. Slavery and segregation do not really explain it either. So then what perpetuates it and why does it defy remedy, decade after decade?

• Commandeering the foreign policy machinery, military, and security services to serve the demands of domestic social engineering: Vietnam began the process of waging warfare using social programs, and Henry Kissinger observed that “Military missions…are [now] defined as a form of social work.” Can war ameliorate “inequality”, even when it is waged by a military that has itself become a gigantic welfare state? This spread the Deep State from the welfare-dependent poor to the rest of us.

• Policies designed to denigrate, discourage, and punish masculinity: These defy summary, but they are everywhere and increasing and show no sign of abating or being brought under control.

These changes were not the conspiracies and not brought about by conspirators. They were and are changes in us — changes that we permitted, either through agreement or negligence or simply not foreseeing the consequences. They weakened our democracy, surrendered our freedom, and allowed powerful interests to take control. By the same measure, it is we alone who can rectify them.

How precisely this happened and how we can reverse it is more than I can explain here. But you will find the details in my recent book (below).

---

If you want to read more analysis that will push you to think “outside the box,” you can find it in my recent book, Who Lost America? Why the United States Went "Communist” — and What to Do about It — available from Amazon.

Now available: Ask this book a question using ChatGPT.

Stephen Baskerville is Professor of Politics at the Collegium Intermarium in Warsaw. His books and recent articles are available at www.StephenBaskerville.com.