“Retrumped”? – Donald is back in the White House

When Trump was elected for the first time, in 2016, we published a compilation of articles that predominantly analyzed the astonishment that the election result had provoked in the most diverse quarters. In this collection, the text published by feminist Marge Berer on her personal blog was entitled Trumped, evoking the expression trump-up which means fraudulent or spurious action. We used the neologism “Retrumped”? to name this more extensive compilation on the results of the 2024 US presidential elections, as to draw attention to the state of surprise or even bewilderment that once again occurred after November 5th.

This “surprise” is, on the one hand, surprising. The factors that explain and characterize the US 2024 re-election are not exactly as opaque as they were in 2016. Since then, the perfect storms leading to ultra-right turns — heralded by the Brexit vote and Trump’s election — have taken on sharper and denser contours: Bolsonaro in 2018, Bukele in 2019 and Javier Milei in 2023. Concomitantly, we have witnessed a persistent growth of the European ultra-right, the rise of Georgia Meloni in Italy and the recent elections to the European Parliament being its most blatant signs. In addition, as we point out in our regular bulletins, open wars, localized conflicts and autocratic tendencies characterize the broader global scenario in which these dynamics of de-democratization are taking place. In the US more specifically, since 2020, despite the violent invasion of the Capitol, the various lawsuits that Trump is subjected to, and the good performance of the economy, Trump’s MAGA base and the resentment” inflated against the ‘elites’ has not lost steam. And, not least, the economic elites’ support for the Trumpist project has grown substantially.

On the other hand, the persistent adherence of the American electorate to the falsehood that serves as an appeal to Trumps political project is indeed perplexing. As Judith Butler rightly observes in an interview shortly before the elections, one can’t help but seriously wonder why this is the case. In exploring this conundrum, Butler hypothesizes that the electorate recognizes the falsity of what Trump and his spokespeople say, but at the same time people rejoice in hearing someone say what’s on their mind loud and clear. They are exhilarated by the window this opens for them to openly express abjection and hatred for others and this is a poorly analyzed and understood feature of the ultra-right’s political successes over the last decade. In Ionesco’s theatrical parody of historical fascism — rightly evoked by Teju Cole in his article on Trump’s election in 2016 — this exhilaration is what suddenly and mysteriously turns people into rhinoceroses.

Beyond the perplexity, Trump’s return supported by the popular vote decidedly implies a much greater potential for democratic erosion. Between 2016 and 2024, his electorate grew from 63 to almost 77 million votes “legitimizing” the ultraright open intentions to deepen de-democratization. The general guidelines for that are recorded in Project 2025, drawn up by the Heritage Foundation and analyzed by GPAHE, Françoise Girard and the THEM website. One amin objective this project is the demolition of the so-called “administrative state”, abhorred by the ultra-right as a “source of privilege and economic distortions”. Another unequivocal priority is the systematic elimination of legal and institutional parameters that anchor rights in the fields of gender, sexuality and reproduction. Less debated but no less relevant are proposals announced to attack Palestinian support networks and organizations. Not less importantly, the immediate and long-term effects of Trump’s election on the unstable dynamics of multipolar geopolitics have barely begun to be seen. These various imensions are examined in the wide range of analyses incorporated into the compilations we have organized in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

The material collected also analyzes the demographic shifts of the electorate that ensured the 2024 victory of the ultra-right. Since 2020, social groups that historically voted for the Democratic Party have migrated to the Republican camp, such as the Latino population and, to a much lesser extent, a 4% share of black men. James B. Galbraith, in an article for Project Syndicate, and Thiago Amparo in Folha de São Paulo, were harshly critical of the party´s leadership ongoing indifference to the loss of voters, its arrogance and problematic positions in relation to migration and the rest of the world.

The general breakdown by gender and race of the voting is also very telling. Among men, Trump had a 13% lead over Kamala Harris that was concentrated among whites and Latinos. Even more drastic was the migration of the female vote to the ultra-right, as 70% of white women and 40% of Latinas voted for Trump. Biden’s 15% lead in the female electorate in 2020 fell to 8% for Harris. Also, among Latina women, Harris’ vote shrank considerably, she beat Trump by 22% while Biden had won with a 39% lead. Black women, on the other hand, voted massively for Harris: 84% of the vote – a 3% increase on Biden’s performance in 2020 – thus constituting a flagrant bastion of political resistance to neo-fascism.

To conclude, following the election, the ultra-conservative and ultra-right-wing profile of the Trump II administration became clearer by the day. The nominations for the first and second echelons signal a multifaceted offensive against citizenship and human rights in health, education, the environment but also rather unpredictable trends in security and intelligence. New York Magazine has, for example, listed all the appointments who are directly linked to Project 2025, and the Them portal has shown how Trump’s cabinet is shaping up as a stronghold of homotransphobic figures. The deleterious potential effects of these appointments will be certainly amplified by emblematic figures of anti-egalitarianism and anti-“wokism” such as Elon Musk, who will head a new supposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, in fact only a commission).

Musk will be joined by many other peculiar figures: in the Treasury an openly gay billionaire (who worked in investment management for George Soros); in Defense a war veteran turned Fox News commentator accused of sexual assault and violence against women; an anti-vaccine Secretary of Health and Human Services, in the potentially vanishing Departmnet of Education a female MMA billionaire accused of covering up sexual abuse by coaches; in the FBI a fan of conspiracy theories; and in intelligence services a female politician who came from the Democratic Party and who, because of her spiritual affiliation, is radically opposed to LGBTQIA+ rights. Furthermore, Jamil Chade analyzed, this cabinet comprises a sum of individual fortunes that exceed the GDP of 154 nations. The names announced, although subject to confirmation by the Senate, are a strong symptom of the degree of destruction that could be installed in the US administrative dynamic after January 20th.

No less significantly, as the face of the new administration took shape, Wall Street and cryptocurrency indices reached high peaks. At the same time, however, large corporations announced setbacks in their so-called DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies, signaling to how extensive is the penetration of ultra-right-wing agendas into the non-state spheres. Faced with this scenario, we can’t help but recommend to tighten the belts. But we also pledge to continue monitoring and analyzing the turbulence that lies ahead, as we have been doing for a long time.

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