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A Trump dynasty will swiftly implode Barron Trump is not MAGA's white knight


May 13, 2024   4 mins

With Oedipal drama never far from America’s political consciousness, it was only a matter of a time before Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron, was thrust under the spotlight. Would he, the nation’s pundits speculated last week, at the tender age of 18, assume his first political position: that of a Florida delegate to the upcoming Republican Party convention?

In the end, no less than his mother Melania was forced to step in, clarifying that young Barron “regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments”. Yet her assurances will have done little to dispel the notion that, as it starts to wane, the MAGA movement will be little more than a family affair.

Donald Trump Jr has, after all, been active politically since the 2016 election, spending time campaigning for several republican candidates during the 2018 midterms, and again taking an active role in the electoral campaign of 2020. His sister, Ivanka, meanwhile, was rumoured to be angling for Marco Rubio’s senatorial seat in Florida, before eventually denying such plans. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is arguably even more central: in the mythology around the Trump presidency — that of the hapless but well-intentioned monarch surrounded by devious, conniving viziers and ministers — Kushner figures prominently as one of the villains.

From the start, the extended Trump clan and their role in US politics has had something of a “dog catches car” quality to it, in at least two respects. First, many of the attempts to get the family involved have been either abortive — Ivanka’s senatorial trial balloon, Barron Trump’s potential role as a GOP conference delegate — or fairly ill-received in practice. Second, the way in which Trump has tried to make politics a “family business” increasingly gives the impression of a political movement that fundamentally doesn’t know where it is going, nor what it intends to do once it gets there.

One can here make a comparison with a figure like Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Bill and Hillary. There was never really the sense that the various no-show, well-paid sinecures Chelsea was handed were part of some nascent movement to revive America, drain the swamp, or take back control: this was pure trading favours for access. A grift, in other words, but an honest grift: one that was never confused about what the point of it all was. The talk about nominating Barron Trump as a GOP delegate, however, came at a moment of profound confusion within both the US Right in general and the MAGA movement in particular. The American Right is increasingly losing its cohesion, and it’s starting to manifest in haphazard attempts to create a political family dynasty.

Just recently, the America First Policy Institute — a Trump-affiliated think tank — released a report detailing proposals for a more robust and solid foreign policy for Trump’s second term in office. The suggestions are revealing, because they are essentially far more belligerent on the question of Ukraine — including a desire to keep arming the country even though the US is facing its own huge financial woes and cannot adequately restock its own arms inventories — than MAGA voters themselves. Far from being radical or shocking, “America First” policy initiatives increasingly seem like the same old Washington consensus that Trump supposedly set out to destroy.

But the issues surrounding the various idiosyncrasies of the extended Trump universe now appear fairly irrelevant, at least when compared with the troubles closer to home. Trump’s decision to team up with Republican speaker Mike Johnson — a man who is widely viewed as a traitor on the Right, and has been claimed by the Democratic Party as de facto “their” man in the house of representatives — in order to bury the issue of the American border while shunting a hundred billion dollars into foreign hands might very well be seen by future historians as the moment that he destroyed his own political career.

“The issues surrounding the various idiosyncrasies of the extended Trump universe now appear fairly irrelevant.”

The severity of this self-inflicted blow to his own credibility and political legacy is easy to underestimate, for the simple reason that people have been conditioned to think of Trump as a snake charmer, and his voters as fundamentally irrational; when Trump says he could shoot a man on the street in New York in broad daylight and still be as loved as before, his liberal opponents all too often make the mistake of taking him both seriously and literally.

In truth, however, Trump is hardly immortal. History is full of political figures who rise to prominence relatively quickly, only to be abandoned and cast aside just as fast. In early 20th-century Russia, the orthodox priest Father Gapon became by far the most popular leader for the nascent Russian worker’s movement, easily outcompeting the more radical socialist and communist actors for that role. It did him very little good in the long run: after Russian soldiers opened fire on a demonstration he led in 1905, it’s as if all of Russia simply forgot he ever existed and moved on to more radical politics. But even in America the time between victory and disgrace can be very, very short. Richard Nixon’s 1972 electoral victory was one of the greatest landslides in American history; two years later his political career was destroyed.

Such an outcome for Donald Trump is not just possible, it is actually very likely. He is now backtracking across a range of areas — mostly to do with foreign policy — away from an earlier posture of trying to avoid foreign adventurism. He is trying to score points by stressing his willingness to support Israel hand over fist at precisely the moment that support for Israel inside the US Right is starting to be called into question, and opposition to foreign aid in the face of a looming bankruptcy crisis is rising to record highs. Moreover, signs from the American banking sector are becoming increasingly worrying, even as the US population is carrying record amounts of credit card debt — and debt defaults are spiking. The combination of weakened enthusiasm from his own base, a chaotic and messy personnel and policy situation, and finally the very real possibility that the majority of the next presidential term will be defined by very serious domestic economic crisis — perhaps even a Liz Truss-style scare in the bond markets — has the makings of a political crisis from which not even Trump will be able to extricate himself.

In this context, the emptiness of those seeking to create a political dynasty out of Trump’s family becomes plain to see: those who seek its warm embrace exude political helplessness, just as a child crawls to his mother when he’s scared. Rather than Prince Barron riding to its rescue, the Trump clan, like the MAGA movement itself, is likely to be viewed by future historians as a political failure: unable to deal with its own contradictions or idiosyncrasies, nor able to keep up with the rising tide of discontent sweeping across America, it turns in on itself like a black hole — until, eventually, it implodes.


Malcom Kyeyune is a freelance writer living in Uppsala, Sweden

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Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
4 months ago

Oh, the Trumpbots aren’t going to like this!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
4 months ago

Exactly!

J Bryant
J Bryant
4 months ago

For me, the most interesting question raised by this article is the direction of travel of the Republican party. They do seem split and confused. Do they have a unifying agenda? Do they have compelling narrative for the upcoming election? Who constitutes the MAGA base and are they motivated solely by Trump, or will they vote for another Republican nominee in the future?
It’s a sad situation. A Republican party that stood behind bland, center right policies such as immigration control, law and order, a balanced budget, no DEI, would easily beat the Dems.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
4 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Repugs have been against everything for so long but never told us what they are for. There is no plan.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

That’s good enough for me. If you oppose open borders, net zero, student loan bailouts, CRT/DEI, you got my vote. I’ll give the Dems credit. They do have a vision, but it’s horrific.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
4 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Neither party stands for anything. They’re in the grift for there own enrichment.

mike otter
mike otter
4 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

The plan is win control of the executive and “don’t just do something, stand there” as Ronald Reagan is credited as saying. Also i think the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
4 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

JB, beating the Dems is very short term: it won’t remove the corruption and dysfunctionality present in the system, on both sides of the House, and elsewhere, from the Media, to Hollywood, the legal system, the Medical and Military Industrial Complexes and state bureaucracies, just to name a few.

glyn harries
glyn harries
4 months ago

Indeed. We have already had 4 years of Trump and of course nothing changed. Trump is in the swamp as much as any other US oligarch, he just makes out he is not. The ultimate grifter.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
4 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

The direction of travel for all political parties in Western democracies is that they are ceding power to the markets … ‘the public debt’ will determine our future through the markets

Cho Jinn
Cho Jinn
4 months ago

“The American Right is increasingly losing its cohesion”
There isn’t an “American Right”, and as such nothing(s) to cohere. The American Left, or the Blob, fittingly coheres, or at least it did until the paid agitators and champagne socialist cosplayers started running around with plastic garbage pail shield, for justice. That has been fun to watch.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
4 months ago
Reply to  Cho Jinn

“There isn’t an American Right”. Eh? Of course there is!. You seem to be implied that the list is complete ideological conformity that broad brush political terminologies have no meaning.

As we can now see with the Biden administrations backtracking on all sorts of extreme environmental policies, for example, the American Left doesn’t “cohere” either. In fact no broad brush political tendencies can be a monolith except into totalitarian states imposed by force.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
4 months ago
Reply to  Cho Jinn

The Blob is the liberal centre: neoliberal economics, neoconservative foreign policy. Pro-China too and obsessed with Net Zero as well as gender.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago

Lots of jumbled thoughts here, skipping across widely diverging topics without developing any kind of cohesive thesis. What does Barron Trump have to do with foreign policy and who cares?

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I thought it was a good article. There clearly is a tendency to for nepotism in US politics as we’ve seen with the clintons the Kennedys, Bushes, Clinton’s and now the Trumps. Jared Kushner certainly did have a position of power although he was an “only” an in-law.

But that wasn’t really the most interesting part of it which was to my mind the correct analysis of the misplaced near worship of Trump amongst the MAGA movement – not to say quite a few of the commentators on this forum! – much to their ultimate disappointment disappointment!

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Idk. These are two completely different ideas and should be separate essays. This essay meandered all over the place. Develop an argument, flesh it out and come to a conclusion. This was a jumble of different ideas.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

I don’t think anyone on this forum worships Trump. Most sane people however do believe that policy is more important than posture. For thirty years we’ve endured policies from the liberal left – on borders, trade, gender, the environment and much more – that have a lot more to do with the narcissism of the few than the welfare of the many. A Trump victory is the only hope – however forlorn it may be – that that will change. Hence the support for him on this forum.

Christopher
Christopher
4 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Exactly. And on election nights when the purple hairs scream, they still won’t get it.

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

There is no worship of Trump. Most Trump voters don’t care for his personal life or celebrities in general. He will just get this job done here and now. After that, there are all sorts of options – JD Vance for one. The party has become working class, populist and at base vigorously anti-woke

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Your characterization of Trump support as “worship” is defective. Most conservatives detest politicians; we certainly don’t worship them. Support for Trump is the response to the political, administrative, and technocrat class that is bringing the Western world to ruin. During Trump’s presidency, we were experiencing a genuine return to peace and prosperity that had been severely, deliberately damaged by Obama. Now, we don’t even have a president; the country is being run by the intelligence agencies and the NGOs.
What I don’t get is the deranged hatred for a guy who, until he became a political player, was a wealthy developer/showman on everyone’s A List. Well, that’s not true; I do get it. He was effective in office, found out the staggering level of corruption, learned who was selling our country to foreign enemies, and was going to put a stop to it. As Chuck Schumer warned, the FBI (and others) have “six ways to Sunday” to wreak their revenge.
And yet, two phony impeachments, multiple political hoaxes, and numerous lawfare attempts later, he’s garnering crowds in the tens of thousands. That is called support, not worship. We’re supporting our nation, not one man.

glyn harries
glyn harries
4 months ago

“He was effective in office, found out the staggering level of corruption, learned who was selling our country to foreign enemies, and was going to put a stop to it.” Literally none of that is true. If it were he would have got elected by a landslide.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
4 months ago

What I don’t get is the deranged hatred for a guy who, until he became a political player, was a wealthy developer/showman on everyone’s A List.
Trump is not one of THEM, them being the cabal of govt careerists, political lifers, donors, and the media that pretty much run DC. He is an outsider who can naturally notice the inherent flaws of business as usual. His financial status also means he’s not beholden to anyone; the benefit of having FU money is the ability to say FU to the would-be masters of the universe.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Ha! His family hit the jackpot when he was president. Jared Kushner got 2 billion dollars from Qatar and other countries, right after Trump lost the election , to start his own little hedge fund. Ivanka got dozens of trademarks from China, something others wait years for. And so on.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
4 months ago

Trump is the symptom, not the disease; but since the disease can’t be acknowledged, it’s the symptom that gets targeted. The use of the term ‘worship’ here is, of course, derisive, meant to dismiss Trump supporters as cultists–perversely ironic, given the undeniable cult-like nature of wokeism. But, then, hypocrisy and lack of self-insight are at once symptoms of this particular disease and weapons in its arsenal.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago

Other than the massive tax cuts for corporations and the very wealthy (the tax cuts for the middle expired in 2022), can you name one piece of legislation he supported that was passed in Congress? Actually, he never was much interested in anything that didn’t involve him. (The tax cuts included a specific cut for developers like him.). Can you specifically explain how Obama damaged our peace and prosperity? I do recall how Trump cozied up to dictators and autocrats—Putin, Kim, Orban, Xi, Balsinaro (sp). He trusted Putin more than our own intelligence agencies! Putin, the guy who makes sure anyone who challenges him in elections ends up dead. That guy?

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
4 months ago

But because he is a serial liar, you cannot know when to believe him.

Terry M
Terry M
4 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Very few worship Trump. But he is clearly far superior to almost all others on offer.
Second, the way in which Trump has tried to make politics a “family business” increasingly gives the impression of a political movement that fundamentally doesn’t know where it is going, nor what it intends to do once it gets there.
Given how the loyalty of those around Trump has been terrible, is it any wonder that he rely on his family, whom he can really trust? Did you also blame JFK for promoting his feckless brothers? Biden for colluding with his criminal son?
Begone, fool!

chris sullivan
chris sullivan
4 months ago
Reply to  Terry M

I would never have considered Robert ‘feckless” ???

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Indeed. I must acknowledge that I could hardly concentrate on the first couple of paragraphs and gave up reading this article at the point where the author said that Clinton’s grift was “honest”.
As far as I understand from your comment, the problem might not be caused by lack of intellectual capacity on my part 😉

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago

Exactly my thoughts.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
4 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Great minds and so on… 😉

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
4 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

One is not “for” Trump. One is “against” that which Trump is against. The question is whether “against” is ever enough all by itself. It is the question of the Modern age. As Hume said: “We always suppose an external universe which depends not on our perception but would exist even if we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. But this universal and primary opinion of mankind is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy which teaches that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image . . . without any intercourse between the mind and the object.”

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
4 months ago

That we exist in the context of an external universe that is not ourselves is less a supposition than a fundamental constituent of our experience–indeed, a prerequisite for the very possibility of experience. What could it possibly mean to talk of ‘perception’ in the absence of a perceiver and an object perceived? We can dismiss what is present to the mind as mere ‘image’ if we like; but we cannot thereby dismiss the subject-object relationship between mind and not-mind that still needs to exist in order for this language, and the concept of perception, to make any sense.

What we can infer about objects from the perceptions we have of them is something we can legitimately debate; but debating the nature of ‘that which is not ourselves,’ and pretending ‘that which is not ourselves’ has no existence because we have difficulty getting a handle on it, are two different matters.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
4 months ago
Reply to  Mark Kennedy

Yeah pretty much what I was thinking.

Nick Faulks
Nick Faulks
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Too kind – just a total load of rubbish.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
4 months ago
Reply to  Nick Faulks

Yet, it is the “essence of Modernity,” or so said Heidegger. When he said he has a “world view”, he meant not a view of the world, but the World understood as a view, a picture. A world without walls. It well explains the readiness of so many to accept, even embrace, “transition.” I too don’t agree with him, but one can’t deny how well it explains what see going on all around us.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
4 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

There are some good ideas in there, but as you say, it’s haphazard. If Trump really backpedals to support Ukraine and embraces the military adventurism of Biden, he will lose… period. Trump voters are NOT worshipers of Trump for the most part and he is not some sort of great charismatic leader in the vein of Hitler or Mussolini, however much he might want to be. His best and only hope is to maintain at least the appearance of being a dissident and an alternative to the political establishment. He never has been a very effective populist or libertarian and his first administration was mostly a lot of traditional Republican policies like tax cuts for corporations dressed in his combative and sometimes populist rhetoric. Off camera, Biden’s policies have been as much if not more economically nationalist than Trumps. The fact that he’s failed to mention that is more a function of who the core Democratic voters are and how the party thinks they can keep winning elections. American politics can be stupid and nonsensical. The nation has already pivoted away from unchecked globalism, largely as a pragmatic response to the serious Chinese threat. It won’t go nearly far enough unless the plutocrats are deposed but Trump isn’t, and never has been, up to the task of really changing the system. That so many embraced his hucksterism is a testament to how desperate the people are for change. They won’t get much in 2024. We’re going to have to wait for the great showman and egotist Trump to be removed from the stage for that to happen. 2028 will be an interesting year. If he doesn’t win this year, I can’t imagine anyone supporting a third candidacy. He’d be getting into William Jennings Bryan territory at that point. Then we’ll get to see what the Republican party really looks like without the clown show distractions and whether the populist/working class turn of the party really sticks. I believe it will. Hawley for President 2028.

Thomas Donald
Thomas Donald
4 months ago

Omen vibes. Massive Omen vibes.

Damon Hager
Damon Hager
4 months ago
Reply to  Thomas Donald

Non-story. Massive non-story.
Journalist having to write something, anything, for his editor. Journalist having to write something, anything, to get paid.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
4 months ago
Reply to  Damon Hager

Yes, the required number of words. Reminds me of Phil Space from ‘Private Eye’ 😉

Damon Hager
Damon Hager
4 months ago

So, for the sake of clarity: Barron won’t be a delegate to the Republican convention, and Ivanka has denied senatorial ambitions in Florida, and both of these points are conceded by the author at the start of the article.
Yes. That’s some powerful piece of dynasty building.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
4 months ago
Reply to  Damon Hager

Yes, I was also puzzled by these arguments. From little that I know about journalism, I remember the principle that if something did not happen, it’s not news.
But…

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
4 months ago

It’s also a principle that if something does happen, but to one’s team, it’s not news, either.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
4 months ago

A good point, indeed ::-)

Martin M
Martin M
4 months ago

In truth, however, Trump is hardly immortal.
That is true both figuratively and literally. Trump is in his late 70s. There will come a time when he is no longer around, and (statistically speaking) that time is not far away. It is a long bow to draw to say that Trumpism will coalesce around Barron.

j watson
j watson
4 months ago

Just further illuminates the predictable dead end Republicans find themselves in as a result of following the Orange one.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Reply to  j watson

You’re obviously feeling mora than usually lazy today.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
4 months ago

The Clintons involved in ‘honest grift’?

That’s a good one! 🙂

And ‘even a Liz Truss-style scare in the bond markets’ is confusing correlation with causation.

Here’s a better understanding of the UK’s predicament:
https://youtu.be/jqN-B4DVUww

Her ‘mistake’ was to see that a modern, sovereign state needs cheap Energy, and the BoE wasn’t going to have that: no way!

alan bennett
alan bennett
4 months ago

A typical lefty essay on what they want something to be, not what it is.
The West is in dire straights, and this clown brings in imagined scenarios involving a very tall teenager.
That will cure the horrors people like him have visited on the West.

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
4 months ago

The idea of a Trump dynasty or any other political force determining the future is simply not going to happen.
Market forces will determine everything, with a $34 Trillion US public debt, and rising, the politicians will very soon discover they have ceded power to the markets.
There will be a reckoning on all fronts, from wokeism to the financial markets.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago

Yes. In the absence of any real ideological cleavage, mainstream politicians have become almost entirely dependent on using national treasuries to buy the votes that keep them in office. This has happened everywhere in the West. The most likely resolution is a revolution in the means of exchange which simply removes that power from their clutches. It can’t happen soon enough.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
4 months ago

Yes, we’ve all been done by the inflated cost of living and raised interest rates. The shrinking middle class can’t support endless jobs and there may be a major recession on the way.
A peace in the Ukraine may be essential there to secure a more balanced energy mix. Otherwise, where is the investment and spending going to come from other than from families like the Trumps?

Richard Calhoun
Richard Calhoun
4 months ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

The situation is dire .. way beyond the family dynasties whose fortunes although seemingly huge are tiny in the face of the public and private debt across the World

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
4 months ago

What a stupid premise for an article. Seriously Unherd. This is just stupid. Who said anything about a dynasty?

blue 0
blue 0
4 months ago

Alot of time and words devoted to a few weirdo’s that think an 18 year old is the next US saviour

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
4 months ago

Oh, don’t be ridiculous. The Trumps are not the Kennedys, or the Gores, or the Bushes, or the Pelosis, or the Sununus, or the myriad other talentless families who have made their fortunes as political grifters. For the life of me I don’t understand why UnHerd publishes this strange Swedish guy who insists on writing about American politics whilst knowing nothing about it.

Philip Tisdall
Philip Tisdall
4 months ago

You are wrong about the Sununus.

Bryan Dale
Bryan Dale
4 months ago

This is like news from a parallel universe. The writer doesn’t understand MAGA policies, repeatedly misstating them and then claiming they’re changing.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
4 months ago

Oh, good; handwringing over something that has not happened and may never occur. As a rule, I am not in favor of dynastic politics. We have had enough Bushes and Clintons, and an overdose of Kennedys. But here, we have a kid who’s not even in college yet. How about we just let Barron grow up and find his own path. He’s already learned that the Trump name carries benefits and grief.
The conclusion, meanwhile, is cluelessness on steroids. There would be no MAGA movement except for the fecklessness of career politicians who are responsible for most of the issues they claim to want to fix. Blaming the outsider for decades worth of insider trading, graft, stupid policies, and the rest is intentionally missing the obvious point. Trump’s viability is evidence of an unhealthy republic, one that has lost its way and one whose “leaders” have lost all connection to those whom they ostensibly represent.
By the way, “supporting Israel” is not a new stance, nor does believing the state has a right to exist the same as supporting endless war funding. Clutch your pearls all you like, but only the very wealthy and very connected can say that they’re better off today than they were four years ago.

Gina B
Gina B
4 months ago

I am so over anyone suffering from the TDS – my eyes glaze over and I can’t focus on anything they are trying to say. Basically they just try and find a new way to say “Trump is awful” and it is just boring. Jared Kushner – who the author seems to dislike and dismiss – negotiated the Abraham Accords which I do believe was a significant factor in the current Middle East crisis. Hamas – backed by Iran – unleashed its savagery in October in order to prevent Saudi Arabia from signing the accords and normalizing relations with Israel.
The UAE and Jordan have already signed and are clearly not joining Hamas in trying to destroy Israel. These Abraham Accords seem like a pretty good thing that has prevented even further chaos in the Middle East. If Jared Kushner is responsible for negotiating them then he should be given credit for it. Obviously it was way better than what the current Biden administration has done as they have enabled the complete mess in Ukraine and Israel and wasted billions of dollars in the process. Biden administration evidently cannot negotiate for peace at all – anywhere.
Hopefully soon they will be out and we can get some decent and clear sighted negotiators back in the White House – and if that is Jared Kushner then that will be a good thing. Why does the author neglect to mention this? Why is no credit given to the previous Trump administration for this? I really don’t care about porn stars but I do care immensely about peace in the Middle East.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
4 months ago

(?) Speaking of ‘mythology,’ Mr. Kyeyune is apparently enmeshed in a doozy of his own. Nietzsche claimed that in the final analysis we experience only ourselves, which in the sense intended is tautologically true; but most people attempting analysis offer more than glimpses of their inner demons and fantasies of being a seer. How did such a curious mishmash of speculative fabulism and disconnected historical reference, that knows ‘coherence’ only by hearsay, make it into Unherd? I suppose it’s informative to know that the preoccupations of those suffering from TDS include nightmare visions of a Trump family dynasty; but did we really need a clinical demo?

Chuck Burns
Chuck Burns
4 months ago

We get the authors message, Never Trump. First point about Barron. He is eighteen years old and will undoubtedly proceed on to alt least 4 years of college if not six. After seeing what his Dad went through dealing with the lying back stabbing anti-America Democrats politicians, deep state bureaucrats, the CIA, FBI, State Department, et.al. Barron might see himself doing something somewhat safer over the next twenty years. I’m sure his parents would strongly discourage any political aspirations until he gets some worldly experience under his belt.
Regarding Ivanka, likely she has had enough politics and much prefers to Take care of her children and her business rather than succumbing to those “rumors” about “angling” for anything.
About Jared, no comment.
The mention of “shunting” a hundred billion dollars into foreign hands is only half correct. Billions of tax dollars from We the People have been squandered but they did not all go to foreign entities. The money went to the military industrial complex which returned kickbacks through lobbying back to politicians,, some was skimmed by the US regime in Ukraine, and some was laundered through various business’s and banks back.to who knows where.
As for the Make America First Deplorables. We simply want Trump to finish his second term and hopefully select a Vice President who will give us an additional eight years of America First. If we don’t get Trump in 2024 there very likely won’t be another election. The sham Biden administration has given us a taste of the Orwellian dystopia that is to come “when” the Obama Marxists get back into power..

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
4 months ago

Is Unherd these days casting its net into the writer’s pond in hope of dragging in utter fantasists? This is the first I’ve heard of a “Trump dynasty”, and I pay rather close attention to US politics.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
4 months ago

Just reading this superficial half baked article, I get a flash news story over my screen, that Trump leads “bigly” in 5 battleground states. He had 100(!) thousand participants yesterday at the MAGA NJ rally. Well, it doesn’t seem to go too badly for the Orange Man right now.

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
4 months ago

A guy who dislikes Trump so much he is busy imagining and then trashing his and his family’s history before it happens. Does he get paid for this?

Mark epperson
Mark epperson
4 months ago

Love it! Another pretentious BS hit piece by a hack who sold out a long, long time ago. I hope he got paid for writing this because if he didn’t, it was a complete waste of everyone’s time. Including Mr. Kyeyune. Keep em” coming, UnHerd!

Rita X Stafford
Rita X Stafford
4 months ago

MAGA is about just one person— Donald Trump. That’s it. No dynasty here. That’s why thousands of people show up to support him. They get it.

Martin M
Martin M
4 months ago

Exactly right. When Trump is gone, the movement will fragment.

laura m
laura m
4 months ago

Clickbait. Beneath Unherd’s aspirations.

John T. Maloney
John T. Maloney
4 months ago

Wow! This article and the odd comments are very unusual. They recall a famous quote by the legendary Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former Democratic senator from New York: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/

William Miller
William Miller
4 months ago

Yeah, you’re a trustworthy critic and source.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
4 months ago

Trump is not a true Republican, at least in the historical sense. He was, in fact, a Democrat, before he came down the elevator. It’s not surprising that he appeals to the working class who used to be Democrats. Strong borders, protectionism and anti-war used to be staples of the Demicratic platform. Now it’s all climate change, gender fluidity and open borders. In reality, Trump has merged the middle Left and Middle Right– he gets attacked by both the Far Left (i.e., the Progressive Democrats) and the Far Right)! If you’re a Catholic who is still against abortion but have voted Democrat your entire life, who is there to choose besides him? Look past the R and the D besides the candidates name and it’s pretty clear which candidates have a more rational platform that appeals to more voters. The Democrats, from what I can see, literally have no appeal to any except the most radical, and their only weapon to try and retain their old voters is “Trump, Trump, Trump”.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
4 months ago

George Orwell just called. He says that dynasty building only works for the Inner Party. And only if your name is Kennedy.

Daniel Patrick
Daniel Patrick
4 months ago

I always thought Trump was at least trying to do the right thing. Led by his ego perhaps, but at least trying to do the right thing. As opposed to Biden and the democrats who I’m not sure even try to hide their corruption these days ?
The way Trump gets worshipped (by some-many?) as some sort of white Knight in shining armor however, seems somewhat hilarious. As an Aussie observer, RFK Junior seems so far ahead of the rest of the pack in terms of his integrity and intelligence it’s not funny. Not funny because he appears to have zero chance of winning.

Martin M
Martin M
4 months ago
Reply to  Daniel Patrick

RFK Jr might indeed be a good President, were it not for the fact that he is completely nuts.

Daniel Patrick
Daniel Patrick
4 months ago

I think we’ve seen it all now when we read the term “honest grift” in relation to the Clintons

Fafa Fafa
Fafa Fafa
4 months ago

What does Barron Trump have to do with oedipal drama? Did he have sex with his mother?

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
4 months ago

“(Melania Trump’s) assurances will have done little to dispel the notion that, as it starts to wane, the MAGA movement will be little more than a family affair.”
Today’s TDS piece from … uh …Unherd?