In early 2017, at the beginning of the first Trump administration, I was teaching at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. At that point, there were rumors of people claiming to be Trump associates wandering the halls of the university, asking around to see if anyone was interested in working for the new administration. Whether or not those rumors were true, eight years later, we know one thing for sure: that is not how staffing the new administration is going to work.
It is hard to overstate how different things feel in Washington this time around. In 2016 and 2017, the mood in the city was shocked—but also energized and rebellious. The 2017 Women’s March attracted hundreds of thousands of people; Trump’s first executive actions were met with activism across civil society; the birth of the so-called “Resistance” was immediate and forceful. Everyone I knew was organizing and active. Eight years after Trump’s first inauguration, everything has changed, including in the Capitol, where the mood among everyday people is tense, still, and sober: a sensible response to a political landscape that has been utterly transformed.
Eight years after Trump’s first inauguration, everything has changed, including in the Capitol, where the mood among everyday people is tense, still, and sober.
Consider the conditions of Trump’s two electoral wins. As the historian Tim Shenk wrote in the aftermath of the election this past November, “This time, there’s no James Comey to scapegoat or Electoral College to blame.” In 2016, Trump’s victory seemed like a chancy, outlier event in the history of the United States. It was easy to list reasons to think of it this way: Trump had only won the nomination because other candidates failed to take him seriously. Hillary Clinton was a controversial candidate, loathed by many, who ran a terrible campaign—which was then undermined even further by Comey’s “October surprise.” The election was very close, and the outcome seemed largely dictated by the quirks of the electoral college; Trump did not come close to winning the popular vote.
These conditions do not apply in 2024. Trump ran virtually unopposed and had no trouble winning the nomination. Biden was a catastrophic candidate and should have stepped down long before he finally did, but Kamala Harris did quite well, and by November it seemed that the momentum was on her side. The 2024 election was close but Trump won the popular vote, and very nearly won a majority. In 2016, Democrats gained seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, though Republicans retained a majority in each. This time, Democrats had a net gain of only one seat in the House, while Republicans flipped four Senate seats, and regained their majority in both bodies. There’s been a significant rightward shift among Black and Latino voters, as well as with Arab American voters.
If the 2016 election signified the surprise and surreal rise of right-wing populism in the United States, the 2024 election signifies its triumphant entrenchment. Trumpism was not a one-off; it is here to stay. As Shenk put it, “Trumpism doesn’t have a generational lock on American politics, but it has broad and deep support, with the potential to grow in the years to come.”
If the 2016 election signified the surprise and surreal rise of right-wing populism in the United States, the 2024 election signifies its triumphant entrenchment.
What is most depressing to many of us in Washington, DC, is that Trump’s return has taken place against the backdrop of election denialism regarding the 2020 election, and the subsequent violence of January 6, 2021. The New Right’s position on the 2020 presidential election has been dubbed a new lost cause and loyalty test, and it runs in total contradiction to the foundations of the American constitutional order—including the elections that were just held. The New Right is nonetheless eager to celebrate the inauguration, pretending to be blind to these contradictions.
In DC and its suburbs, where everyone pays attention to politics, the juxtaposition between this election and the prior two is palpable. But the real worrying comes from the awareness that this time around Trump is much better prepared. Not only was he able to cement his dominance over the GOP even in the aftermath of January 6th—loyalties were tested and the truth was on the losing side—but Trumpism now has a much more robust base of institutional support. No one will be wandering the hallways of the DC colleges looking to make new hires.
I count five significant shifts since 2016.
First: Trumpism has a robust and legitimate donor base now, complete with plenty of billionaires. Whereas in 2016, Trump’s success came less from the super-PACS and the uber-wealthy and more from smaller contributions, by 2020 there had been a major shift, and by 2024 he was awash in their money. Plus, new actors like Tom Klingenstein, Chairman of the Board of the Claremont Institute, have since arrived on the scene.
Dubbed the New Right, the intellectual movement that now undergirds Trumpism contains multitudes of perspectives and outlooks; the new administration will be well-supplied with arguments for whatever it is they want to do.
This brings us to the second major shift: Trumpism now has a fully-fledged ideological program. In 2016, the Claremont Institute was the only significant conservative institution to get behind Trump—and it did so relatively tepidly—through the pseudonymous mouthpiece of Michael Anton. Since then, the institute has embraced Trump much more tightly, with John Eastman serving as one of Trump’s main legal advisor’s in the lead-up to January 6, 2021, and other leaders at the institute supporting the idea of a stolen election. Claremont-style thinking has also taken over establishments like The Heritage Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and has inspired new groups like the National Conservatism conference (NatCon), the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), American Moment, and related media outposts like American Greatness. In 2016, Michael Anton was a lone voice in the wilderness; now, in addition to being a new hire for the incoming administration, he is just one voice in a cacophonous throng. Dubbed the New Right, the intellectual movement that now undergirds Trumpism contains multitudes of perspectives and outlooks; the new administration will be well-supplied with arguments for whatever it is they want to do.
Third: These various people and institutions have worked together to flesh out a clear policy suite for the incoming administration, which was most fully articulated in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Highly controversial—in the lead-up to the 2024 election, Trump denied knowledge of the plan, which was often labeled “toxic” in the media—Project 2025 was extreme in its rhetoric, and called for major cuts to some parts of the federal bureaucracy, partisan reorientation (or weaponization) of other parts of the government, and a potentially massive purge of federal employees—to be replaced, according to called “Schedule F, by partisan appointees (for a good rundown of these changes, see Thomas Zimmer’s Substack series from February 2024). The new institutions have been compiling lists of potential hires. There are a lot of people in DC who are right to be worried about getting laid off and replaced by Trump loyalists.
The fourth major shift concerns the Christian right, which in 2016 was still somewhat skeptical of Trump, but now is fully behind him. This is partly due to the revivalist rise of the “New Apostolic Reformation,” a growing network of non-denominational charismatic Christians whose leaders have fostered close ties to Trump; but it also has to do with the rise of influencers like Charlie Kirk, and other “TheoBros,” who have increasingly embraced Christian Nationalism (which scholars have defined as an orientation that sees America as distinctly Christian, including in its political spheres, and works to keep it that way—to the disadvantage of other religious minorities and the separation of church and state).
The last big shift concerns Elon Musk’s rise within the Trump world and Trumpism, and the broader trend of a new “tech bro” alliance with the far-right populists. While Peter Thiel was a vocal supporter of the first Trump administration, Musk only formally endorsed Trump shortly after the assassination attempt on the latter last summer, and regularly appeared alongside him during the final weeks of the campaign. Now, Musk appears to have been charged with overseeing the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE—an ad hoc commission announced by President Trump shortly after the election in November. The ultimate purview of this team remains murky, but Musk and company seem poised to advise the incoming administration about spending cuts and the dismantling of parts of the administrative state, key priorities of the new administration’s policy program as discussed above.
Musk and company seem poised to advise the incoming administration about spending cuts and the dismantling of parts of the administrative state.
In the months preceding the election in November, thanks in large part to the switch to Harris, it still felt like Democrats had a chance to win. That hope of course collapsed quickly, and now change is advancing very rapidly indeed. Everyone knows someone who is leaving their job this week, or likely to be out of work soon—not to mention the threats that are coming to far more vulnerable groups than the white-collar workers of the nation’s capital. Whereas in 2016 there was a sense of shock in Washington, accompanied by an immediate imperative to action, this time around, for good reason, the mood is bleaker and more uncertain.
No one is sure what is to come or how bad it will be. But compared to 2016, as we wait in slow motion for the coming shocks, it feels more real and far more long-term. We can see how MAGA has become entrenched on the American right—from the donor base and key thinkers to the policy-makers, religious groups, and tech leaders.
The sobering end of American exceptionalism may ultimately be a good thing—especially if it can awaken Americans to the challenges facing their country.
Given the waves of anti-incumbency sentiment and the rise of the far right around the world, it certainly also feels like the end of American exceptionalism (the idea that America stands apart as a beacon of liberty for the world). This sobering shift may ultimately be a good thing—especially if it can awaken Americans to the challenges facing their country and lead to something deeper and more fruitful than #NeverTrump and #Resistance reaction. Hopefully, all those who oppose Trump’s illiberal populism will hunker down and figure out how to channel their political energy productively, and the second Trump administration will mark the beginning of a hardened political battle for liberal democratic renewal.
Laura K. Field is a Scholar in Residence at American University and Senior Advisor with the Illiberalism Studies Program. She is writing a book on the New Right for Princeton University Press. Find her at @lkatfield.bsky.social, @lkatfield, and https://www.lkfield.com/.
Photo: “Security fencing ahead of Trump’s second inauguration,” by Sdkb licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.