By David Sole
Donald Trump, especially in his second term as president, is an unstable and unreliable agent of the capitalist class in the United States. While some among the ruling elite are worried Trump’s worst excesses might provoke mass rebellion, the billionaires are uniformly thankful that he has provided them with a trillion-dollar tax cut.
But bankers, corporate bosses and billionaires also are concerned with economic stability. As long as Trump’s reactionary policies of racism, anti-LGBTQ discrimination, anti-immigrant hysteria, etc. don’t provoke mass rebellion, the super-rich are not concerned. But when the unleashing of ICE agents drives migrant workers from fields and factories, thus disrupting production, when tariffs on imports create havoc in international trade, when Trump policies result in wild swings in the stock market, that’s when important sections of the ruling class get seriously worried and might start thinking about replacing Trump.
Taking down a demagogue like Trump requires severing him from the ultra-right-wing mass base that took decades to cultivate and grow (with ruling class support). That base is immune from the everyday lies and crimes Trump is guilty of. It will take something uniquely important to the MAGA movement for them to break with their idol.
That’s where Epstein comes in. The Trump movement had been bombarded for years with the Jeffrey Epstein case. Concern over the gross pedophilia of Epstein goes far beyond just MAGA. That he was murdered in prison is also widely believed. But after promising his followers to release all the Epstein files, Trump is now furiously backpedaling. It is highly probable that Trump and many other ruling class figures would be compromised if the massive file of documents were to be made public.
It appears that a significant section of the ruling class has gotten behind the demand to have the files released in an attempt to bring down Trump. They are comfortable with this issue since, unlike issues like Medicaid or union wages, hammering on Epstein will not raise expectations among the masses for economic gains. But the ruling class, or a section of it, is not all powerful. Once having given Trump the levers of power, it is not certain that they can prevail.
Trump, meanwhile, is moving to consolidate his power. Most alarming is the creation of an army of Department of Homeland Security and ICE agents – fully militarized and outside the control of the regular armed forces. Trump’s Big Ugly Bill puts $175 billion into DHS and ICE. The government is offering $50,000 signing bonuses to recruit 10,000 ICE agents who, no doubt, will be chosen with loyalty to Trump as the main criterion. Deportation concentration camps are quickly springing up which easily could be made to also imprison political opponents.
Trump is also brazenly politicizing the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) by calling for the investigation and imprisonment of Democratic Party officials. This consolidation of power is proceeding but could easily cross over to a coup stimulated by a faked “national emergency” like Hitler’s “Reichstag Fire” of 1933.
Opposition to Trump’s illegal and immoral actions is coming from numerous judges around the country. But the Supreme Court majority is mostly giving legal cover to Trump outrages. In some cases Trump is stalling in the courts or even simply ignoring court orders.
The Democratic Party is not uniformly or strongly opposing Trump. This failure is not surprising considering that most of the Democratic Party leadership is firmly controlled by the banks and corporations.
Trade unions have been shockingly inactive, with a few notable exceptions, to the Trump assaults on union rights, civil rights and other attacks on the social gains won by the workers and oppressed people. It has to be remembered that only a little over 11% of the workers in the United States are in unions.
Most of the protests to Trump policies have been coming from grass roots movements that are springing up. As Trump’s outrages mount it can be expected that these protests will grow in size and intensity. There is a certain urgency that the protest movements grow and unify regionally and nationwide to defeat the neo-fascist forces. The peoples’ movements will continue to raise demands that go way beyond the Epstein files to include protection and expansion of unions, civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, education, housing, job programs, halting climate change, an end to imperialist war and militarism, and defense of the Palestinian people. .
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