The last time we talked about the communist tactics of Donald Trump, it was in the context of economics. In an interview with me, Patrick W. Watson, a senior analyst for Mauldin Economics, explained how the policies we are seeing coming out of the White House are the policies that would normally be associated with command economies.
“The way business leaders are frantically begging Trump for favors and the almost openly corrupt way in which he is granting them is, in effect, government taking control of the means of production,” he said.
But those communist tactics go beyond economics. The president’s assault on free speech, a free press, the legal profession and private enterprise – put these together, as US Senator Chris Murphy has, and you have an enormous contraction of individual rights and liberty, and an enormous expansion of what conservatives used to called statism.
“If journalists are constantly looking over their shoulders and unable to report on the truth; if protest is suppressed, even moderately, at universities; if lawyers start providing cover, instead of uncovering corruption and illegality; if companies start being mouthpieces for the regime as a price of doing business – if all that happens, we are not a real democracy,” Murphy said last month. “We are a fake democracy.”
Murphy isn’t alone. His GOP colleague, US Senator Rand Paul, appears to be in the throes of recognizing what’s going on. After a tariff meeting with Donald Trump, he told NOTUS that “most of it was Republican senators congratulating him, wishing him well as the industrial czar and pleading for exemptions to the tariffs for their people.”
“It reminded me of a meeting on industrial policy in the Soviet Union, where you have to be nice to the czar, because if you are not nice to the czar, they’ll bequeath exceptions to the iron fist,” Paul said.
Making matters worse is the upside down, backwards and prolapsed nature of the president’s propaganda. Here, for instance, is that White House putz Stephen Miller, explaining why the regime must use communist tactics – enforcing correct words and correct thinking and correct values – in order to fight, wait for it, “communist ideology.”
“Children will be taught to love America,” Miller said. “Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding. So as we close the Department of Education and provide funding to states, we’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.”
Then there’s the fact that the “communist ideology” they don’t like isn’t communism at all. It is the set of values etched into the Declaration of Independence, namely that “all men are created equal.” That’s the problem for Miller. He doesn’t want the government and the law to serve everyone equally, to treat everyone equally. For him, there are inpeople deserving of protection and there are outpeople deserving of punishment. Any attempt to bridge the difference is “communist.”
For more, I reached out to Joe Walsh, the radio host and podcaster who is entitled to the claim of being the most anti-Trump conservative of all anti-Trump conservatives in America. He has recently gotten into the habit of sharing posts from the Editorial Board. So I got in touch and he kindly accepted an invitation to a brief interview with me.
JS: Is there a market for limited government or is that principle too old-fashioned these days? Maybe liberals should take it up again?
JW: I think there’s an opening for, and a market for, efficient government. Government that works. Philosophically, I’m a limited government guy, and I believe a smaller government is more efficient and works better, but in today’s world where both the left and now the MAGA right advocate an expansionist, activist government, I think the push should be for efficient, effective government that works.
JS: Trump called for government ownership of coal mining. If that isn’t “taking control of the means of production,” I don’t know what is.
JW: Trump represents the MAGA right view of big government. Your direct ownership of coal mining is just one example. Trump and the MAGA right want to use and expand government to achieve their aims. Which is antithetical to a libertarian like me. Heck, MAGA wants to use government to turn America formally into a Christian nationalist country. Scary stuff.
JS: Maybe the Cold War never ended?
JW: No, I think Russia lost the Cold War, then laid low for years, and waited for one of our two major political parties to become an arm of the Russian government. And because of that, because Trump is at best a useful idiot and at worst a Russian asset, Russia is ascending. The authoritarian impulse animates this Republican Party, hence a lot of Republican support for Putin.
JS: Republicans have spent 40 years using the word “communist.” Is that why no one can see that Trump’s tactics are communist?
JW: Spot on about communism. Trump’s tactics are in fact communist. Many Republican elected officials do see this but turn the other way. Because the base of the party embraces these communist tactics. Again, so much of this can be attributed to the fact that the right had always had a thing for authoritarianism.
JS: Solzhenitsyn said the lie is the pillar of the state. Sounds right to me.
JW: Completely agree with “the lie is the pillar of the state.” I’ve said for years now that Trump’s greatest legacy is the destruction of truth. We now have a situation where one of our two major political parties is completely untethered to truth. Trump succeeded. He succeeded in 2020. Even though he lost the election, he won in that he convinced the vast majority of Republicans that he won.