Mike Pence versus the Cult of Trump

Mike Pence

I have a genuine respect for Mike Pence. While many of those around him abandoned their conservative principles in favor of Trump’s brand of populism, Pence has largely held his ground. His essay “A Republican Time for Choosing,” published in the Wall Street Journal, clearly articulates those principles.

Much of what Pence writes echoes concerns I have raised since Trump first took office — including my recurring unease about the stranglehold our two-party system has on American politics. I won’t rehash those arguments here. But one passage in Pence’s essay deserves particular attention: his invocation of Calvin Coolidge’s 1926 speech in Philadelphia, delivered on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth and their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary.”

Against that backdrop, consider how Trump has chosen to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. A $250 bill bearing his likeness? A proposed “settlement” funneling $1.776 billion in taxpayer money to political allies — since blocked by a federal judge? The plastering of his name across Washington landmarks, including the Kennedy Center, where another federal court has ordered its removal? And then there is the spectacle of the National Mall celebration, where Trump announced himself as the headline act after a string of performers — Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, Young MC, Morris Day and The Time, and The Commodores — declined to participate. Trump dismissed them as “overpriced singers, who nobody wants to hear, whose music is boring,” and declared on social media that he was bringing “the man who some say is the Greatest President in History (THE GOAT!), DONALD J. TRUMP” to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists.’” 

But of course everyone wants to hear a two hour speech by the president!

The Cult of Trump

As Pence observes, Trump’s populism has gradually transformed his movement from a conservative coalition into something more closely resembling a personality cult. The phenomenon is not unique to Trump — it follows the familiar logic of any cult organized around a single charismatic figure. Those who once identified as principled conservatives have, in many cases, jettisoned those principles entirely, endorsing behavior from Trump that they would roundly condemn in any liberal politician.

The conflicts of interest alone should give pause. Trump purchased $5 million in Dell shares, after which Dell was awarded a $9 billion government contract. To MAGA loyalists, this registers as unremarkable. George Will — hardly a Trump sympathizer — put it bluntly: the GOP has “become a cult” whose beliefs are whatever its leader declares, even when those declarations contradict longstanding conservative orthodoxy. As Will noted, Trump’s Republicans have found themselves in agreement with progressive Democrats that the government should be directing the economy — rejecting free trade for protectionism and free markets for state intervention. That his supporters can absorb these contradictions and still find their footing is, at minimum, a feat of considerable cognitive flexibility.

Again TDS reigns on both sides.

What we have, in practice, is whim-driven governance — mercurial, unpredictable, and largely untethered from coherent principle. The tariff policy offers the clearest illustration. The rationale shifts constantly; the targets seem almost random. Allies and adversaries are treated interchangeably. Trade surpluses and deficits seem equally irrelevant. The policy reaches its logical nadir when the president raises tariffs on Switzerland, reportedly because he took offense at the Swiss president’s tone during a phone call.

Recall that Trump told Fox’s Bret Baier, before taking office, that he would be too busy governing to pursue retribution against his enemies. I wrote at the time that this was a lie — a claim that cost me my column at the Knoxville Focus, a local “conservative” weekly. The subsequent record has vindicated the assessment. The Department of Justice has functioned, in no small part, as a Department of Retribution, pursuing more than 48 individuals Trump regards as adversaries — among them E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of sexual assault in the 1990s. The case of John Bolton is particularly instructive: forced into a “settlement” that required him to plead to a felony charge for conduct that, in prior cases involving more serious offenses, had drawn only misdemeanor treatment. That prosecutors continue to push for jail time suggests motivations that are, at best, difficult to distinguish from pure vindictiveness. Bolton, for his part, should have had the judgment to wait until Trump left office before publishing his memoir.

I have long argued that Trump Derangement Syndrome cuts in both directions. His opponents are consumed by a reflexive hostility that distorts their judgment; his supporters are consumed by a reflexive loyalty that does the same. Both are, in their way, cults — one organized around loathing, the other around devotion. Neither is a reliable guide to the truth.