Donald Trump doesn’t like the Koch Brothers. This should come as no surprise. Trump always operates based on three generalized assumptions:
The establishment is bad.
The status quo is bad.
He’s the victim.
The Koch Brothers are about as “establishment” as you can get.
Trump’s pedigree as an outsider railing against the corrupt proletariat (to use the old-line communist term for it) goes back a long way. Let’s look at some of the evidence:
His antipathy toward former President Barack Obama is well-documented. Whether it’s because of his racial heritage or the fact that he remains a beloved figure by millions of Americans, Trump clearly can’t stand the guy. He not only spread lies about his birthplace, he also called him “one of the worst presidents, maybe in the history of our country” and made the outlandish claim that “he founded ISIS” (the terrorist group, not the Egyptian goddess).
One might expect Trump to attack the leader of the opposition. But what’s striking is how readily and how often he disparages members of his own party. Not only is this counterintuitive, but it breaks what’s known in Republican circles as the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Those words were uttered by none other than the most venerated Republican of the 20th century – at least within GOP circles: Ronald Reagan, the man nearly every GOP candidate sought to emulate for nearly four decades.
Trump’s bad blood with the Bush family (which is about as “establishment” as you can get: two presidents and a governor) runs so deep that neither former president voted for him in 2016 – even though they belong to the same party. Trump called the younger Bush’s decision to invade Iraq “the single worst decision ever made.”
Trump also attacked the Republican Party’s most well-known and, arguably, most revered senator, John McCain, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
And in 2016, he called Mitt Romney “one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.” In short, he’s disparaged his own party’s last three presidential nominees in the kind of vicious terms usually reserved for enemies of the state.
But he didn’t stop with those in government. The NFL, the pinnacle of corporate success in the sports world, and the Koch Brothers, perhaps the party’s most reliable and generous donors in recent years, were next.
Perpetual outsider
Trump’s distaste for the establishment is deep-seated. He’s been on the outside looking in much of his life. He was a developer in Queens who wanted to succeed in Manhattan. He was the owner of a spring football league team who wanted to play with the big boys in the NFL. (The owners kept him out; is it any wonder he’s trying to make life miserable for them now?)
It would be easy – and probably accurate, on some level – to view Trump’s heavy-handed approach to the presidency as the work of a control freak with authoritarian tendencies. But there’s more to it than that. Trump has spent so much time on the outside, he doesn’t know how to be an insider. More than that, he doesn’t want to be. He wants to refashion the presidency in his own image, not just because he’s a know-it-all with a massive ego (he is), but also because he doesn’t trust the establishment.
If it appears that Trump is a threat to the nation’s institutions, it’s because he doesn’t value them. He looks at them with suspicion as the instruments those in power used for so long to suppress his “superior” way of doing things. He might pay lip service to the Constitution, but he has no interest in maintaining the prestige of the presidency. He doesn’t care about old money or old ideas; he has his own way of doing things, and it’s “modern-day presidential.”
He tweeted that.
So, what is Trump’s way of doing things? About the only thing consistent about his philosophy, other than the economic protectionism that inspired the current trade war with China, is its volatility.
The fact that the establishment wants to “keep things the way they are” helps explain why Trump is so hostile to the status quo. But his impulse to cause chaos goes beyond that. Trump needs chaos in order to feel comfortable, so if there isn’t an enemy to fight, he creates one ... either by goading someone into getting down in the gutter with him or manufacturing a conflict where none existed before. The endgame: to depict himself as the victor, whether or not he truly accomplished anything.
The national anthem controversy with the NFL, the “Merry Christmas” crusade and the summits with foreign leaders all pit Trump against an adversary he can claim to have bested, whether not he’s actually done so. In the end, it doesn’t matter. He’s amassed a loyal enough following that those who believe in him will continue to do so, no matter how outlandish the claim. (This is, by the way, undoubtedly why loyalty is so important to Trump: It’s a necessary bulwark against those pesky things called facts and data. Climate change. Obama’s birth certificate. The size of his inaugural crowd. The list goes on and on.)
Trump’s insistence on upending the status quo, for good or ill, perpetuates his victimhood. He gets to depict himself as the much-maligned underdog who somehow comes out on top. That’s an archetype that resonates with a lot of Americans. Whether or not it truly applies to a billionaire real estate developer and reality show host, he’s convinced them that it does, and that’s all that matters.
He gets to be the victim and be “winning” at the same time. Talk about chaotic.
Whither conservatism?
The irony about Trump’s approach is that it isn’t conservatism. Not only has Trump badmouthed, at one time or another, most of the senior figures in the Republican Party, he’s turned the GOP on its head. Conservatism generally defends the status quo, but Trump has challenged it at every turn, defying party orthodoxy on everything from tariffs to Russia; depicting enemies as friends and vice versa. There’s a good reason many see Trump’s tactics as something out of George Orwell’s 1984: He hasn’t just changed the equation, he’s inverted it.