Perhaps the most famous celebrity dynasty, the Kardashians trace their lineage to the attorney Robert Kardashian, a member of the legal ‘Dream Team’ who represented the athlete OJ Simpson during his murder trial. The killing of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994, his attempts to escape arrest, and the following trial, mesmerised a worldwide audience. Major television channels interrupted their scheduled broadcasting to bring gory updates from the trial, advertising rates increased, and the masses of America, along with the millions in her vassal states, tuned in to catch every sordid moment in the downfall of ‘the Juice’.
It was America’s globe-spanning cultural influence that, reaching a zenith by the early nineties, had already seduced the Soviet Union’s leadership to relinquish sovereignty and socialism for Nike trainers and Pizza Hut. When the president of the new Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin met Bill Clinton in 1995, his first question to him was “Do you think OJ did it?” On the face of it, this is an amusing anecdote about a belligerent alcoholic, however, more seriously, it might as well have been an oath of fealty to American cultural suzerainty.
Producers coveted the immense ratings the Simpson trial was pulling compared to their traditional, scripted entertainment. They needed a means to replicate the morbid fascination with human dysfunction, degeneracy and downward trajectory that the trial represented. In the decade that followed, they threw themselves into the emerging genre of reality television, commissioning such classics as Jackass, The Osbournes, The Real Housewives of Orange County, and, if the trial influence wasn’t obvious, Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
One of these programmes was a US version of a show that was popular in Britain called The Apprentice. It follows a troupe of contestants competing to demonstrate their business acumen to an apparently successful and experienced boss figure, who was also the show’s host. Since the first season of The Apprentice in America, producers had stuck Donald Trump, a real estate magnate who had made something of a media career by that point, on TV in front of millions of Americans as the savvy businessman, gloriously firing a succession of yuppie aspirants, such that it became impossible to associate him as anything other than an avatar of American capitalism. There’s a satisfying irony for the people who spawned reality entertainment slop to one day be ruled by someone closer to Simon Cowell than Bill Clinton.
You should remember the confrontation between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. The initial pleasantries, the gradual bubbling of snarky tension, bickering, defensive postures, an uncomfortable language barrier, on an occasion that would ordinarily be a manicured performance of friendship in front of a press conference. Had it been interspersed with some ‘confessional’ footage of the cast members talking about this argument, it would have made prime reality TV.
What is interesting is that finding Trump reprehensible as a leader but nonetheless entertaining to observe and follow, even in a situation as unprecedented as that, is a completely natural reaction to him. He is a reality entertainer by trade. He has contrived his public image for so long, he has effectively become one with the character he portrayed. Your perception of Trump and whether you like or dislike Trump correlates to your tolerance of reality TV, because Trump is the first reality TV president.
His awkward interlocuter Zelensky played a president on the TV series Servant of the People from 2015-19, before Zelensky was elected as the real-life president of Ukraine in 2020. Given his character’s anti-corruption message that catapults him to power on the show, it’s a bit ironic that IRL Zelensky would later be implicated in the Pandora Papers, partnered-up in various shell companies based in tax havens that owned some valuable London real estate. Interestingly, the same year Servant first aired was also the year Donald Trump reneged playing the President in Sharknado 3 in favour of running for office of the actual US president.
It is interesting to compare how the two presidents moved from their respective entertainment careers into politics: Trump from reality TV and Zelensky from televised theatre. The latter became famous playing a liberal-fantasy president, the protagonist in a piece of fiction affirming liberal ideals. He embodies respect for the illustrious institutions of democracy, government accountability, and the rule of law. There’s a nobility to be found in a superficial reading of his life: a plucky hero, who once told jokes for a living, and now leads his country through a horrific crisis brought about by an ‘End of History’ complacency once championed by his loudest commentariat fanboys. He is the unassailably honourable and pure leader in the eyes of fawning western media.
You can observe this kind of reverence for the liberal warrior-politico in the ruling elite here in Britain. Our people have long come to terms with generationally deteriorating prospects, decreasing social trust, rats infesting the streets, fag-ends and shit covering our shores, waiting for the shop assistant to remove the security tag from a block of cheese. The political class, perhaps conceding an inability to reverse the country’s decline, remain magnetised instead on the theatrical: strutting about Westminster and Downing Street in front of the rows of cameras, before the cabinet meetings to decide on the next august gesture to enact in response to a television show. It is natural for our political and media class to therefore support Zelensky, as the ultimate act of ministerial theatre, a chance to charge the ruddy levies to the rescue of a heroic leader, like the climax of some Tolkeinite narrative.
By contrast, Trump is the Dark Lord of the corn-fed lumpens, once the manufacturing force of the country, outsourced decades ago. Millions of dispossessed Americans who could be swept away by hurricane or covid or fentanyl, with nobody in power really noticing. As the former industrial provinces atrophied, nourished with the slop of right-wing ‘infotainment’ commentary and unpasteurised reality entertainment, their people articulated new and terrifying narratives on their own existence. It became clear that their masters had not simply relegated them to the status of bovine consumers and cannon fodder, but were actively conspiring to consolidate their power and remould civilisation to some unspeakably evil design— Satanism, the New World Order, QAnon, Pizzagate; 5G demons and adrenochrome rituals inside the Clinton Foundation. These became the lumpen heuristics for those wrestling with a harsh existence in the drip tray of America, to convince themselves—understandably if wrongfully— it was outright malice from their elite, rather than contempt, that put them there.
Trump became ‘their guy’ because he was distinct from the caste of sanctimonious career politicians and cold technocrats that would usually run for president. By being frankly contemptuous towards the traditional institutions of liberal democracy, usually only when they were used to oppose him, he could unite the gamut of people who distrusted, feared, hated or did not understand them. After decades of portraying the character of a successful businessman who makes tough decisions and important deals, and who spoke in a kind of illiterate vernacular, he became a cathectic object for millions of angry Americans who fantasied about ‘firing’ their hated liberal elites first and figuring out what to do next later. With each attempt to discredit him, the liberal establishment legitimised Trump as a natural leader of the forgotten millions who had grown to hate them. The entire political and legal structure of the republic tried to imprison him for paying a porn star to keep schtum about his infidelity to his glamour model wife. He was found guilty of a felony, and he still walked away to be re-elected as president.
Whilst pearl-clutching liberals, geographically and culturally insulated from the post-industrial wastelands of America, predicted these scandalous proceedings would have destroyed Trump’s chances of winning, you can only cast your mind back to 2016 and how previous attempts to draw attention to Trump’s sordid personal nature, ended-up boosting his credibility among a nation that has watched sleazy figures rise to the top of television prominence for decades.
To claim Trump is merely a reality star would, however, be underselling his significance. Unlike most people in reality television, Trump was already a billionaire. His lavish lifestyle and erratic business ventures may have incentivised making a TV persona as a source of income, but that is one option for generating liquidity out of a plethora he already had. It was a choice for him to appear on TV, to become the ‘business guy’ in the popular consciousness. Trump made the decision to build off of reality entertainment because he would get more out of it than it got out of him. Trump is less of a reality star and more like a reality artist. Our reality is just a canvas for his composition.
Trump has long been a focus for art criticism. Notable pieces include ‘Presiding Over the White House Fast Food Buffet’ (2019), photographed by Joyce N. Boghosian. The juxtaposition of vulgar, oily, unwholesome food in familiar colourful packaging, meticulously stacked and arranged on silver trays by a swarm of aides, amidst the sterile, prestigious opulence of the presidential palace makes for a compelling image. George Baker, professor of art history at UCLA, notes the contrast in the background portrait of Abraham Lincoln, deep in contemplation, whilst Trump stands below, gurning at the viewer, arms and hands open, in a pose reminiscent of the crucifixion of Christ.
Critics would point to photographer Evan Vucci’s iconic images of Trump immediately after his attempted assassination in 2024 as the image that cemented his election in that same year. The composition of the nameless Secret Service agents around Trump acting as a frame; the linear streaks of blood along his face mimicking the stipes of the American flag above, contemplating mortality. Trump emerges, almost drowning in his bodyguards, bloodied and terrified but alive. A moving display of Man’s will to survive.
Some may find it fatuous to discuss Trump in terms of artistic expression. The man is in control of the most powerful nation on the planet, whose decisions can and do shape and break the lives of millions across the globe. He certainly did not become president for the sake of posing in a few iconic photographs. Consider, however, Trump’s Mein Kampf, The Art of The Deal. In reality, the book was composed largely by a ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, who wrote a cover story in New York about Trump going to bizarre lengths to unsuccessfully evict rent-controlled tenants from a building he had purchased. Fittingly, Trump was so impressed with the negative article Schwartz had written, he framed the cover in his office and invited Schwartz to write his memoirs for him, splitting the publisher’s advance and royalties evenly. The breakout success of The Art of The Deal seems to serve as a source of pride for Trump since it was published in 1987. In 2014, he tweeted this revelatory meditation:
“Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.”
Trump’s art truly is the deal. The bigger the deal the better, like he says. And what deals can be bigger than the deals that will reset the course of American history? For Trump, breaking down and reshaping the most powerful country in the world is an exercise of artistic expression.
Joe Biden started a break from hitherto unshakeable free trade dogma and set the foundations for a return to state-directed industrial policy. He achieved in essence what Trump told his supporters he would achieve when he first won the election in 2016. The Democrats had the opportunity to argue the case for a continued economic nationalism and win or lose the support of ordinary Americans on that platform. Instead, they couped their winning leader because the hostile media could make fun of him for being old, phoned-in Kamala Harris and defrosted the 2016 culture war from a position of weakness.
The Democrats sought to beat Trump by giving him an opponent he could easily defeat. Such familiar contempt emanating from a supremely unpopular career politician of the Democratic right wing, once again, drove disgruntled Americans onto a Trump train careening into the White House. Perhaps they could still have had a prayer of winning, were they not bipartisan and ‘realistic’ on continuing to arm Israel with bombs for a year-long campaign of genocidal vengeance. When it came down to it, Trump offered a gamble whilst the Democrats offered vapidity. The Democrats deserved to lose more than Trump deserved to win.
Trump must feel he owes some of his success to his mephitic sycophant, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter/X. Trump’s deal with him is one of many that will change America’s destiny for generations. It is true that Musk has immense influence, and is consistently proven correct about his platform shaping global news. The man is also clearly suffering from social media addiction and is chronically, devastatingly, unfunny. More importantly, he is blatant in abusing his status as a special advisor to the president to advance his private business interests. Remember, he is an unelected United States government official, at the president’s side no less, who owns one of the largest social media platforms in the world, which has unsurprisingly been found to be giving its owner a significantly disproportionate reach than other accounts. You would think he was some slick and mysterious figure. Instead, he prances about on a stage in a stupid t-shirt for the adulation of engagement-farming accounts based in India called things like “Immortal America” and “Anti-Woke West”. He christened his Trump administration sinecure after a dead meme-cum-crypto scam he pushed on his moronic followers.
The Department of Government Efficiency is an immense ideological reshaping of the American federal state. On a purely symbolic level, it is a victory for the Trump administration, tearing up the ‘woke liberal bureaucracy’. On the practical side, the left, especially outside of the United States, can feel a justified glee witnessing America shoot itself in the foot, and cut its genuinely evil and downright weird soft power initiatives it uses to try and stoke violent unrest within its foreign rivals. That said, it is also equally disturbing that Musk has cut vital civil services ordinary Americans need, in what can only be described as national sabotage. Forest fire protection, hurricane tracking, education, all cut, leaving the US practically and developmentally more vulnerable.
It is impossible to understate how positive it is for the world for USAID to be slashed. It also needs to be pointed out that, after Biden’s efforts to bring about a soft economic nationalism, the Trump administration pledging tax cuts, funded by cutting vital services and scientific investment, amounts to pillaging the state. Musk himself made his fortune, not so much through technology as he likes to pretend, but through finance platforms during the late-nineties dot-com bubble. His success would have been completely impossible, were it not for state-directed development in technology that allowed for, among others: smartphones, electric vehicles, and especially the Internet. Indeed, Tesla would be a recipient of government loans under the Obama administration, who likely figured a consumer electric vehicles industry would be useful to have in future. Musk is obviously aware of this, and has been abusing his position as a special advisor to try and secure lucrative government contracts, damage his rivals, and flaunts freedom of information requests, that would likely expose the numerous conflicts-of-interest at play here, whilst putting out irrelevant whataboutery that all government information should be public.
It’s very easy to cringe witnessing Musk’s LARPing as a savvy businessman chainsawing bureaucracy for top kek, but funding a cash grab for the rich by taking from the poor has a distinct whiff of pre-revolutionary France, and could generate increasing instability in the United States. As Musk’s time in DOGE comes to an end, he can now step away from responsibility after his norm-defying, possibly illegal mass firings have gutted swathes of the civil service. It helps Trump be rid of a drain on his own popularity charisma vacuum, whose political backing for now appears more harmful than helpful.
Trump’s public beef with Zelensky is another part of his counter-productive deals to reshape the American empire. Whilst Trump is telling Zelensky to end the war with Russia and repay the aid his country received by giving America access to its mineral resources, he makes semi-serious designs around annexing Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal. This realignment of American foreign policy focuses more on locking-down the Western Hemisphere, and tells Europe to fend for itself, as Trump makes statements that America may not defend allies that ‘don’t pay enough’ into their own defence.
This has caused, to put it mildly, quite a stir across Europe, who had looked to the United States as its main security guarantor. As Trump threatens to rescind this protection, whether as some cynical negotiation tactic or a sincere realignment, the inevitable result will be increased military spending across Europe. This will inevitably come at the expense of the already-declining living standards of ordinary working people. This also raises questions for the future of the ‘Eurobloc’.
Whilst readers will no doubt be familiar with the United States’ interests in undermining development of a rival power such as China, it is worth also keeping in mind that Europe is another (subservient) rival to be kept in check. The Biden administration skilfully played the Russian invasion of Ukraine to their advantage in Europe. Sanctions and fuel supply shortages, coupled with the improved state-led development in America, pushed European capital to relocate to the US. The European ruling classes made no serious move to counter this, likely because they could not, and perhaps out of belief this was a worthwhile price for the American largesse that would protect them if and when push came to shove.
As Trump shatters any promise of protection in exchange for vassalage, several European leaders, including Keir Starmer, have made bold pledges to continue to support Ukraine, and guarantee their own security. Whilst this is largely bluster for the moment— Britain’s steel industry currently hangs by a thread and goes round a carousel of overseas owners, the Royal Navy has more admirals than ships, etc.— the most likely way out for countries like Britain, Germany and France is years and billions spent rearming. When that is eventually realised, and Europe does pay for its own defence, bluntly, why would they need to do what America says?
Finally, we must critique the art of Trump’s tariff deals. As alluded earlier, synchronous with the rise of reality entertainment, a third of American manufacturing jobs were lost from 1999-2009. This followed the admission of China into the World Trade Organisation and the establishment of free trade relations under the Clinton administration. American factories did not survive the subsequent free market trial by fire. Millions of people leaving high school suddenly lost their chance at the well-paid, respected, unionised jobs their parents had had, and could find only desperate work in non-unionised, service jobs. They quite understandably fell into Trump’s messaging about how he was going to bring jobs back to America, or at the very least, wanted to give the middle finger to a political establishment who’d ruined their lives. In a normal situation, tariffs would work, indeed, they would probably have saved American industry had they struck whilst the iron was hot in 2000. However, decades have passed, and America’s capitalist class sold up and mothballed the domestic factories they would need to make these tariffs work.
This would be the moment for Trump to announce historic levels of state investment into manufacturing and make good on his key economic promise: the government breaking with free trade dogma once and for all, and bringing jobs back to America. The problem is the Trump movement, more particularly, the ghouls surrounding Trump, are too busy looting the state. They have a psychotic aversion to any and every case of government spending, no matter how sensible. They want to cut funding to the agency in charge of maintaining museums. A soft economic nationalism, a few shades bolder to what Biden had been developing, to return vital infrastructure, would therefore be tantamount to communism in their eyes. So Trump immediately flakes it on tariffs, and the result is a few Wall Street short sellers hit the jackpot whilst millions of ordinary people continue to be let down by the same class of plutocrats who, in fairness, never cared for them to begin with.
If you had to describe an ideology of Donald Trump’s administration, you might call it ‘anti-neoliberal neoliberalism’. Its stated goals run counter to what is enacted. Trump got into power, both times now, presenting himself as a conservative who recognises the failures of neoliberalism. He has spent his time as president enriching the wealthiest people in society, funnelling the money ‘saved’ from cutting forest fire prevention and hurricane warnings into tax cuts and bomb funds for Israel. Trump proclaims the world will be brought back in line with American interests, whilst destroying American soft and hard power. Trump promises to protect living standards and reignite American industry with some of the most eye-watering tariffs in living memory, he reverses tariffs immediately after a possible ‘pump and dump’ scheme. In a sense, this is expressed by the recurring internet meme of the MAGA Trump supporter receiving his ‘fell for it again award’. Trump supporters voted for a Cool Boss figure to fire the liberal establishment and return America to its postwar, industrially driven prosperity. They did not vote for foreign tech billionaires to enrich themselves further at their expense. This dissonance in Trump’s messaging versus his impact can remind you of the way left wing groups claim to represent solidarity whilst their activity is preoccupied almost exclusively with internecine denunciation, a tendency to eulogise political radicalism when it appears in history or abroad but quickly disown it when it appears near home.
In Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle summarised Trump’s appeal as “an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom” using the line from Baudelaire’s Voyage. Post-2024, and this still rings true for the Trump project. I would submit his leadership, once distilled from his personality and measured in terms of his self-described artistic expression through dealmaking, should be likened to Mishima’s “beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
The situation for ordinary Americans will likely take a turn for the worse. The political aesthetics of protectionism and ‘bringing jobs back’ are being wed to a demented project, led by right wing troglodytes with an ideological revulsion to the investment needed to make good on their promise. In the same way Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders presented natural ramps to democratic socialist relief after an economic crisis, which were successfully sabotaged and stolen from us by the ruling class, so too has economic nationalism been hampered and perverted by capitalists who see the state in the same way a Las Vegas card sharp sees a gambling addict.
Outside of America, Trump’s rumblings on foreign policy will mean years of insane budgets trying to catch up on defence spending. There is likely much celebration in the boardrooms of arms companies across Europe, and if political resistance from the organised working class is not sufficient, ordinary people will be left to foot a confiscatory weapons bill whilst social housing and benefits programmes further deteriorate. If Europe does rearm, it remains to be seen how a strong Europe jives with an America that is in no position to order them about.
One thing that must be said, is that Trump has made politics interesting again. It is tragic it has to be this way. But Trump is an artist, and his art is the deal. For art, truly beautiful art, to have meaning, it must involve suffering.
Some residents on the Pacific coast report nights with a faint westerly breeze, the evening’s serenity broken by the distinct sound of laughing and champagne flutes clinking together following meetings of the Beijing Politburo.
James Meechan is an editor of Challenge
