“I learnt a new word just after the election: ‘kakistocracy’”, says Roberta Haar, herself an American, in her office at University College Maastricht. “It means government by the least suitable, most unscrupulous people. Right now, the only requirement for a job in the US government seems to be: do you love Trump?”
It’s incompetence, she says, combined with a total lack of empathy and a desire for self-enrichment, that underpins many of today’s policy decisions. “Why does Trump want to relax crypto regulations? Because he and his wife both have their own ‘meme coin’ [crypto coin that is inspired by internet trends]. Or take the decision to cut off USAID [the principal US agency for international aid] – a cruel move that will cost lives, but also an illogical and self-defeating one. If you want to reduce migration, it won’t help to withdraw aid from the very regions migrants are coming from. And viruses don’t recognise borders. More cases of for example HIV/AIDS in Africa will mean more cases in the US.”
Genuine pain
And yes, says Haar, part of why Trump appealed to American voters was because he’s a “norm-buster”. “But I’m not sure this is what they had in mind. There’s a lot of genuine pain in the American heartland [the sparsely populated, largely rural central region of the country]. Globalisation was good for the stock markets, but not for the small towns that lost their industries to countries like China. People there can no longer make a decent living, and that leads to frustration and a loss of dignity. Trump struck a chord with them, but a lot of people only saw in him what they wanted to see.”
Even those voters are now starting to feel the negative impact of Trump’s policies. Haar points to a fund set up by Trump’s predecessor Biden to combat inflation. “Much of that money went to Republican states. Now that Trump has frozen those funds, those projects might be in trouble as well. Republicans are all in favour of small government, but perhaps not if it affects their piece of the pie.”
Far right
What worries Haar is how openly far right the people around Trump are this time around. “There was always an aspect of racism in the people around Trump, but before, you also had people like former Vice President Mike Pence, who weren’t as openly offensive. Now we’ve got Musk allegedly giving a Hitler salute and Vice President JD Vance telling Europeans off at last week’s Munich Security Conference for not embracing far-right politicians.”
She was also taken aback by Trump’s handling of peace negotiations over the war in Ukraine. “He gave Putin everything he wanted before the negotiations even began. Does he realise how weak that makes him look?”
Resistance
The question is whether any of this will lead to resistance. Haar sighs. “In 2016, when Trump was first elected president, there were plenty of Republican members of Congress who opposed him. Now, hardly any remain. The Democrats seem paralysed – they have no idea what to do. And the courts move at a glacial pace. On top of that, we have a Supreme Court that is receptive to arguments in favour of expanding executive power.”
Haar hopes – but at the same time dreads – that something will happen that will go too far for other Republicans. “Something that will make Trump voters and members of Congress say, ‘Enough is enough.’ But I fear it will take something catastrophic, like bird flu spreading to humans on a large scale or a major terrorist attack.”
Europe
What role does Europe play in all this? “Europe should finally get it together, starting with increasing its defence spending. America has been fed up with being Europe’s military safety net since the 1970s, long before Trump. The European Union should have taken serious steps when Russia annexed Crimea more than ten years ago. Poland did, and now its army has doubled in size and is the third largest army in NATO, after the US and Turkey. The EU defence budget is around €326 billion – no small amount, but only about a third that of the US, and it’s spent inefficiently.”
Beyond that, strong leadership is needed, Haar argues, both in the US and in Europe. “We need people who emphasise the importance of having allies, who insist on upholding international law, who don’t believe that those in power are always right and who want to help the most vulnerable in society. Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, gave me hope that he could be such a person when he flat out told Vance that his interference in the German elections was unacceptable. And in the US, we need someone who understands the pain of the heartland, someone who can be a president for everyone. I would have liked to see Gretchen Whitmer [the Democratic Governor of Michigan] run for office.”