Much More Minus Trump, by Robert Gore

Trump may not be the fifth face on Mt. Rushmore.

President Trump has betrayed what he considered his own movement, but which has always been “Much More Than Trump.” MAGA is fractured; minus Trump the underlying movement will be stronger than it is now. There are millions of Americans who fear the government and despise the so-called elites who control it. Their number only grows.

There is a strong possibility that Trump doesn’t finish out his term, and he may be gone by the end of next year. If he is removed from office, it will amplify the disgust and hatred many of his supporters and former supporters feel towards the government and the ruling caste. Those who have always hated Trump will have their revenge, but their victory will be Pyrrhic.

Trump’s has helped dispel the illusion that America’s problems, most of which trace back to government, can be solved by more government. That illusion still grips many in the opposition, which appears set to capitalize on Trump’s downfall. They are in for their own disillusionment as they discover that stones yield no blood; something can’t be had for nothing. Polarization will increase; the divide between the rulers and the ruled will widen. The last chance of peaceful revolution having failed with Trump’s “revolution” that wasn’t, some sort of violent schism is likely.

The Middle East and Israel have bedeviled presidents since Truman. If it had no oil, the Middle East would be a desert backwater, an oxymoron. The U.S. has plenty of oil and natural gas. It could buy Middle East oil when prices were favorable and otherwise stay out of the region. However, there is the relationship with Israel, which gets far more from it than the U.S. That’s intolerable from a business perspective, but it’s a political necessity for Trump. The relationship could destroy Trump’s presidency if the two countries wage war on Iran. Given Iran’s ties with Russia and China, such a war could escalate to World War III.

“The Turnaround,” Robert Gore, SLL, 3/1/25

The relationship with Israel, the war on Iran, and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, all interrelated, are destroying Trump’s presidency. The known details of Epstein’s operation are sordid. Trump’s failure to make full disclosure and his continuing attempts to divert attention feed the natural human inclination to suspect the worst. One well-founded suspicion is that the operation was sponsoredby Mossad, perhaps working with American intelligence, to collect blackmail material on powerful people, including Trump.

Another well-founded suspicion is that Trump was blackmailed by the Israelis into waging war on Iran. A more benign explanation is that he was bribed with donations from wealthy Jews. Either way—and it may well be both—the war on Iran has not gone as planned or advertised. In Iran, Trump has bear-hugged a tar baby from which it’s become increasingly difficult to free himself. His only recourse now is either surrender and retreat from the Middle East or escalation that could go nuclear.

Trump would give his right hand for the status quo that prevailed on February 27 of this year, the day before he and the Israelis launched their attack on Iran. The Strait of Hormuz was open; Iran disavowed any nuclear weapons ambitions; its nuclear program had sustained unknown but significant damage from Trump and the Israelis’ 12-day war last year, and the Iranian government still expressed willingness to negotiate with the U.S., notwithstanding the 12-day war. Trump would give his right arm for the status quo that prevailed on May 7, 2018, the day before he withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear agreement signed by the Obama administration.

Unfortunately, neither status quo is attainable. Iran would never agree to the JCPOA’s conditions now. Contrary to Trump’s assurances, the Iran war has not been a couple-of-weeks affair. Decapitation strikes took out a substantial portion of Iran’s leadership, but also created a martyr in Supreme Leader Ali Khameni. The Iranians have rallied around their government; Khameni’s funeral proceedings drew tens of millions of Iranians. They have proven they can both take it and dish it out, damaging or destroying a number of key military installations, oil facilities, and infrastructure in Persian Gulf states, Jordan, and Israel. They’ve exercised their non-nuclear “nuclear option,” closing the Strait of Hormuz, and their Houthi allies have essentially closed the Red Sea’s Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.

Time is on the Iranians side. They no longer take either Trump’s threats (TACO) or his attempts to negotiate (agreement incapable) seriously. They’re making fun of his catering cart escapade in Turkey. Unless the U.S. and Israel use nuclear weapons (which can’t be ruled out), Iran has achieved escalation dominance. U.S. and Israel stocks of weapons are running low, while Iran appears to be replenishing its expended weaponry. With both straits closed and the havoc that’s been wreaked in the Middle East, the bell tolls for Western economies, financial markets, mountains of debt and derivatives, fiat currencies, and political stability.

The U.S has elections in less than three months. The Iranians won’t rescue Trump with a deal that ameliorates the economic and financial threats or with a military triumph that Trump can trumpet as ultimate victory. They’re out for vengeance and blood. There’s no end to the mischief they could inflict between now and then. Their Chinese and Russian buddies might join in the fun. Trump’s recklessness, lies, ego, bullying, subservience to Israel, decapitation strikes, and broken agreements have earned him billions of enemies. Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18, KJV). His enemies will take immense satisfaction from his destruction and fall.

Electoral disaster would leave the dwindling remnant of Trump faithful with less than nothing. If the Democrats win House and Senate majorities, they’ll start the impeachment machinery running minutes after they take their oaths of office in January. Unlike their failed attempts during his first term, this time they’ll have a substantial case and receipts.

One more tale out of last week demonstrates the president’s continuing willingness to enrich his family and supporters out of behavior that is generally conceded to be illegal “insider trading.” It has frequently been observed how the president has a tendency to make pronouncements of a political or economic nature on Mondays and Fridays, i.e. to impact on the opening and closing of Wall Street and other investment markets. Investors armed with that advanced information can and have benefited financially greatly by playing the predictable surges caused by White House actions. Those with prior knowledge of what is going to happen benefit particularly, to include Trump personally and his family.

In the latest version of that reality, Trump is selling through his family company Trump Media & Technology Group early access to premium data product released on its new subscription service to his Truth Social posts, where the pronouncements will appear. The cost is $100,000 per month to investors, who will then be able to benefit substantially from the shifts in the stock market. So far five investor firms have signed up and its is [sic] already expected that Trump personally will benefit directly from his ownership share of Truth Social distribution to the tune of 41% of the $6 million of existing committed revenue. Critics have observed that Trump “must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.”

In conclusion and ironically, Trump sometimes boasts how he accepts no government salary as president but in 2025 he declared “more than $2 billion in personal income last year—nearly quadruple his 2024 total—with the bulk flowing from ventures that sit directly at the intersection of his office and his balance sheet. He earned roughly $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency alone, including $635 million in royalties from his $TRUMP meme coin and more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture run by his sons.”

“Another Strange Week in Trumpland,” (LINK) Philip Giraldi, 8/5/26

If, by that time, financial markets have crashed, the economy has tanked, and Trump can’t spin humiliating and debilitating defeat in the Middle East as victory, some Republicans may join the Democrats in voting Trump out of office. Giving him a pass on his and his family’s financial self-dealing would be political suicide. Trump may be so toxic that J.D. Vance might not grant a pardon. Having become a liability, Israel and the Jewish lobby would abandon him. The “greatest president ever” could wind up in prison. Cancel that addition to Mt. Rushmore.

Trump rode a wave of loathing for the government and so-called elites that’s been building for decades. He threw his supporters a few bones but implemented the same agenda as his predecessors—he made the government bigger, more powerful, and more in debt. Americans’ individual liberties have dwindled to virtually nothing. The surveillance state he’s green-lighted, well on its way to full implementation, will reduce most Americans to slavery within a digital panopticon (see “Technototalitarianism,” Parts One, Two, and Three).

The worst is yet to come for MAGA, many of whom are already bitterly disillusioned. Trump will be the last of the Baby Boom presidents. Not surprisingly, the Baby Boom’s progeny are embracing what they’ve been taught in government schools: collectivism—more government—is the answer to all problems. What they haven’t been taught: many of those problems stem from the collectivism prior generations embraced.

A brief detour into political philosophy is in order. At root, it is the answer to the question: Who owns one’s life, the collective or the individual? If the answer is the former, you get one of many “isms” that are all variations of collectivism—the belief that the individual is subservient to the collective, usually embodied as its government. The ultimate “ism” is unimportant, but quibbling over labels employs political theorists and obscures the truth that people don’t own their own lives.

Throughout history, collectivism has been the mode of political organization. A non-collectivist ideal—. . . that all Men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed . . .—is more remote now than it was when the Declaration of Independence was penned.

Collectivism is institutionalized crime. Crime has perpetrators and victims. MAGA will be the chief victims of the communist collectivism (as opposed to the mainstream nanny-, welfare-, and warfare-state collectivism accepted by virtually everyone for over a century) finding favor among some elements of the electorate, particularly the younger generations. This cohort despises Trump and everything MAGA represents. However, the productive elements within or formerly within MAGA will be expected to provide the goodies the collectivists are promising themselves. These collectivists will, of course, embrace technototalitarianism to keep the slaves in line.

Enslavement never works because slaves don’t produce much, only a small fraction of what free people produce for themselves in free markets. Exacerbating the problem for this generation of collectivists are $40 trillion of U.S. government debt and hundreds of trillions of unfunded liabilities from the collectivist promises of past generations. The cupboards are as bare as the shelves of Soviet grocery stores were and those of Mayor Mamdani will be. Decades of economic idiocy can’t be erased by more idiocy. This sets up epic disappointment for those counting on more government-provided freebies, who instead will be presented the bill for previous generations’ freebies.

That disappointment and MAGA bitterness will create a volatile, unstable brew. Throw in a financial crash, economic contraction, rising unemployment, continuing war in the Middle East and Ukraine, the impeachment and potential removal of a president, and an oblivious governing class, and you have a potentially explosive situation. An appreciable swath of the American population may well seek redress for their grievances outside the boundaries of the unresponsive political system. In other words, discontent would go kinetic; all hell would break loose. That possibility is not yet on the radar screen for 2027 and beyond, but it soon will be.