Almost everyone else knew years ago that Donald J. Trump is a con artist whose talent lies in feeding prejudices with lies that people want to believe.
By Tom Arms | London
MAGA (Make America Great Again) is waking up to the fact that it has been conned. Almost everyone else knew years ago that Donald J. Trump is a con artist whose talent lies in feeding prejudices with lies that people want to believe.
But in America—as in most countries—there is a socially conservative and fiscally liberal base of voters who are frightened of change while anxious about their bank balances. The Democrats and old school Republicans had failed them. Trump convinced them that he had the answer with his “Make America Great Again” campaign.
Proof of the MAGA’s disillusionment came this week in the form of a special election for a congressional seat in the deeply conservative state of Tennessee. The Republicans held it, but dropped nine points compared to the 2024 poll. If this result is reflected in next year’s mid-term elections then the Democrats will win up to 30 seats in the House of Representatives and possibly half a dozen in the Senate.
This would give the Democrats control of both houses of Congress and guarantee a third impeachment for Donald Trump. On top of that, recent polls indicate that up to 18 Republican senators are prepared to break with the president. That would be enough to impeach, convict and remove Trump from the White House.
The causes of the disillusionment are many and varied. Top of the list is what has been termed the “affordability crisis.” For some reason, Trump insists that “the word affordability is a con job by the Democrats” and that prices are actually “way down.”
For any American who walks down a super market aisle this is an obvious porky pie (rhyming cockney slang for lie) that insults the intelligence of even the most loyal MAGA voter.
Inflation is not the only problem. MAGA is delighted at the dramatic drop in people attempting to cross America’s southern border. In 2022 they reached an historic high of 2.2 million apprehensions. In June 2025 they fell to an historic low of 6,000.
But at the same time a growing number of Republicans are embarrassed by the activities of balaclava-clad ICE agents pulling people off the streets and bundling them into unmarked vans. Such activities smack of 1930s-style Nazi brown shirts.
Neither do they like the Administration’s attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs. To date 87 people have died. The boats probably were carrying drugs. But where is the proof? Under the law a person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And since when does smuggling drugs carry an automatic death sentence?
But what disturbs Trump’s MAGA base most is the realization that the man they elected to drain the swamp is the swamp.
Nothing demonstrates this better than the Epstein Files. It is unlikely that the forthcoming publication of the FBI files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will expose Donald Trump as a paedophile. But it is quite possible that some of his rich and powerful friends and backers could make awkward appearances.
If that happens then it will raise the following obvious question: was Trump’s reluctance to allow publication of the Epstein linked to an attempt to protect rich and powerful friends?
Lately a new descriptive phrase has become popular in Washington circles–“The Epstein class.” Not middle class, working class or upper class, but a completely new category of uber-wealthy and politically powerful super elites with interlocking interests which transcend national borders. This “Epstein Class” appears to have coalesced around the leadership of Donald Trump.
In Latin America they are Argentina’s right-wing populist leader Javier Millei whose friendship with Trump secured a $20 billion prop for his country’s economy. And ex-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. He has been sent to prison for organizing the Brazilian equivalent of the January 6 riots. Trump responded to the sentence by slapping a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods. Then there is El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele who self-describes as “the world’s coolest dictator”. He won Trump’s support by building the CECOT mega-prison to house 40,000 prisoners, many of them US deportees.
In the Middle East the Arab monarchies are closely aligned to the Trump Administration. Their common interest is opposition to climate change proposals and the fact that the Arabs and Trump run their governments as family businesses.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been a family friend since the 1980s. He is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and Israeli courts for fraud. In an address to the Knesset, Trump asked that Netanyahu be pardoned.
In Europe Trump is supporting a string of far-right anti-immigrant opposition parties such as Britain’s Reform, Germany’s Alternative fur Deutschland, France’s National Rally and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom. Trump also gives full-backing to Hungary’s Viktor Orban who has curbed the media, academia and the courts.
His strangest relationship is with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. It has emerged that the most recent White House proposals to end the war in Ukraine was more a blueprint for joint U.S.-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting the valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favoured U.S. and Russian businessmen.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has established a kleptocracy in Russia that allows a corrupt network of ruling elites to use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain. It permits virtually unlimited theft while the head of state provides cover for his cronies through pardons and the uneven of application of the law. Trump appears to taking a leaf from Putin’s play book.
One thing is certain: The beneficiaries of Trump’s policies are not the traditional American working class voters who make up the bulk of the MAGA movement. Many of them will double down and stick with Trump no matter what. The alternative is acute I-told-you-so embarrassment. But many others—like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon—are swallowing their pride and admitting that they were wrong.
Read: Observations of an Expat: Court with a Backbone
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and a regular contributor to “The New World” He is also lectures on world affairs and is the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
