In this vein, Donald Trump’s core contention is that the American people have been betrayed and taken advantage of by incompetent and corrupt elites from both parties. Trump’s America is divided between the people at large, whom he has taken to
calling, in the spirit of FDR, “the forgotten men and women of this country,” and a ruling class, defined neither by its party affiliation nor its wealth, but by its grip on power, contempt for the American people, and globalist ideology.
Over the course of the campaign, Trump described the members of that ruling class in various ways: “
wealthy donors, political activists and powerful, powerful politicians,” “
the media-donor-political complex,” “
big media, big businesses, and big donors rigging the system,” or more simply, “
our nation’s most powerful special interests” — to which he has since added, unpatriotic athletes “
making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues.” Trump thinks they form a unified class that advances its own interests at the expense of the American people by supporting, for example, trade and immigration policies that enhance their bottom line or quality of life at the expense of working-class jobs. The members of our ruling class not only share interests, they have similar backgrounds, lifestyles and, most important of all, a shared worldview that is contemptuous of ordinary Americans. As Angelo Codevilla has
observed, the “dismissal of the American people’s intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance is the very heart of what our ruling class is about.”
Like Sandersism, Trumpist populism is rooted in class conflict. But it defines the classes by their access to power and their worldview, rather than by their income and assets. Trump’s ruling class will of course include many of Sanders’s 1 percenters, but it will also include many considerably less well-off people who share the ruling class’s prejudices and support policies that harm the American people. An underpaid but well-connected blogger for the
New York Times who graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and supports open borders would be considered part of the ruling class. A millionaire used-car dealer in Omaha who “
clings to his guns and religion” and is proudly patriotic would not.
In this class conflict, Trumpist populism is wholly on the side of the American people. And it is much more comfortable than mainstream conservatism with the idea of using the federal government to advance the interests of the people. Trump, it is true, recognizes that most organs of the state are controlled by elites that use them to their advantage. He therefore
wants to “drain the swamp,” or in the
words of Steven Bannon, to undertake “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
But Trump also thinks the federal government can help the American people. Hence his opposition to reforming entitlements, his calls for a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, and his proposal to institute paid maternity-leave (Ivankacare). This support for “big government” is one of the greatest sources of tension between Trumpist populism and mainstream “conservatarian” thinking. While both are highly critical of the administrative state and the toll its regulations take on the economy, Trumpist populism seems for the most part comfortable with a welfare state in which transfer payments go to ordinary Americans......snip~
https://www.heritage.org/conservatis...y-and-practice
There is 6 more paragraphs on Trump after this.