Who Is Really Running the Oval Office?

Donald Trump has never been a leader who is particularly concerned with details or even specific issues day-to-day. In 2016, he allegedly offered control of both domestic and foreign policy to former GOP Ohio governor John Kasich if he would accept the nomination of VP. What would Trump’s job have been? “Making America Great Again.” He wants to bluster, get up onstage and talk, and appear at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but he never has been somebody particularly concerned with details. His sudden attention to a given issue, such as his initial interest in South Africa and the myth of white genocide taking place there came from Tucker Carlson.

Even by that standard, Trump’s attention level and output has clearly declined compared with his first term. Speculation over a sudden absence this summer turned into rumors that he had died or was critically ill. He brags over the results of his cognitive tests — tests that are typically administered to people suffering from dementia, in which they ask the test taker to identify a picture of a camel — and it’s unclear whether he believes they’re measuring his IQ because in the same breath, he is demeaning Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, women of color, by referring to them as “Low IQ.” He spends a lot of time golfing or obsessing over the fine details of his new ballroom, and presidents are not supposed to have time in the day to waste on interior decoration. He frequently denies knowing about certain things that have happened: Recently, he claimed to not know Changpeng Zhao despite having just pardoned him.  

This isn’t uncommon in authoritarian governments. Strongmen age just like the rest of us, and when they do, there’s no graceful way to ease them out or transition their responsibilities to somebody else. The United States already has a lot of the signs of a gerontocracy — a government run by people much older than the population. The average in the Soviet Politburo in 1981 was 69 years old; today, the average age in the Senate is 65. Donald Trump is the oldest person ever elected president. 

Decision-making in these governments frequently grinds to a halt or happens chaotically because of infirmity and disorganization. Leonid Brezhnev, the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1981 was in declining health from the mid-1970s onward. That period in Soviet history became known as the Era of Stagnation — Brezhnev ignored growing problems in the economy. In 1979, French officials noted that Brezhnev could only pay attention for about an hour at a time and was so deaf he missed much of what was being said around him. He nearly died of a stroke in 1976 but was resuscitated in part because nobody wanted to deal with the possibility of a power transition. Brezhnev lingered for another five years before eventually dying; decisions were made by a small group of supporters while the Politburo was sidelined. 

Mao Zedong similarly spent the end of his life in terrible health. Suffering from emphysema and either Parkinson’s or ALS, Mao increasingly withdrew after 1972. Governance was turned over to the so-called Gang of Four, led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Whether decisions came from them or Mao was unclear at any given moment. Ultimately the Gang of Four was taken apart after Mao’s death in September of 1976. 

So, who’s running the show for this government?

Stephen Miller, for one. Miller is the architect of the administration’s mass deportations, but he’s also the administration’s Homeland Security Advisor. At the same time that he’s been deporting people to foreign gulags, he’s also been authorizing strikes on fishermen off of Venezuela. J.D Vance similarly is a kind of administration “fixer” who manages Capitol Hill. Russell Vought is using his position as director of the Office of Management and Budget to gut the federal bureaucracy, all in the hopes of creating an explicitly Christian government. Others who normally occupy positions of influence such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio seem to have been sidelined. 

Factionalism is a normal thing in an authoritarian government. Dictators don’t have enough time, attention, or energy to do everything by themselves. Often dictators even encourage this as a way to weaken and divide potential rivals as well as to force them to curry favor and make a bid for his attention: Trump did so during his first administration. Often the most powerful individuals are ones that can manipulate bureaucracy (like Vought) and pit rival factions against each other. In Germany, Martin Bormann was the head of the Nazi Chancellery and Hitler’s private secretary. He used that to make himself one of the most powerful people in the regime, in part by controlling the flow of information or access to Hitler.

Aging leaders can lose control of their own factions, too. Juan Perón of Argentina was elected and returned to office in 1973 at age 77. In all likelihood, he was showing signs of senility, and he attempted to hold together a disparate coalition of left-wing and right-wing Peronists who otherwise loathed each other politically. He lived for less than a year, but the attempt to return to power likely worsened Argentina’s political instability. His wife Isabel attempted to hang on to power but was in turn deposed and replaced with a military junta that ultimately killed more than 30,000 people.

But factionalism is also a question of succession, and Trump is surrounded by people hoping to be the heir to the MAGA throne. Reports suggest that Vance and Rubio are probably best positioned right now and seemingly have Trump’s blessing. But that could change quickly — and what really counts is an open question because so much power is being accrued behind the scenes. Stephen Miller doesn’t have direct oversight over ICE, but will that matter if he has de facto influence over it because of his position as Homeland Security Advisor?  

Hearing all of this, it might seem that Trump’s age and infirmity is a good thing. After all, even in the worst-case scenario where he refuses to leave the presidency in 2028, he cannot stick around indefinitely. The hope goes that when he finally leaves (in whatever way he does), things will go back to normal and this will be the end of this country’s descent into authoritarianism. But this is a very optimistic hope, bordering on pollyanna-ish.

It’s true that none of the people around Trump possesses much genuine political charisma: Stephen Miller and Russell Vought are black holes of likability, and even J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio were just senators (the latter of whom was easily crushed in a primary by Trump) without a broad, national base. In a straightforward and fair election, they’d be goners. But that’s not the playing field that Democrats are going to get: They’re going to inherit a political order where the old rules and norms have all been so eroded as to effectively be meaningless. The behind-the-scenes actors are not going to passively accede to free and fair elections.

Or, the country gets plunged into outright chaos as the different factions turn on each other and vie for control. Again, this might not sound bad at first glance. They eliminate each other and we can get back to passing some infrastructure bills. But there’s no version of that where the fighting and likely bloodshed stays confined to them, especially when they directly control the levers of power. Even if it stays bloodless, it’s highly unlikely that having seized power that way, they’ll voluntarily relinquish it.

This is a pretty doom-ridden message to be putting out to people, but I don’t think we’re doomed. We just can’t rely on earlier electoral-only tactics or the presumption that Republicans in Congress will eventually step in to halt things once they get bad enough. Direct action is going to have to be part of the formula. Take Spain’s transition to democracy: Francisco Franco had ruled over Spain for more than three decades by the time that he died in 1975, and the regime was starting to strain under the combination of illegal labor strikes and Basque separatist activity. It wasn’t a given that there would be a peaceful transition to democracy. Francoists in the military were intensely distrustful of the whole idea and the upper echelons of the Catholic Church supported Franco. 

While elites at the top negotiated a transition to democracy, what made that possible was unrelenting pressure from civil society. In the first quarter of 1976, Spain saw 17,422 strikes and 1,676 demonstrations. Unions, students, and collectives put continual pressure on both sides to keep negotiating. Even cultural events were seen as tools of mobilization. They did this even when strikes were illegal. Hardline Francoists found themselves outflanked because any attempt at unilaterally seizing power was seen as too likely to provoke a backlash. 

Democrats need to have a full plan for what happens as this regime becomes more unstable. Some of that is electoral and a good way to channel grassroots energy, but it also means embracing a degree of direct action that party officials are likely going to be uncomfortable with. They need to imagine themselves as genuine opposition, and opposition needs to happen outside of strictly political spaces. The recent Democratic withdrawal over the government shutdown only highlights how important it is to create pressure outside of legislative spaces.

The question of succession meanwhile might become a lot more important. The recent disclosure of a tranche of e-mails relating to Jeffrey Epstein has dominated the news cycle — and shown that Donald Trump had some awareness of Epstein’s activities. Those e-mails weren’t even the documents that the administration has specifically been trying to keep from disclosing. Epstein has been the one issue that rattles even Donald Trump’s base, and it shows: We’ve seen the panicky meetings the administration has held with people like Rep. Lauren Boebert urging them to oppose release of more Epstein documents. Trump might finally be trapped by a scandal he can’t shake loose, and those around him might start to wonder whether he’s finally too much of a liability. It sounds absurd to say, but people like Stephen Miller might be wondering what to do and when to cut Trump loose.