We’re not fans of adding “ism” to the names of presidents—“Reaganism” and “Jeffersonianism” make sense to describe those men’s political worldviews, but you wouldn’t use the formulations “Fordism” or “Clintonism” and expect to be understood. Nonetheless, “Trumpism” meant something definable to a substantial proportion of the people who put Donald Trump over the top last November: vastly increased border security, protection of domestic industries, a simpler and less burdensome tax code, a foreign policy oriented exclusively toward national interests, a restrained judiciary.
Many of Trump’s voters—maybe a majority—embraced his candidacy not for any specific set of policy goals but as an expression of contempt for Washington’s sundry dysfunctions and for the media mandarins’ political correctness. And of course many also chose Trump because they could not abide the thought of another Clinton administration. But any number of articulate, intelligent, and highly visible advocates of the candidate—you saw them often on your favorite cable news shows—embraced Trump because they believed he was redefining conservatism in fundamental ways, and because they agreed with the redefinition. They concluded that Trump’s combination of cultural and economic nationalism—which they dubbed “Trumpism”—was the future of conservatism and the Republican party, and some of them took personal and professional risks to align themselves with the change. We thought that conclusion was deeply misguided. But the hopes they invested in him would not have looked foolish or irrational were Trump to carry to completion the policy changes they desired.
The real trouble with their conclusion, however, is that President Trump is proving to have his own definition of “Trumpism,” one very different from that of his most earnest advocates.
The case of Attorney General Jeff Sessions makes this sadly clear. Senator Jeff Sessions, as he then was, endorsed Trump on February 28, 2016—the first U.S. senator to do so; indeed almost the first high-level public official to do so. He staked his political credibility on Trump, not because he had no apprehensions about Trump’s character or conduct, but because he believed in what he took to be Trump’s ideas. On illegal immigration, on globalization and trade, on foreign policy, Sessions supported Trump’s ideas with none of the squeamishness that characterized many other Republican politicians’ support. “People don’t have to endorse all of his rhetoric,” he said in May 2016, “but he’s correct on the issues, substantively, and he’s where the American people want to be, and we as a party should celebrate this and join this movement.” As attorney general, Sessions hasn’t veered from his understanding of Trump’s agenda in the slightest degree.
Yet now Trump is openly taunting Sessions in the most public way—and not for any failure or impropriety but simply because the attorney general recused himself from the Russian-meddling investigation. The president began with a swipe in his July 19 interview with the New York Times: “Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president. . . . If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair—and that’s a mild word—to the president.” He continued his assault on Twitter in the days that followed: “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?” Trump asked. And then: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!”
What about Sessions’s early and risky endorsement? When that question was put to the president in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, his answer was astonishing: “When they say he endorsed me, I went to Alabama. I had 40,000 people. He was a senator from Alabama. I won the state by a lot, massive numbers. A lot of the states I won by massive numbers. But he was a senator, he looks at 40,000 people and he probably says, ‘What do I have to lose?’ And he endorsed me. So it’s not like a great loyal thing about the endorsement. But I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions.”
There is no good reason for any president publicly to goad his own attorney general in this way. It is unpardonable and loony. Nor was Sessions wrong to recuse himself from the investigation: As he explained when he made the decision on March 2, the investigation concerned a campaign that Sessions had worked on and with, and current law prohibits someone with that conflict of interest from supervising such an investigation. The recusal took place four months ago. One wonders why the president is suddenly so upset that his erstwhile loyal attorney general isn’t in charge of the Russia probe.
There is an important lesson to draw from all this. Sessions is the purest example of someone who ardently supported Trump because he believed in Trumpism as a set of ideas to which both he and the president were committed. There are many such people, within and without the administration. What the president has made clear in the past week is that he is not with them. The people working for this president may do so from a commitment to a set of policy views, but their boss assumes they’re doing so from a commitment to him.
To put it another way: Trump’s subordinates and allies may believe in Trumpism, but the president has a much different and much simpler definition. He equates Trumpism with whatever enhances the notoriety of Donald J. Trump and the well-being of the Trump family. As those subordinates and allies discover this regrettable truth—and as those millions who pulled the lever for him conclude that Trump and Trumpism are one and the same—the prospect of a move back to Trump Tower may look more appealing than ever.
