Trump’s coalition is a mess of contradictions — and they’re about to be exposed

There is not one contradiction at the heart of the incoming Trump administration’s political project. There are two.

The first centers on economic policy — or, more fundamentally, the role of government itself.

One camp, exemplified by Elon Musk and traditional big business, sees Trumpism as a celebration of individual greatness and unfettered capitalism. The second camp, including economic nationalists and RFK Jr.’s crunchy hippy types, believes Trumpism has a mandate to try to transform American society, including by attacking the practices of large corporations that do not fit their nationalist vision.

The second centers on foreign policy — or, more fundamentally, the purpose of America in the world.

One camp, exemplified by Secretary of State pick Marco Rubio, sees the United States as the world’s rightful leader, one that has not only a right but an obligation to assert its will across the globe. Another camp, exemplified by Secretary of Defense pick Pete Hegseth, sees the United States as a more ordinary country whose interests are served by being less involved in other countries’ issues like the Ukraine war, but being more violently involved when core American interests are at stake.

Of course, there are areas of overlap between these groups. Both sides of the role-of-government divide believe that America will be well-served by a mass deportation campaign; both sides of the foreign policy divide support aggressively confronting China and waging a global war on jihadist groups like ISIS.

Yet these overlaps are limited and partial points of convergence between deeply divided ideological currents. The real connective tissue between the various Trump 2.0 factions is disdain for the cultural left and the “deep state” in Washington. The anti-left culture war has become, more or less, the central ideological principle of the modern Republican Party.

On the campaign trail, it’s easy for Trump’s diverse set of allies to join together based on this shared animosity. But when governing, the administration will be forced to make choices in areas where its leaders disagree at a fundamental level, leading not only to internal conflict but potentially even policy chaos.

The Trump coalition’s contradictions, explained

Every administration has its internal disagreements. Typically, however, those disputes take place within a relatively narrow band: The political party they hail from is mostly clear on what it stands for and why. The Biden administration, for example, has generally agreed on a more redistributionist economic policy, even if certain policy issues, like how large the post-Covid stimulus should be, were subjects of major internal debate.

The Trump-dominated GOP, by contrast, is ideologically adrift. Its nominal ideology is Trumpism, but Trumpism has little in the way of a defined ideological core. Its core tenets, total personal fealty to Trump and a generalized illiberal nationalism, are flexible, admitting of a wide band of different policy visions on a host of different issues.

In the first Trump administration, the main fight was over just how much deference Trumpist impulses deserved. You had Trump in the Oval Office, but he was surrounded by establishment figures like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and chief of staff John Kelly, who saw their job as curbing his worst impulses.

In the second Trump administration, the situation will be very different. The Mattis and Kelly types have either been purged from the party or forced to bend the knee. The question now is not whether Trumpism is leading the party, but what Trumpism actually stands for. 

One way to think about the divides on this question is which part of the classic “make America great again” slogan the various camps emphasize: America or greatness.

When it comes to domestic policy, the “greatness” side includes folks like Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and traditional Republican business elites. They see the attack on “the deep state” as, in part, a war on government red tape that stands in the way of progress, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Trump, for them, is proof that one man can change the world if left to his own devices. They aim to unleash similar spirits across the country and, non-coincidentally, advance their own business interests in the process. 

The “America” camp, by contrast, is more inclined to emphasize collective solutions to America’s collective problems.

The chief advocates of mass deportations and across-the-board tariffs, like Steven Miller and Peter Navarro, are almost by definition not free marketeers. JD Vance aims to rebuild America along more conservative Christian lines, including by curbing the power of secular big business when he believes it threatens the organic unity of American society properly conceived. RFK Jr. and the “make American healthy again” movement see the war on government not as a campaign to shrink government per se, but rather to redirect its energies toward the problems they think really matter (vaccines, fluoridated water, and other such crank health concerns).

The foreign policy divide falls along similar lines.

People like Rubio and national security adviser pick Michael Waltz fall on the “greatness” side. They believe that the United States is destined to lead the world and ought to work to ensure that it remains safely atop the global power hierarchy. Challengers to the existing American-led order like Russia and especially China must be aggressively confronted, and hostile dictatorships like Iran must be brought in line by force if necessary. The American continents must be dominated, Monroe-doctrine style, advocating a far more aggressive policy toward Latin American leftist dictatorships like Venezuela and Cuba (as Rubio did in Trump’s first term).

The other camp, including Hegseth and director of national intelligence pick Tulsi Gabbard, espouses a kind of narrower nationalism. Though they believe in American military strength, they care far less about aggressively protecting the existing political order. If Russia wishes to seize part of Ukraine, they suggest, that’s not really an American concern. The United States should instead be preoccupied with killing its enemies, advancing its narrowly construed interests, and protecting its border — up to and including launching a war in Mexico to battle drug cartels and human traffickers.

I don’t mean to say that these camps are fundamentally opposed. They are part of the same administration and share many of their boss’s core insights and enemies. They all agree to “make America great again” as a slogan but disagree on which parts of it to emphasize.

In practice, this might lead to a whole host of predictable and significant conflicts inside the administration.

When RFK Jr. moves to put new regulatory barriers in the way of pharmaceutical research, will Big Pharma and biotech executive Vivek Ramaswamy try to stop him?

When billionaires suggest financing the extension of Trump tax cuts by cutting the social safety net, will Christian populist JD Vance stand up for the meek?

When Marco Rubio pushes for regime change in Venezuela, will alleged anti-imperialist Tulsi Gabbard try to make him back off?

None of these conflicts are hypothetical. Each is eminently predictable based on what the personalities involved have done in the past and promise to do in the future. If left unresolved, they threaten to create a kind of policy incoherence, with different aspects of the US government working at direct odds with each other, depending on who they answer to. 

If and when Trump steps in to resolve them, will he do so consistently? Will he say one thing publicly and do another privately, as so often happened in his first term? Or will the resolution so consistently favor one group over another that we can finally start saying Trumpism has a little more meat on its ideological bones?

There is only one honest answer: We don’t know. But we can be sure the stakes are high for the Republican Party, the country, and most likely the entire world.

This story was adapted from the On the Right newsletter. New editions drop every Wednesday. Sign up here.