Trump Coalition

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Ian Ward at Politico:

With the 2026 midterms fast approaching, those divides have fueled speculation that MAGA voters might defect en masse from the GOP in November. But that’s not the primary threat facing the Trump coalition: Recent polling suggests that self-identified “MAGA Republicans” are standing firmly with Trump on the war and a host of other divisive issues, underscoring the stubborn reality that — as Trump has pithily put it — “MAGA is me.”

Yet as several conservative commentators have recently pointed out, Trump didn’t win reelection in 2024 merely on the strength of MAGA voters. His winning coalition paired his core MAGA constituency with a broader constellation of other non-traditional Republican constituencies — disillusioned Democrats and “MAHA moms” and “manosphere” podcast bros among them.

It is that broader Trumpian coalition — rather than the core base of MAGA supporters — that some Trump backers fear has been endangered by Trump’s policy choices. As the conservative activist Mike Cernovich put it this week, “A generational coalition, squandered.”

The issues:

• Iran
• Antisemitism 
• Immigration
• Epstein files
• MAHA
• AI
• Gender politics
• Identity

Cui Bono?

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Its corruption is unprecedented.  Qatar's gift of a jet is just one example. His memecoin is another. Its corruption is unprecedented.  Qatar's gift of a jet is just one example. His memecoin is another. The Ukraine sellout is a third.

Tom Burgis at The Guardian:

The Trumps’ income in the first half of this year increased 17-fold, from $51m 12 months earlier to $864m, Reuters calculates. Of that, more than 90% came not from real estate but from cryptocurrency. The Trumps’ representatives have questioned those numbers but it is clear that this new frontier is proving remarkably lucrative for them.

When Trump launched World Liberty Financial two months before his re-election, he claimed it would help make “America the crypto capital of the world”. Three of his sons – Don Jr and Eric along with Barron, aged 19, net worth about $150m – are named as co-founders, as was Trump himself until he was sworn in.

Four months into Trump’s second term, World Liberty announced that its USD1 digital currency had been selected for a gigantic transaction. Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, was selling a stake to a United Arab Emirates state-owned fund called MGX. The $2bn price could have been paid in dollars. Instead, Binance would receive 2m freshly minted USD1.

Because USD1 is a stablecoin – crypto pegged to a real currency – World Liberty holds one dollar for each token it issues. It makes money from the interest and investment returns on these reserves. The $2bn jump in the reserves from this one deal could end up making the Trumps’ company tens of millions annually.

Around the same time, Binance’s stratospherically wealthy Chinese-born founder, Changpeng Zhao, asked Trump for something. He had served a four-month sentence in a California prison for violating US laws against money laundering. Prosecutors said that allowing sanctioned Russians, al-Qaida and assorted others to move illicit funds over Binance – which paid a $4bn fine – had caused “significant harm to US national security”.

Upon his release, CZ, as he is known, went home to the UAE. His criminal record looked like an obstacle to re-establishing Binance in the US. He applied for a pardon in May, just as it emerged that the $2bn deal was done with USD1. On 23 October, Zhao posted on X: “Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice.”

David Sacks is a South African-American who chairs the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  Cecilia Kang et al. at NYT:

Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government, influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor. Among his actions as the White House’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar:

• Mr. Sacks has offered astonishing White House access to his tech industry compatriots and pushed to eliminate government obstacles facing A.I. companies. That has set up giants like Nvidia to reap an estimate of as much as $200 billion in new sales.
• Mr. Sacks has recommended A.I. policies that have sometimes run counter to national security recommendations, alarming some of his White House colleagues and raising questions about his priorities.
• Mr. Sacks has positioned himself to personally benefit. He has 708 tech investments, including at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to artificial intelligence that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis of his financial disclosures.
• His public filings designate 438 of his tech investments as software or hardware companies, even though the firms promote themselves as A.I. enterprises, offer A.I. services or have A.I. in their names, The Times found.
• Mr. Sacks has raised the profile of his weekly podcast, “All-In,” through his government role, and expanded its business.

 

Trump's Solution to Funding Stalemate: Post Racist Video

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.

Kit Maher at CNN:

As the US government barrels toward a shutdown, President Donald Trump shared a racist video on social media, which appears to be AI-generated, depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a mustache and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaking in a fake voice.

Jeffries and Schumer met with Trump just hours before at the White House to discuss the looming shutdown.

In the video, Schumer is depicted as arguing for undocumented immigrants to get “free healthcare” because minority voters hate Democrats and they could use the votes in the next election.

As mariachi music plays in the background of the video, the fake Schumer voice says, “There’s no way to sugar coat it: Nobody likes Democrats anymore.”

This is real. pic.twitter.com/MSANoEbFCP

— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeemjeffries) September 30, 2025

Robo-Gerrymander

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Bruce Mehlman:

Researchers were using high-performance computing and big data to discover new materials and analyze proteins before AI… but AI massively accelerated & improved such data-intensive efforts. Gerrymandering dates to 1812 in the U.S. Party strategists have been leveraging voter data and computing to draw advantageous maps for decades. AI promises gerrymandering on steroids — weapons of mass division in the 2025 redistricting wars — with powerful AI models able to (1) precisely-sift unprecedented amounts and unprecedentedly-personal data, (2) compare unlimited potential maps to optimize outcomes. But while AI-enabled cramming could reduce the paltry 20% of seats that are currently competitive, AI-drawn maps might also create more competitive seats by shifting voters out of safer seats (where risk-averse incumbent politicians often prefer them).

Russian Influence Operations 2024

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.

Russian influence operations have changed. After an abortive coup, Putin killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led earlier efforts.  The Russians are now doing things in-house, and poorly. Julia Ioffe at Puck:

Some of the mistakes are just weird, like the title of one of the Doppelganger sites, “50 States of Lie.” (Fifty states of lie? It just sounds wrong.) Or like the one I discovered on Across the Line, one of the websites in the Doppelganger network. “According to recent polls,” an article on the website proclaimed, “it is refugees who are mostly in favor of Biden’s second term and strongly support him, calling him their ‘daddy.’” (Daddy?!) Others, true to the directives we know were given to the staff of the agencies to imitate average conservative Americans, created posts that sounded more like Yosemite Sam. “I protect my home and my rights here in Texas, not listenin’ to them Washington games,” one such Telegram comment said. “We got bigger things to worry ‘bout, like illegal immigrants messin’ up our land. Don’t mess with Texas!” (The apostrophes are particularly amusing because, if there’s one thing we’ve all noticed on social media, it’s that people are sticklers about punctuation.)

And if that didn’t make you laugh, consider the fact that OpenAI found that these agencies were using ChatGPT to generate comments and posts—and then just threw everything up online, including ChatGPT’s error messages. Here’s an amazing screenshot, also from OpenAI’s report.

A Russian armed with ChatGPT, in other words, is still a Russian.

Deepfake War

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the impact of social media and campaign technology.

Josh Archote at the Tampa BayTimes :

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political campaign’s apparent use of fake, artificial intelligence-generated photos of former President Donald Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci has raised concerns among experts about the new technology’s ability to deceive voters.

The pictures were part of a 40-second video posted last week by @DeSantisWarRoom on Twitter criticizing Trump — DeSantis’ chief rival for the GOP presidential nomination — for not firing Fauci, an infectious disease expert who was a part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Many Republicans say Fauci advised keeping businesses and schools closed unnecessarily throughout the pandemic.

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In May, Trump shared a two-minute parody video on Truth Social and Instagram of DeSantis’ presidential announcement that made it look like DeSantis was making his announcement alongside the devil, Adolf Hitler and others. And Donald Trump Jr. days later shared a video that replaced Steve Carell’s character from the hit show “The Office” with a figure that looked and sounded like DeSantis. In the scene, the characters of the sitcom mock Carell’s character for unknowingly wearing a woman’s suit.