TRUMP IS NOT A FIGUREHEAD: Anyone paying attention knows that, as dangerous as Donald Trump is, he's in steep physical, mental, and political decline. How much longer he'll persist in power is hard to say, though it doesn't seem a good bet to think he'll be around in 2027. Given that his presidency has proven bad beyond all comparison with earlier presidents, there's good reason to think things will substantially improve after he's gone.
There is a faction that takes the opposite view, expecting that things will get worse, even much worse, saying: "They'll just replace Trump with another figurehead." In that view, Trump is merely a puppet of Right-wing actors like the Heritage Foundation, who will simply find another puppet when he's gone.
One Jack Hopkins, posting on BlueSky in 2025, made the persuasive case that Trump is not a "figurehead": Trump can't drive straight, but he's still in the driver's seat. Hopkins says that Trump is "the one irreplaceable piece of this machine. When he's gone, the whole thing starts to crack." Hopkins elaborated, his comments being heavily edited-down here:
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Trump didn't conquer the Republican Party with a ten-point plan, white papers, or even a policy agenda. In 2016, the GOP literally ran on no platform, just: "Whatever Trump says." Trump is a showman who understood that politics in America had already mutated into reality television. He didn't change the rules -- he played them better than anyone else in history.
Trump's magnetism is not transferable. As the WASHINGTON POST recently outlined, Trump's coalition is a Frankenstein's monster of factions: MAGA populists, business conservatives, anti-immigration hardliners, libertarians, religious zealots, even stray Democrats like RFK-JR. What unites them? Not policy, not shared vision, just one man; it's classic cult-of-personality politics.
The GOP is not 'Trump's party' in some abstract sense; it is Trump's literal property. MAGA isn't bigger than Trump. MAGA is Trump. He built a cult around himself, sabotaged rivals, and made sure no one else could challenge his dominance.
Once the leader goes, the cult can't reorient. MAGA isn't bonded by shared vision; it's bonded by shared enemies. The energy dissipates without a unifying hate-preacher. Remove Trump and MAGA doesn't march on at full strength: it fragments, it erodes, and it collapses.
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It seems less the case that Trump derives his power from his backers, than they derive their power from him. It's voters who have empowered Trump, and his backers are disconnected from the voters. The Republican Party clings to Trump, because he's all they have left. Once Trump exits the scene, they have nothing left.
AFTER TRUMP? Once Trump does leave, then JD Vance becomes president, with some saying he's likely to be worse than Trump. That's arguable, and there's reasons he may be an improvement -- one big reason being that he will not be able to assume he cannot be impeached, or that he will be able to evade responsibility after leaving office. Maybe more importantly, Vance shifts with the wind, and may not feel it's a good idea to continue unpopular programs, most notably the Trump Regime's mass-deportation effort.
It has been said that Trump is a fake giant, surrounded by real pygmies -- and it can be added that the pygmies fight among themselves. Once Trump is gone and Vance becomes president, there will be a struggle for power, with Vance evicting his rivals, and it's very possible that some order will be restored to the government.
There's a lot of concern over Vance's connections to Peter Thiel -- but in the first place, oligarchs like Elon Musk already have way too much influence in the government, and it's hard to say we'll be worse off. There's also the fact that Vance is a 100% opportunist, and will discard Thiel the moment it becomes convenient to do so. With Vance, I suspect, we'll go from a "bad and deranged" president to one that is merely "bad", and maybe not worse than earlier "bad" presidents.
Indeed, Vance's "flexibility" gives the worry that he may normalize the USA enough to give him a chance in 2028, but a little thought diminishes that fear. First, Vance will not really be able to discard all the excess baggage he's inherited from the detested Trump Regime; second, anything Vance does that placates the Left will antagonize the Right, and vice-versa; and third, Vance works at making enemies, while being poor at making friends.
Trump has a weird charisma; it's not easy for a sensible person to see, but it's clearly there. There's no evidence Vance has any such charisma, and his flip-flopping is likely to antagonize everyone. There is only one Trump; Vance is no replacement for him, thank Bob, and it's difficult to see there's anyone else on the Trump Right who is even that credible.
