Trump 2.0 and the Return of ‘Court Politics’
About this episode
Frantz, a scholar of authoritarian personalism, argues America is undergoing regime change: Trump has converted the GOP from a programmatic party into a personalist one where elites fear falling from his favor rather than defend a platform. The conversation walks through her framework — loyalty prized over competence (the Wray-to-Patel FBI shift), inexperienced appointees with no career outside the leader, corruption as patronage that binds and compromises elites, and tariffs as discretionary tools for favor-trading. She describes the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimages by CEOs as 'court politics,' compares Trump's media lawsuits to tactics in Singapore and Hungary, and outlines the backsliding playbook seen in Venezuela, Turkey, and Hungary: capture the judiciary, cow the press, then tilt elections. Her warning signs to watch: judicial manipulation, escalated media attacks, and prosecution of opponents — with a divided Republican Party as the best democratic safeguard.