With only ten days of media orgy of the US election to go, the finely balanced contest is making many people both there, and in the rest of the word(except autocrats like Orban, Maduram Putin,L Lukashenko and their like) nervous at the prospect of a second Trump term, They have good reason.

Trump’s threat to use the US military on “the enemy within” contravenes federal law. General John Kelly and other members of Trump’s administration say he is a fascist, and fed growing concern that Trump’s re-election could spark a deadly conflict between the Trump loyalist MAGA wing of the Republicans (a.k.a. Grand Old Party = GOP) and those they perceive as their enemies. They have many, not all of whom are Democrats.

At the same time, there has effectively been a civil war within the Republican Party. Trump recently boasted that he had “taken the Republican Party and made it into an entirely different party/ The Republican Party is a very big, powerful party. Historically, it was an elitist party with real stiffs running it.”

Trump’s analysis of his effect on the party is right. In 2015, the party had for years been controlled by a small group of leaders who wanted to pare government back  in size and activity to that of the years before the 1930s, slashing regulations on business and cutting social security provision., allowing for cuts in taxes. Their numbers were small, so to stay in power, they relied on the votes of the racist and sexist reactionaries who didn’t like civil rights.

Once he had taken office in 2017, Trump put the base of the party in the driving seat. Using the same techniques that had boosted Hungarian prime minister Orbán, he attacked immigrants, black Americans, and other people of colour, promising to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights. After his defence of the participants in the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he began to turn his followers into a movement by encouraging them to engage in violence.

In the following years, Trump’s hold on his voting base enabled him to take over the Republican Party and push older Republican establishment figures aside. In March 2024 he took over the Republican National Committee by installing a loyalist and his own daughter-in-law Lara Trump at its head, directing its finances to benefit himself.

But while older leaders were happy to use Trump’s base to keep the party in power, the two factions were never in sync. Established Republican leaders’ goal was to preside over a largely unregulated market-driven economy. But MAGA Republicans want a weak government only with regard to foreign enemies—another place where they part company with established Republicans. Instead, they want a strong government to impose religious rules. Rather than leaving companies alone to react to markets, they want them to shape their businesses around MAGA ideology, such as denying LGBTQ+ rights. 

By 2024, such tensions had grown. Trump’s promise to build a tariff wall around the country contradicts established Republicans’ belief in free trade. His vow to deport 20 million could devastate entire sectors of the economy. Both plans are widely condemned by economists. Recently, twenty-three Nobel Prize-winning economists have warned that Trump’s economic plans would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.”  Trump’s plans risk cutting the gross domestic product in the U.S. by an estimated 8.9%, creating a recession if not  a depression. 

MAGA Republicans are fiercely loyal to Trump, but it is not clear how much they offer to those trying to get elected in more moderate districts. Extremist abortion bans have fired up significant opposition to Republican candidates, and that opposition does not appear to be weakening. Otherwise, the government would be involved in it. And if the government’s involved, that means the police and the district attorney are involved in medical decisions, which seems crazy!” 

“He is putting women’s reproductive health at risk; some women have died already because of this…. What’s happening with women right now is real, and it is playing out across America.”

MAGA extremists in the House of Representatives did the party as a whole no favors when they took control of the chamber in 2023 and made it virtually impossible for the Republicans to govern. Party members took weeks to agree on a House speaker and then threw him out, marking the first time in U.S. history that a party has thrown out its own speaker. With MAGA extremists unwilling to compromise on their demands, the Republicans were unable to pass almost any legislation at all, including appropriations bills and the long-overdue farm bill. 

Their determination not to yield an inch continues. A Trump-endorsed Republican candidate challenging a Democrat incumbent in New York could not name a single Democrat she would be willing to work with if she is elected. “These people are not fit to govern,” House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York posted recently.

Had-core MAGA Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Green are already intentening to expand their disruptive power in the House, should Republicans retain control over it: Ohio representative Jim Jordan appears to be considering making a bid for House leadership, while others have their eye on committee chairs. Joe Perticone of The Bulwarkexplored today how “Trump’s loyalists feel obliged to defend everything he does, even when his former White House chief of staff says “he is a fascist”.
 

But the struggle between Republican factions has not gone away, as evidence mounts that Trump will not be able to continue to lead the party. Reportedly, 230 doctors have declared, “Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for high office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity,” they wrote. After that, 233 mental health professionals, organised by a conservative PAC warned that “Trump appears to be showing signs of cognitive decline that urgently cry out for a full neurological work-up,” and “his malignant narcissism makes him grossly unfit for leadership.

But if Trump’s grip is slipping, who will take over the party? 

In a new biography of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, McConnell condemns the MAGA movement and blame Trump for making it hard for the Republican Party to compete. He decribes Trump as “not very smart, irascible, nasty and  just about every quality you would not want somebody to have.”

Trump loyalist Senator Mike Lee from Utah has declared himself “shocked that McConnell would attack a fellow Republican senator and the Republican nominee for president just two weeks out from an election”.

Technology elites are pouring money into Trump’s campaign. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that billionaire Elon Musk, who is backing Trump’s campaign with daily million-dollar giveaways, plus tens of millions in fumdimg, has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022, discussing  ‘personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.” 

Musk’s SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite system, which won a $1.8 billion contract with US military and intelligence agencies in 2021. It is the major rocket launcher for NASA and the Pentagon, and Musk has a security clearance; he says is “top-secret”.

Musk appears to be making a play for control of the Republican Party, challenging both the established Republicans and the MAGA loyalists.

The Republican voters themselves are abandoning MAGA Republicans, State senator Rob Cowles of Green Bay, WI, who has served almost 42 years, has announced he would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris. David Holt, the Republican mayor of Oklahoma City, OK, also indicated he would be casting his ballot for Harris.

You don’t need to be a Democrat or a Harris supporter to see what dangers for democracy in the USA and across the world, created by Trump and machinations he has spawned pose.

Despite all the above, the bad news is: Kamala Harris is losing much of the momentum she built after she re[;aced President Biden as the Democrat candiddate.

#1112—1,320 words