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Trump & the Unpredictable 2024 Election – Can
an “Anti-Government” Candidate Win Again?

By Constantine A. Pagedas
Throughout its 248-year history, the United States has had tocontend with anti-government movements as a constant feature ofAmerican political life. Even before the American Revolution, therebellion by the Thirteen Colonies against the British crown, whether
it was the actions of a colonial mob protesting against the British
Parliament’s right to tax the colonies that led to the Boston Massacrein 1770, or the Sons of Liberty disguised as Native Americans who
destroyed a shipment of tea in what became known as the Boston
Tea Party of 1773, Americans have often been driven to act –sometimes violently – against what they have perceived asgovernment encroachment on their lives, liberties, and the pursuit ofhappiness.
Today, as the US heads into the 2024 presidential election, aconfused and unsettling picture has emerged – especially withrespect to the two most likely candidates. On the one hand, former
President Donald Trump is leading the Republican field of candidates
in most polls by an average of 44 points without having participatedin any of the party’s debates. And on the campaign trail, he is playing
up his anti-government credentials, highlighting that he plans to rid
the US government of “the deep state” and exact political revenge
against those who have brought criminal charges against him. On
the other hand, current President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in
2020, has a job approval rating that is languishing at around 41
percent. This is largely due to an ongoing higher-than-normal
inflation rate, an uncertain economy as new global economic
challenges arise, and a sense in both Republican and Democratic
circles that the president’s age may be finally catching up with him.
As such, the 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be one of
the most uncertain and unpredictable in modern US history. Indeed,this election could see Biden win re-election and continue as theoldest president in US history, Trump return to the presidency as thefirst officeholder to have been charged in four federal criminal
indictments, or a relatively unknown candidate break through andoffer an alternative approach to the current political inertia in
Washington. Independent, third-party candidates such as Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. have also thrown their hats into the ring and could act
as a spoiler for one of the major party candidates. In any event, many
people are now wondering whether an “anti-government” candidate
such as Trump could again become the Republican presidential
candidate in 2024 and eventually return to the White House.

AuthorConstantine A. Pagedas

The Constant Anti-Government Feature ofAmerican Politics“What country before ever existed a century and half without arebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers
are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spiritof resistance? Let them take arms ... The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is
its natural manure.” So wrote one of the most famous founding
fathers of the US, Thomas Jefferson, who in 1787 endorsed the ideathat resistance – if not outright rebellion – was an appropriate action
for citizenry to air their political grievances against tyrannicalgovernment authority (Photo 1). Tyranny, or cruel and oppressive
rule, however, is highly subjective. Indeed, Jefferson’s words havebeen adopted, some might say manipulated, by far-right antigovernment groups to justify their extreme rhetoric and violent
behavior to curb Washington’s political overreach of state and local
communities. Indeed, the way in which the US Constitution is written
sets up an ongoing political tension in the US about rights andresponsibilities of the federal government in relation to the individualstates. This division of power that is enshrined in the Constitution has

Photo 1: commons.wikimedia.org

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson wanted American citizens to take an active role inmonitoring government officials. Some right-wing anti-government groups such as the Proud
Boys and Oath Keepers have used Jefferson’s words as approval to take up arms against
Washington and the federal government.

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https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

led to bitter and sometimes deadly political conflicts, whether it was
the Confederate states arguing their right to maintain the institution ofslavery in the mid-19th century which ultimately led to the US Civil
War, or the strong isolationism of Middle America that delayed the US
entry into both world wars in the 20th century.
That is not to say that the US has never seen periods of significant
federal government expansion. Indeed, the pendulum has swung theother way, usually when the country has faced a political crisis
requiring strong and centralized government, whether it was Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to mitigate the effects of the Great
Depression of the 1930s, Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” toaddress the social unrest of the 1960s, or George W. Bush’s
response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In some cases, the expansion of federal government powers wasapproved with relatively little political opposition either from
Congress or the American public. This was the case in the aftermathof 9/11 most notably with the creation of the Department ofHomeland Security, currently the third-largest department in the US
government after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs
with over 250,000 employees.
In other cases, however, presidential actions to expand the reach of
government either garnered an immediate anti-government response,or a longer-term anti-government movement fueled by an ambitious
political outsider whose rhetoric blamed Washington for the ills
Americans seemed to be suffering. This has been an especiallyeffective argument made by Republicans to paint the Democrats overthe past half-century as the party of big government and out ofcontrol spending. The former actor and Republican President Ronald
Reagan, for example, perfectly captured the anti-government mood in
the post-Great Society American electorate (Photo 2). In his first
inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1981, he famously observed that

The efforts of former President Barack Obama’s administration toaddress the 2008 global financial crisis called for the federal
government to invest in the country’s aging infrastructure as well as
to revamp the US healthcare system. As a result, the Tea Party
movement within the Republican Party formed in 2009 to resist theperception of Washington’s growing power and the “Democratic
Socialism” agenda under Obama. Focused on the core principles oflowering taxes, reducing the national debt and the federal budget
deficit, as well as reducing the size of the federal government,
dozens of Tea Party Republicans were swept to power in Congress inthe 2010 midterm elections. Although the Republicans were able tocut some federal government spending through the Budget Control
Act and a process known as sequestration, these actions did not
realize all the major cuts the members of the Tea Party had originallyenvisioned. Moreover, Republicans voted no less than 64 times overthe next several years to repeal one of Obama’s signature pieces oflegislation – the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare– believed by some extreme Tea Party members of Congress to put
the US firmly on the road to a government-run, socialized healthcare
system (Photo 3).

Photo 2: commons.wikimedia.org

Photo 3: commons.wikimedia.org

President Ronald Reagan was adept at portraying a personable, sunny image while presenting
his anti-government rhetoric to the American people.

“Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the
problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe thatsociety has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, thatgovernment by an elite group is superior to government for, by, andof the people.” Alluding to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address,
Reagan provided his anti-government message in a palatable way,adding that “If no one among us is capable of governing himself, thenwho among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

The Trump EffectA Tea Party rally to stop the 2010 healthcare reform bill, known as Obamacare, on March 13,2010 in St. Paul, Minnesota

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Enter Trump, who promised to succeed where the Tea Party had
failed. Tapping into the anti-government mood created by the Tea
Party’s efforts against the Obama administration, the New York City
property magnate and former reality television star of The Apprentice
cashed in on his name recognition and ran for office as a Republicanwith an anti-government message. His expressed intent was toreplace the Washington political establishment by “draining theswamp” under the slogan to “Make America Great Again”. Runningagainst Hillary Clinton, someone who epitomized the politicalestablishment, Trump promised throughout the election campaignthat he would undo much of the federal government expansion of his
predecessors. And during his term in office, to some extent he did.
In one of his first actions as president, on Jan. 30, 2017, Trump
signed Executive Order 13771 on “Reducing Regulation andControlling Regulatory Costs”. This Executive Order required any
department or agency of the US government considering a new
regulation to propose at least two regulations to be revoked. Trump’s
deregulatory, pro-business approach was welcomed by his fellow
Republicans in Congress, from cutting back Environmental
Protection Agency regulations on US industry designed to protect
the environment and slow down climate change to the passing of the
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a bill which reduced tax rates
especially on wealthy businesses and individuals, significantly
cutting federal government revenue. Importantly, the law also
eliminated the federal penalty associated with the Affordable Care
Act’s individual mandate – thus removing a critical Obama era
requirement on businesses and individuals to ensure they arecovered by some form of basic health insurance.
Despite his repeated campaign promise that he could eliminate thenational debt in eight years – a key Republican Tea Party objective –it should be noted that as president Trump approved of significant
increases in government spending, mostly for favored departments
and programs such as the Department of Defense. According to
Brian Riedl of the conservative Manhattan Institute think-tank,“President Trump signed legislation and approved executive actions
costing $7.8 trillion – compared to $5.0 trillion for President Obama
and $6.9 trillion for President Bush. In addition, President Trump
enacted these costs in just a single four-year presidential termcompared to his predecessors’ eight years in the Oval Office.”
Granted, much of the spending during the Trump administration($3.9 billion) was in response to the global pandemic and was basedon bipartisan legislation signed by Trump to float the US economy.
Combined with the 2017 tax cuts, however, again according to Reidl,
Trump era spending saw the US national debt soar from $14 trillion
in nominal dollars to $21 trillion by the end of his term, while the US
debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high above 100%.

approach to limit the size of the federal government and allow US
industry to operate in a reduced regulatory environment, but theyalso turned a blind eye towards massive government spending
programs and the increase in the national debt during the Trump era.
Most importantly, and what Republicans had not bargained for, wasthe president’s encouragement of far-right anti-government
extremists on Jan. 6, 2021 to keep him in power after he had lost the2020 election to Biden (Photo 4).
It may be an understatement to say that Trump was one of themost controversial presidents in US history. Whether it was his“Muslim ban”, his criticisms of military veterans, or his support for
white nationalists following the “Unite the Right” rally inCharlottesville, Virginia, Trump courted anti-government militia
groups and brought them into the political mainstream to support
his personal causes. During his time in office, most Republicans
came to the president’s defense. Indeed, they were prepared to makethis Faustian bargain so long as Trump could deliver on nominatingconservative judges to the US federal court system, as well as
continue to support deregulation and limiting the power of thefederal government.
This changed, however, on Jan. 6. Having lost the 2020 election to
Biden, the Trump team made baseless claims that there had been
widespread voter fraud and challenged the election results in a bid toremain in power. Trump and his associates filed 62 lawsuits
contesting election processes, vote counting, and the votecertification process in nine states. These were in turn rejected by atleast 86 judges at both the state and federal level, including byfederal judges appointed by Trump himself, many of whom found thesuits “without merit” due to a lack of evidence. Desperate to remainin power, Trump pulled out all the stops on Jan. 6 at the “Save
America” rally on the Washington Ellipse organized by the far-right

Photo 4: commons.wikimedia.org

Jan. 6 & the Split of the Republican Party
Overall, Republicans in Congress lauded Trump’s deregulatory
56 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2024

A crowd of Trump supporters marching on the US Capitol on Jan. 6 2021, ultimately leading
to the building being breached and several deaths

wing anti-government militia groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath
Keepers.
Just as Congress was preparing to certify the 2020 election
results, Trump repeated his false claims that the election had been“stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats” and encouraged therally goers to march on the Capitol building to make their voices
heard. At that crucial moment, he told them “If you don’t fight likehell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” According toreports, more than 2,000 protesters-turned-rioters, some of whomwere armed, entered the Capitol building and vandalized offices andmeeting chambers. The lawmakers quickly went into recess andwere evacuated to a secure location while the mob went on its
rampage. In total, five people died during the event, while many were
injured, including 138 police officers who had responded to theattack. Later in the day, once order was restored, and as is outlinedin the Constitution, Vice President Mike Pence certified the Electoral
College results and thus Biden’s election victory. That said, evenafter that day’s fateful and horrific events, eight Republican Senatorsand 139 Republican Representatives still objected to certifying the2020 election.
And therein lies the challenge the Republican Party currently finds
itself. Trump’s controversial presidency and actions at the end of his
term to remain in power has done what no Democrat has been able
to do over the past 50 years. In short, Trump has effectively divided
the Republican Party against itself, turning it into a party
characterized by dysfunction and in some cases venal subservienceto the former president by certain Republican members of Congress.

A Year of Republican Dysfunction
On Nov. 8, 2022, the US held its mid-term elections representing
former President Trump’s first political test as leader of the
Republican Party after his departure from office. Normally, theopposite party of the president is expected to make significant gains
against the president’s party in his first term. Indeed throughout
2022, Biden had historically low approval ratings (in the low-to-mid
40% range), while the top voting issues – high inflation and highenergy prices – were expected to bring Republican voters out to thepolls against the Democrats.
This did not happen. The “red wave” that many had predictedbecame in fact a “red ripple”. Republicans who had been expected to
sweep into a majority in both the Senate and the House instead lost aseat in the Senate, allowing the Democrats to retain a majority, andonly saw a 10-seat gain in the House, bringing the Republicans to anarrow 222-213 seat majority. A deeper dive into the results,
however, showed that Trump-backed Republican candidates
underperformed and thus minimized the Democratic losses many
had been expecting. Traditional Republicans (i.e., those not openly
endorsed by Trump) appear to have performed as expected, easily
beating their Democratic opponents. Given the extremely narrow

Republican majority in the House, there was little room for division,
setting up a politically challenging 2023 for the party.
The first warning sign came in January, when it took 15 votes toelect Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California as the House
Speaker – a result which had not occurred since the contentious preCivil War era. A small core group of right-wing, anti-establishment,
Trump-backed Republicans from the House Freedom Caucus led by
Matt Gaetz of Florida prevented McCarthy from obtaining the
Speaker’s gavel without significant concessions, to include a rule
allowing a single House member to introduce a vote to remove the
Speaker (Photo 5). May and early June was a particularly tense
period within the Republican Party when McCarthy reached anagreement with the Biden administration to raise the US debt ceiling,whereas members of the House Freedom Caucus had pushed
McCarthy to hold out for deeper cuts in federal spending.
Things were brought to a head at the end of September when theannual appropriations bills to fund the federal government for fiscal
year 2024 came up for a vote in the House. With the vocal
encouragement of Trump, 21 right-wing Republicans voted against
the Republican bill Speaker McCarthy had introduced because there
were not steep enough spending cuts. Notably, McCarthy tried toappeal to the far-right House members when he did not include
further US military funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia, a
key priority of Trump and his “America First” followers. But this was
not enough. With a government shutdown looming, McCarthy had
little choice but to work with Democrats and passed a Continuing
Resolution, a temporary stopgap measure to keep the government
operating at FY 2023 levels through Nov. 17. With that, Gaetz filed amotion calling for McCarthy’s removal. On Oct. 3, eight right-wing
Republicans joined with the Democrats and voted to remove
Photo 5: https://gaetz.house.gov/about

Donald Trump and his close political ally in Congress, Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida.
Gaetz is not above using his position to support disruptive and divisive anti-government
policies.

Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2024

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McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
In a preview of Republican Party dysfunction heading into the2024 elections, a permanent Speaker to replace McCarthy could not
win a majority in the House until Oct. 25, after four excruciatingrounds of voting openly demonstrated the deep divisions in theparty. While all House business had to be put on hold until a new
Speaker could be elected, there was obvious difficulty within theparty in uniting behind a candidate who could appeal to both the
Trump-allied anti-government extremists and the party moderates. In
the end, the GOP settled on Mike Johnson, a little-known, religiously
conservative Congressman from Louisiana who had voted tooverturn the 2020 presidential election results following the events ofJan. 6 – thus meeting with Trump’s strong approval (Photo 6).
Johnson, however, like McCarthy before him, engineered a newContinuing Resolution on Nov. 14 to fund the federal government
through early 2024 with overwhelming Democratic support anddivided Republican support. Whether this leads to another internal
challenge to Republican political cohesion in the US Congress in
2024 remains to be seen.

Contenders & Pretenders
Overall, the major Republican challengers standing in the way of
Trump winning the Republican nomination for president fall into
three categories. There are the “Trump Critics”, such as New Jersey
Governor Chris Christie, who has been portraying himself as a
traditional, moderate Republican aiming to lead the party back to its
fiscally responsible, socially conservative, and free market-orientedroots. During the Republican debates and on the campaign trail,
Christie has consistently raised Trump’s legal problems and moral
fitness for office which he claims should disqualify him fromreceiving the Republican nomination and from assuming the duties

Photo 6: commons.wikimedia.org

New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish
Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in
Las Vegas, Nevada

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and responsibilities of the presidency.
The second group of Republican candidates could be labeled as“Trump Imitators”. Perhaps the most vocal group, these candidates,
which include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and biotech
entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, have been aping the former
president and similarly claiming to be anti-government Washington
outsiders. As such, they have taken controversial and extreme
positions (as Trump has) that are outside the traditional Republican
mainstream when it comes to foreign policy (by claiming they would
terminate US military aid to Ukraine and reestablish good relations
with Russia), domestic policy (by focusing on nativist issues such as
illegal immigration and the protection of the US southern border),climate change policy (by denying the existence of human-induced
climate change and emphasizing the further development of fossil
fuels to bring down overall fuel costs), and social policies (by railingagainst academic teachings focused on systemic racism in the US
and the inequalities of American society).
The final group could be considered as the “Party Loyalists”,
represented by former South Carolina Governor and former United
Nations ambassador during the Trump administration Nikki Haley – acandidate who previously served and worked closely with Trump –but who has also highlighted her service to the country, her loyalty to
the Constitution, and her fealty to the Republican Party above her
service to the former president himself (Photo 7). Haley is vying to
replace Trump but is trying to do so in a manner that does notalienate current Trump supporters. As such, she is carefully layingout a subtle case that she is prepared to adopt much of Trump’s“America First” mantra, but offer herself as a better alternative toTrump whose presidency and post-presidency continues to divide
Republicans and most Americans.
From the vantage point of early 2024, it is possible that Trump
could maintain his current lead in the polls and once again win the

Photo 7: commons. wikimedia.org

American presidential candidate Nikki Haley (center) and her family at her 2024 presidential
campaign announcement

Republican nomination as well as the White House. Dominating theRepublican polling in 2023 and maintaining a slight lead in the polls
in a potential head-to-head matchup with Biden, however, is no
guarantee that Trump will be able to secure the nomination or win
the general election come November. Indeed, in 2023, most US
voters have not begun to look carefully at the candidates.
Trump’s true viability as a candidate will be tested beginning on
Jan. 15, 2024 with the Iowa caucus and then on Jan. 23 with the
New Hampshire primary, states where at the end of 2023 Trump’s
poll numbers appear to be softening while Haley appears to be
making inroads among Republican voters. As of Nov. 17, according
to polling by Real Clear Politics, on average Trump leads Haley by
47% to 14.3% in Iowa and by 45.7% to 18.7% in New Hampshire.
However, Trump’s lead is expected to shrink as more Republican
candidates drop out of the race.

Can an “Anti-Government” Candidate Win in 2024?
Trump has not won an election since 2016 and his support for
obscure, “anti-government” candidates who are simply loyal to him
personally has been a mixed blessing at best for the Republican
Party. The large Republican gains that had been expected in the 2022
mid-terms were mitigated because of Trump’s influence on the party.
What has become clear over the past several election cycles is that
Americans, whether they support small, limited government or preferlarger, expanded government, nevertheless still want a federal
government that works and can function. The Trump-inspired antigovernment actions on Jan. 6, and more recently Gaetz’s removal of
Speaker McCarthy which brought the House of Representatives to a
standstill, will likely be remembered by voters come November 2024.
Moreover, despite strong polling in 2023, Trump also has many
legal challenges before him in 2024, namely the 91 felony charges
that span four criminal indictments. At the moment, he faces federal
and state criminal charges associated with his role in the Jan. 6
attack on the US Capitol and his alleged mishandling of classified US
documents after he left the White House, as well as charges against
him by the state of New York for allegedly falsifying records related
to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and by
the state of Georgia for allegedly conspiring to overturn the election
results there and in other key states in order to retain the presidency.
Although Trump’s poll numbers among Republicans are currently
strong despite the criminal charges, polls also show that his support
drops significantly if he is convicted on any of the charges against
him. In any event, Trump will be tested to be both on the campaign
trail and in court defending himself, thus opening the likelihood
Republicans may begin to focus on other candidate options.
Nikki Haley, who has already had several strong debate
performances and who also matches up better against Biden than
Trump, appears poised to be the most likely Republican candidate toovertake Trump for the nomination. Being a middle-aged woman ofIndian-American descent with significant government experience,
Haley is also well positioned to win in the general election on someof the core issues Democrats have recently dominated – namely
abortion and women’s reproductive health. To that end, Haley can
attract suburban women who have been leaving the Republican Party
since Trump’s appointment of three very conservative Supreme
Court Justices leading to the overturning of Roe v. Wade
guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion in the US. The results ofthe 2023 off-year elections should be another warning sign for
Republicans supporting Trump. Democratic Governor Andy Beshear
handily won re-election against the Trump-backed state Attorney
General Daniel Cameron in Kentucky, a traditionally Republican state,while Ohio became the seventh US state to pass a ballot measure infavor of abortion rights.
In the end, Republicans only have themselves to blame forembracing Trump and his “anti-government” rhetoric and thus
marginalizing the party to one that is constantly held hostage to theboss and his close political allies. While Americans may be generally
frustrated with the perception of federal government incompetence
and do not appear enamored with Biden, they appear even lessenthusiastic about another four years of an “anti-government”
candidate such as Trump – despite what the polls currently say. Thismay be especially true as much of the American electorate seems tohave learned over the past eight years that when Trump goes on an“anti-government” rallying cry and criticizes the federal government,
he is only criticizing it because it does not serve him or his personal
agenda. If the polls do remain accurate, Trump is elected in 2024,
and he carries out his threat to “root out” government officials who
have legally and legitimately opposed him, labelling them as“communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live
like vermin in our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”,
then it may be time for mainstream Americans to revisit Jefferson’scall to resist government tyrants. Until then, America and the world
will likely be forced to witness one of the most bizarre andunpredictable elections in US history.

Constantine A. Pagedas is executive vice president and COO at International
Technology and Trade Associates, Inc. (ITTA), a consulting company based in
Washington, DC.

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