The Empire Strikes Back: Trump and His Oligarchs Return to the White House

The problem for many male Trump supporters is that right-wing populism primarily serves the economic interests of plutocrats—not the interests of workers or the middle-class.

For those of us engaged in the work of building a more just, fair and compassionate society and world, Jan. 20 was a very sad and tragic day. As many have noted, it was bitterly ironic that this year, the restoration to power of a malignantly narcissistic right-wing demagogue fell on the same day we celebrated the life and contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest progressive leaders in American history.

This great and broken country is nothing if not a bundle of head-scratching contradictions.

Much has been written about Trump’s reelection and what it will mean for the most vulnerable, especially the sick, the poor and millions of undocumented immigrants and their families; for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, who have to live with the fact that 77 million of their fellow citizens voted—in effect—to excuse and endorse an unapologetic misogynist, adjudicated rapist and serial abuser and harasser of women; and for anyone who is already suffering from the effects of the climate crisis that is sure to worsen and intensify under a regime of “drill baby drill” climate-denialists.

No need to run through the parade of regressive executive orders and legislative actions the newly emboldened coalition of uber-wealthy oligarchs and MAGA culture warriors have already introduced and will continue to promulgate in the coming hours, days, weeks and months. The next four years—at least—are going to be exhausting.

But in the spirit of MLK and the late, great feminist leader Cecile Richards, who sadly died on Monday of cancer at age 67, I wanted to add one important—and perhaps unlikely—note of defiant hope. It has to do with men, especially white men.

They’ve played an outsized role in bringing our teetering democracy to this perilous moment. According to NBC News exit polls, Trump beat Kamala Harris 60 percent to 38 percent among white male voters, and a gigantic 69 percent to 29 percent among those with a high-school education.

But tensions exist within the overall white male vote. At the inauguration, potential areas of friction between two discreet segments of white male Trump supporters—MAGA populists and wealthy oligarchs—were already apparent. As former Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill observed on MSNBC, the (blue-collar) MAGA faithful were nowhere to be found inside the Capitol Rotunda, where the seats were filled by business moguls, wealthy donors and other Republican elites.

In the coming struggles, it will be important for anti-Trump, pro-democracy forces to call attention to these sorts of internal divisions in Trumpland—and amplify and deepen those tensions.

The Weaponization of Male Grievance

I’ve long maintained that male backlash—especially but not exclusively white male backlash—is one of the main reasons for the rise of the populist right in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. The political commentariat, as well as the Democratic Party, have been slow to recognize and grapple with the specifically gendered aspects of this backlash. But it’s been unfolding right in front of our eyes for many years.

MAGA’s chief strategist Steve Bannon realized over a decade ago that he had found the perfect messenger for his plan to weaponize male grievance: the bombastic real estate developer and reality TV star Donald Trump.

Trump possessed a unique combination of traits: the aura of a “successful” and not especially ideological businessman, a deeply felt sense of aggrieved entitlement, media-friendly charisma and the aggression, performative instincts and timing of an insult comic.

He was the perfect celebrity spokesman for the MAGA movement, which is driven by a potent combination of white racial grievance and an ongoing “crisis in masculinity” caused by a number of macroeconomic and technological factors. These include things like the corporate off-shoring of American jobs, the decline in domestic manufacturing, the financialization of the U.S. economy and the rapid growth of automation and AI.

But the conservative infotainment media complex—initially right-wing talk radio and Fox News, now joined by the “brocast” universe of Joe Rogan and others—located the source of men’s problems not in those larger, abstract forces of capitalism and various effects of the digital revolution, but in “woke” concerns about race and gender, or ineffectual rule by a decadent and feminized elite.

To achieve electoral success, what MAGA needed most of all was to expand the GOP’s percentage of the male vote, as well as their overall turnout. They already had the votes of traditionally Republican men, and white evangelical Christians. What they needed were the votes of more blue-collar white men, many of whom hadn’t voted before. In the last election, they aggressively went after young men, and, increasingly, men of color.

The strategy succeeded. Trump eked out an Electoral College victory in 2016, and won more decisively in 2024. In both cases, Trump won by beating women—the first and second women to be nominated by a major party.

It’s important to note, however, that many of the men who voted for Trump, including many of the young men, did so not for reasons of ideology or policy. According to a wide variety of polling data, many of them favor progressive policy positions, such as an increase in the federal minimum wage, strong support for labor unions and belief in the need for government action on the climate crisis. A strong majority of young men supports abortion rights.

But they voted for Trump in part because they were told, over and over again on social media, that he was the “men’s candidate.” They believed he understood and respected them. He showed up at UFC fights. He went on their favorite podcasts. He projected, in the memorable words of Mark Zuckerberg, “masculine energy.”

Not like the supposedly “anti-male” wokesters on the left, with their persistent focus on the needs of women, LGBTQ folks and communities of color.

The problem for many of these male Trump supporters is that right-wing populism primarily serves the economic interests of plutocrats, not the interests of workers or the middle-class. The contradictions inherent in the MAGA coalition have surfaced already in the brewing civil war between Bannon and Elon Musk over H-1B immigration visas.

Most pundits agree that on this and other matters, it’s highly unlikely that Trump will side with blue-collar Trump voters over Elon Musk—the world’s richest man.

Trump needed the votes of working-class men, but his loyalties have always lied with the wealthy. As Late Night host Seth Meyers said in December, after the newly re-elected Trump rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, “The incoming president looked delighted, like a Make-A-Wish kid who faked being sick until he got what he wanted.”

Meyers went on to say that “this guy has pretended for over a decade to be a populist champion of the working class, and now he’s on literal Wall Street, getting pats on the back from the richest people in the country.”

For Trump’s second term, he’s already surrounded himself with more billionaires as advisers and members of his cabinet than any president in history—and he’s just getting started.

What if Some of the White Men Who Voted for Trump Start to Have Second Thoughts?

As Trump unveils his new economic and tax policies, the working and middle-class men who think Trump cares about them and their financial struggles might be in for a rude awakening. It’s very possible that Trump won them over with tough talk and other performative masculinity appeals, but is now ready to pivot once again to conventional Republican priorities, like making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, the deregulation of polluting industries and other plutocratic priorities.

What if many of the working and middle-class men who voted for Trump were misled into thinking that feminists and racial justice advocates were their antagonists, instead of the denizens of what David Graham referred to in The Atlantic as a new “Gilded Age,” who were seated right behind Trump at his second inaugural?

What if many men who were initially drawn to the camaraderie and brotherhood of MAGA, in their desire to lead lives of meaning and purpose, eventually came to realize that it was all in the service of a new wealthy elite, courted by Trump, that includes an entire new cadre of tech billionaires like Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg?

To use a Star Wars analogy: What if many of the average men who supported Trump fancied themselves members of the Rebel Alliance, but one day came to understand they were actually working for the Empire?

In her 2020 book Boys Will Be Boys, the Australian writer Clementine Ford wrote that many young men who lash out at women online, fiercely protecting what they see as invasions of their territory by feminists and people of color, consider themselves to be the good guys.

“They don’t realize,” she writes, “that racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and all the other bigoted views they uphold and gleefully enforce are, you know, what the baddies do. They spent their youths daydreaming about being Jedi Masters, and they haven’t yet realized that they’ve grown up to be Stormtroopers, mindlessly doing the bidding of whichever evil leader they’re acting in service to.”

What if, as the second Trump presidency takes shape, and Trump’s plutocratic biases come ever more clearly into view, more and more of them begin to see that Trump and MAGA can never unify this incredibly vast and diverse country, but only exacerbate inequality and injustice, and deepen its divisions? What if they come to realize that economic justice is the path to national well-being, not the oligarchic rule that Trump actually represents?

In the coming months and years, feminist, liberal and progressive activists who seek to block what they can of Trump’s authoritarian agenda, and push the Democrats to assemble a winning coalition for 2026 and 2028, should speak directly to the men who thought Donald Trump was their champion.

They don’t need to convert the MAGA faithful, the kinds of guys who put on the red hat and go to Trump rallies, or think God spared Trump’s life in Butler, Pa., so he could save America. That’s a waste of time and energy.

But I’m convinced that millions of men and young men who voted for Trump have not gone that far down the rabbit hole of hero-worship, conspiracy and delusion. That’s the source of my defiant hope.

Given the right message and messenger, it’s reasonable to believe that enough of them can be drawn away from MAGA and back toward a left-of-center coalition that can not only reclaim American democracy, but deliver a fair deal for working and middle-class people.

This piece originally appeared in Ms. Magazine on January 21, 2025.