There are two Donald Trumps - but which is the real one?

Only four of Donald Trump’s dozens of former cabinet members have publicly supported his re-election. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times

Sensible conservative or dangerous narcissist? The best answer comes from those who have worked with him.

There are two Donald Trumps. We liberals see an ignorant, sadistic, immoral, bigoted, authoritarian narcissist, as revealed by his own words. But there’s another Trump, who is invisible to liberals: a sensible conservative Trump. This is the Trump described by people who are themselves sensible conservatives. They think that we liberals with Trump Derangement Syndrome should put aside what Trump says and concentrate on what he does. Some sensible conservatives are Financial Times readers, who have made this argument to me in thoughtful emails. I’ll set out their case, as I understand it.

Sensible conservatives often open with the disclaimer that they don’t like Trump. They wish he’d talk and post less. They explain that he says wild things in order to appeal beyond the sensible-conservative base to the wider field of Maga types. He’s just doing marketing, one entrepreneur told me.

Sensible conservatives describe a smart Trump whose vulgar words disguise effective policies. Take, for instance, his pressure on European states to fund their own defence. We liberals fixate on his outrageous threat to “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to recalcitrant Europeans. But sensible conservatives explain that he’s the first US president to achieve the long-standing American goal of getting Europeans to raise defence spending. (Liberals would argue that Vladimir Putin did rather more to achieve that, by invading Ukraine.) Sensible conservatives add that Trump was tough enough on Putin as to be the only recent American president not to experience a Russian invasion. In their view, to misquote Theodore Roosevelt, Trump speaks loudly and carries a big stick.

Sensible conservatives argue that, as president, Trump acted like a sensible conservative. He cut taxes for “wealth creators”. He cracked down on immigration. Trump, they say, oversaw low inflation, whereas Joe Biden worsened the 2021-22 global surge in prices with his post-pandemic fiscal stimulus. Now Biden, in an echo of Trump, is calling for new tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminium.

Sure, sensible conservatives will shrug, the Trump family enriched itself from the presidency.

So did the Clintons and Obamas, even if liberals argue that they only did so after leaving office. Sensible conservatives tut-tut over Trump’s poor behaviour in the storming of the US Capitol of January 6 2021. But they understand his concerns about potential vote-rigging. After all, the mail-in ballots he objects to are banned in most European democracies. In short, sensible conservatives make a more sensible case for Trump than he himself ever has. They also point out, correctly, that liberal elites look down on Trump voters.

So which is the real Trump — the dangerous narcissist or the sensible conservative? I’d argue that the answer comes from the one group of American conservatives who are least keen on Trump: those who worked for him. Many of them now endorse the liberal view.

Only four of Trump’s dozens of former cabinet members publicly supported his re-election, reported NBC News last summer. Several former aides are now also going around warning against him. A recent article by the Associated Press captured some cautionary voices: Trump is a “threat to democracy”, said former defence secretary Mark Esper. He’s “unfit to be president”, said former national security adviser John Bolton. Trump “admires autocrats and murderous dictators”, said former chief of staff John Kelly. Trump’s re-election “could mean the end of American democracy as we know it”, said former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin.

These people are conservatives. Their self-interest would surely lie in praising the possible next president and bigging themselves up for having worked for him. Instead they are courting ostracisation by their tribe. Cassidy Hutchinson, a staffer in Trump’s White House turned whistleblower, says: “It’s not easy...there are a lot of consequences that you have to brave when you make the break with Trumpworld.”

Other conservatives who know Trump keep their contempt private. Mitt Romney describes a room full of Republican senators who greeted Trump with a standing ovation, listened to him respectfully, then “burst into laughter” the moment he left. There’s also an entire nonfiction genre of anonymous officials telling terrifying stories about his presidency. Meanwhile, it’s hard to find any Democrats who worked for Biden saying he’s unfit to be president.

The knee-jerk response is that Trump’s conservative critics are “Republicans in Name Only”. But that suggests there’s no room for sensible conservatives in his Republican party. Some sensible people may have invented a Trump in their own image.

Written by: Simon Kuper

© Financial Times