To Defeat MAGA, Freedom’s Advocates Need Elite Defection

Trump’s power depends on elite backing. To resist rising authoritarianism, freedom advocates must fracture this coalition and win defectors.

President Donald Trump’s second inauguration unfolded like a courtly pageant, attended by a procession of modern-day courtiers eager to secure their place in the proverbial emperor’s second coronation.

The courtiers came bearing lavish tributes meant to ward off the emperor’s wrath at the dawn of his second reign, some seeking a fresh start after their role in censoring Trump following his failed January 6, 2021, attempt at a self-coup.

The star-studded retinue featured Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon contributed to the inaugural fund with donations of at least one million dollars each—gestures that, in another country, could be called what they truly are: corporate bribery exchanged for the promise of government favors.

Other industries joined the tech titans. Representing big oil, Chevron and ExxonMobil piled millions onto the gilded altar, buying indulgences to earn their way into Trump’s good books.

From the automobile industry, Ford and General Motors wheeled in offerings, prostrating themselves to show how dedicated they were to the president’s supposed ‘golden age’—as if world history isn’t littered with examples of the iron law of grandiose projects to improve the human condition by sacrificing liberties, devolving into tyrannical totalitarianism.

Despite the flood of donations and stateside investment pledges—fodder for Trump’s self-promotion as if only he possessed some divine power to summon such great wealth to the nation—these corporations were not acting out of loyalty or patriotism. They were following a well-written, albeit unethical, script of rent-seeking: the pursuit of greater wealth not through innovation or productivity, but by manipulating a pliable, often corrupt regulatory system to kneecap competitors and secure their own advantage.

Government for Sale

The rent seeker’s gamble worked, at least in the short term.

For one, under the helm of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, despite the glaring conflicts of interest, the Department of Government Efficiency, with the input of crony capitalist interests, brought down a hammer on the administrative state, quite conveniently targeting agencies that regulated his and his fellow big corporations’ business ventures, notably but not limited to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration. This would allow crony robber barons friendly with the administration to sidestep safety rules and justify said flouting using libertarian and nationalist arguments in bad faith.

Secondly, the Trump administration staged a purge against the administrative state under the guise of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). A system designed to provide Americans with stable, professional, and nonpartisan access to government services regardless of who held office was replaced with a corrupt dispensary where access to government services can be expedited if one pleases the president and withheld if one angers him. In place of seasoned technocrats, party loyalists were brought in, chosen less for expertise than for their unquestioned fealty to Trump, the passionate woke-right Red Guards of the MAGA Cultural Revolution. Potential whistleblowers and inspector generals unenthusiastic about the administration’s nihilist dealings were dismissed, clearing the path for crony arrangements between the administration and corporate clients, all with the ultimate goal of aggrandizing executive power.

Thirdly, Trump’s tariff policy, promoted as a boost to American manufacturing, primarily enriched crony capitalists. To effectively increase domestic production—though less efficiently than free trade—tariffs should have targeted finished goods and spared production inputs, while the government worked to reduce labor costs by allowing more foreign workers.

Instead, Trump’s blanket tariffs favored allied industries, including large steel and aluminum companies, as well as major labor unions, while abolishing de minimis exemptions. These measures harmed small businesses that relied on affordable inputs and steered consumers toward companies aligned with Trump’s political agenda. Although large corporations also faced tariff costs, their enormous coffers allowed them to absorb these, while small businesses and startups, potential competitors, suffered devastating financial losses, raising the barriers to market entry they faced.

In other words, although they were forced to share in some of the tariff burden, these large corporations saw a bright future as their competitors were financially crushed by the Trump-orchestrated inorganic market pressure. After all, once trade barriers become tougher, Americans would be compelled by the administration to buy from them exclusively, so despite the costs the entire economy faces, these large firms that have made Trump their patron will still be better off.

Elite Defection To GOP

It is no surprise, then, that the Democratic Party has witnessed a hollowing out of the support it received from wealthy and corporate donors, who, both out of frustration with the Progressive wing of the party and the fear of retribution from the Trump administration, began pulling out their money. Indeed, given his history of disregarding common-sense norms of executive restraint, Donald Trump's ability to use gunboat diplomacy against American businesses through executive orders, exploiting economic powers irresponsibly delegated to the executive by Congress, gives him significant leverage to discourage businesses from donating to anyone but the ruling party.

But more than a White House temper tantrum, it was rising progressive hostility towards business interests that forced companies to see a savior in the Trump administration. From 2008 to 2024, Democrats had failed to rein in the once-fringe radical progressives within their ranks, who supported anti-free-market actions beyond traditional regulation, and eventually gained dominance in the party by sidelining moderates. Notorious proposals from Senator Elizabeth Warren had included an "Ultra-Millionaire Tax," an annual levy of 2% on household net worth between $50 million and $1 billion, and 6% on wealth above $1 billion while Senator Bernie Sanders had proposed an even more aggressive wealth tax, with rates escalating to 8% on fortunes over $10 billion, alongside restoring the corporate tax rate to 35%. This, along with radical calls for action by groups like the Justice Democrats, who refused corporate PAC money and had advocated for a "Green New Deal" left the Democratic Party's moderate wing in a defensive crouch, making the party drift away from the "Third Way" philosophy of the 1990s, which had then successfully rebranded the party as pro-market and fiscally disciplined.

The business community responded predictably. Major advocacy groups had voiced staunch opposition for years until they switched sides. In 2021, the Business Roundtable found that 98% of its member CEOs believed a corporate tax hike to 28% would have a significant adverse effect on competitiveness. Feeling unheard, business leaders soon voted with their capital.

In the 2024 election cycle, a majority of the top 50 individual contributors to political causes skewed right in their donations, with some naive business leaders, like many regular Trump voters, hoping that Trump would moderate himself after the election. People aware of Trump’s efforts to reshape the economy—potentially as a reactionary nationalist or proto-fascist counterpart to the Democrats' plans—saw a chance to profit from an administration more unabashed about its cronyism.

Naked Authoritarianism

Regardless of the naivete of libertarians, liberals, and business owners who embraced Trump, it was no secret that advisors to the administration had long openly expressed their aim to establish an American-style Caesarism, characterized by executive rule through congressional enabling acts. Indeed, this is the mixed regime that the proto-fascist scholar—proto-fascism as defined by Umberto Eco’s essay ‘Ur-Fascism’—Patrick Deneen in ‘Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future’ advocated for, wherein Congress and the judiciary is sidelined or made subordinate to the executive in the interest of a muscular populist leader who governs by fiat, claiming to serve the "common good" all while suppressing the populace.

Observers of the Trump administration have long noticed its shift towards electoral authoritarianism or autocratic legalism, which according to political scientist Kim Scheppele, is the ‘use, abuse, and non-use of law' to concentrate political power and sideline opponents by pitting the idea of ‘democracy’ against 'constitutionalism,' to the detriment of 'liberalism,’ the embrace of a simplified view of democracy to justify bypassing constitutional checks and balances. This has been no less obvious when Trump boldly declared his blatant disregard for the Constitution and the laws supporting the republic in a February social media post, stating, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Indeed, with Trump deploying troops against American soil in Washington, DC, and threatening to do so in other major cities all under the pretext of a crime emergency, the administration has raised concerns that it could be undertaking a test run for martial law.

That the Trump administration has been building internment camps nationwide—all of which by the stroke of a pen could be easily transformed from a place for holding America’s undocumented residents to one for political opponents deemed un-American by the ruling party—has been a cause for distress. Furthermore, the Trump administration’s dishing out of lucrative AI-driven surveillance contracts to cronies like Palantir has not defeated allegations that it is pushing the country closer to the dystopias—actually, proximate realities—depicted in George Orwell's 1984, Sinclair Lewis's It Can’t Happen Here, and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America.

Dictator’s Predicament

Despite his autocratic aspirations, often expressed through collectivist rhetoric and ultranationalist jingoism, Donald Trump cannot govern solely without the cooperation of elites.

This fundamental principle, known as the dictator's predicament, applies to all dictators, electoral authoritarians, and autocratic legalists. It posits that as autocrats, whether elected or not, accrue power, they can become a threat. This leads to a balance-of-power dynamic between them and society's elites, carrying the risk of coups d'état or electoral defeats if the autocrat undermines the interests of the elites.

The survival of even charismatic leaders, initially elected democratically, hinges on the support of a "winning coalition" of powerful actors. These elites are crucial for governance, offering administrative support, co-opting constituencies, and sustaining essential patronage networks.

Well aware of this predicament, Trump’s advisors, learning from the first administration, have embarked on rewriting the social contract. In the past, a neutral and professional administrative state ensured that permitting, law enforcement, licensing, and access to government services were impartial, regardless of whom entrepreneurs voted for, their causes, or campaign contributions. However, the Trump administration, citing the flawed and inaccurate unitary executive theory and misusing DOGE’s supposed aim of increasing government efficiency, has turned the bureaucracy into an extension of Trump, with all the chaos and instability that entails.

DOGE has indeed enhanced the government's operational efficiency—facilitating a regime wherein Trump can govern unilaterally as a corporate Chief Executive Officer without the constraints of checks and balances, opening the door for the abuse of power, the exchange of favors, and the enactment of petty and tyrannical measures such as initiating unwarranted investigations against critics, and revoking or delaying government services for critics all under plausible deniability offered by vague laws.

In other words, Trump has rewritten the social contract to favor corporations and social elites who are invested in maintaining the dictatorship.

His expanding government gives him strong powers to relax or impose regulations, enabling him to reward allies or punish opponents, effectively creating different laws for friends and enemies. This elevates Trump above the law in a regime that is more about rule by law than rule of law — a system they criticize in the People’s Republic of China.

In the past, innovation has guaranteed success in America, with the government, albeit imperfectly, staying out of the game. However, elites have found that profit under Trump’s reign is contingent on currying favor with him. During Trump’s first term, the existence of the federal bureaucracy, which functioned as the fourth branch of government, ensured that elites and individuals could dissent without retribution. However, the party-controlled bureaucracy of the second Trump administration has made it clear that without Trump, poverty falls on the elites.

Innovation will get you nowhere, entrepreneurs are learning, if it doesn’t meet Trump’s archaic, narrow definition of the ‘common good.’ Some of the bourgeoisie would soon realize, as entrepreneurs in China have, that GOP party membership, like Chinese Communist Party membership, is more vital for economic success than providing a better product.

Regime Change

This transformation will provoke a political manifestation of the Matthew Effect: "to those who have, more shall be given,” as America’s two-party system progressively approaches the brink of complete one-party dominance through efforts such as Trump’s attempts to manipulate elections, redraw electoral boundaries via gerrymandering, and seize control of cultural institutions.

The increasing extraconstitutional influence of the Trump administration and the Republican Party is acting like a strong gravitational pull, attracting resources, talent, and influence into its orbit. Companies, seeking survival and strategic advantage, are beginning to shift their investments toward the ruling party. Aspiring professionals who notice career opportunities shaped by the regime’s institutions demonstrate their loyalty even if they disagree with the politics of the regime. This creates a powerful positive feedback loop—or a vicious cycle for the autocrat—where each new asset strengthens the regime, drawing in even more resources and reducing those accessible to competitors.

Conversely, the opposition party is subjected to the principle’s brutal corollary: “from those who have not, even what they have will be taken away.” The first stage of decay is financial hemorrhage. As corporate and wealthy donors are either co-opted by or fearful of the regime, the financial infrastructure that sustains the opposition—from campaign coffers to think tanks—begins to dry up and collapse. Without money, little else in politics can endure.

The loss of resources triggers a parallel crisis in human capital. Politics is a competitive market for talent, and a party starved of funds and shorn of realistic prospects cannot attract the brightest strategists, the most capable policy experts, or the most ambitious future candidates. As this talent drains away, the opposition weakens intellectually and organizationally, and its bench of future leaders withers. What begins as a temporary tactical disadvantage metastasizes into a long-term structural debility.

This depletion, in turn, produces intellectual atrophy. Without a robust infrastructure of ideas, scholars, and institutions, the opposition loses its capacity to generate compelling, forward-looking policy alternatives. It falls into a defensive crouch, reduced to reacting against the regime rather than articulating a coherent and attractive vision for the future. Its platforms grow stale, its message uninspired, and its capacity to persuade erodes.

The final stage is narrative strangulation. As the regime and its allies consolidate control over media and cultural institutions, the opposition’s ability to reach the public becomes increasingly limited. Its messages are distorted, its leaders demonized, its voice confined to an echo chamber of diminishing resonance. The regime’s narrative saturates the political landscape, leaving the opposition shouting in futility against the static of its own marginalization.

At this point, I must warn my fellow libertarians and classical liberals that they should resist any temptation to feel vindicated or safe in the hollowing out of progressive forces. They are not exempt. In the eyes of the increasingly radical proto-fascist right, they are indistinguishable from socialists and communists—enemies to be destroyed rather than potential allies. This is the essence of Carl Schmitt’s corrosive friend-versus-enemy distinction that Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump’s heir presumptive, has adopted—once politics is reduced to existential combat, nuance evaporates, and every ideological deviation from the ruling bloc is treated as treachery. The regime’s logic admits no middle ground. To stand apart from its totalizing power, whether as a libertarian skeptic or a liberal dissenter, is to be marked for elimination and sent to the camps, as the Integralist scholar Adrian Vermule joked.

Painful De-MAGAtization

Over time, the changes observed under Trump will solidify into a new order, similar to how the Communists, initially revolutionaries, eventually became the long-standing former status quo in Russia whose specter still haunts the country. American civic and economic norms will continue to be dismantled and redefined. What are now informal deals between a megalomaniac executive and his courtiers will harden into institutional sclerosis.

Laws will be revised, judicial appointments will reflect a new legal outlook that justifies unchecked executive authority, and a new generation of civil servants will be trained to favor political loyalty over professional integrity. Eventually, the memory of a neutral, rules-based system will diminish, replaced by a culture where political connections serve as the main currency.

Soon, undoing such a change won't be as easy as winning an election. The MAGA movement and its legacy will become a harmful presence in the nation's civic life. This is because such a system isn't confined to the elite; it spreads throughout society. When progress relies not on merit but on loyalty, ordinary people learn to navigate corrupt channels to survive and advance socially. Bribes for permits, "donations" for government services, and loyalty pledges for job security become the unwritten rules of the game. A large network of dependence and complicity develops, trapping millions who may dislike the system but see no other way to support their families.

Restoration, if not achieved sooner, will require more than just an electoral victory. The process of "de-MAGA-tization"—similar to the painful de-communization of Eastern Europe—would be traumatic for everyone. It would mean undoing not only corrupt laws and institutions, but also the social pathways people have been forced to depend on. Eliminating crony networks would create an economic vacuum; restoring a culture of democratic accountability would challenge many life choices made under coercion. Restoring privileges unjustly gained through race or cronyism will appear to many as oppression. This effort would inevitably be marked by social chaos and bitter political recriminations, leaving a feeling of a violent tearing of the social fabric that the country could never heal from. People who would forget the freedoms Americans enjoyed during the country’s first 250 years, as the Trumpist order solidifies generationally, will prefer the familiar autocracy they will be raised under rather than a return to America’s founding ideals, which would seem unfamiliar to them.

As this new order solidifies, advocates of freedom must recognize that the Overton Window of acceptable political discourse is shifting dramatically, reducing the space for democratic opposition. The very act of advocating for a return to the status quo ante—restoring the administrative state, re-engaging with free trade, and re-imposing the rule of law on the executive—will be portrayed by the regime and its allies as a radical, disruptive, and even unpatriotic move. Suggesting the reinstatement of environmental or financial regulations would be condemned as an attack on the nation's hand-picked corporate champions and the social order and labor relations built around them.

Now Or Never

Yet, within this bleak landscape lie the seeds of the regime’s undoing. The MAGA coalition, for all its apparent strength, is an unstable alliance of convenience, and its most vulnerable point is the very elite it purports to serve. To fracture this coalition, advocates for freedom must pivot from defense to offense, offering these elites a credible and attractive alternative to a system that will inevitably turn against them. This requires channeling the growing corporate rage against the regime’s arbitrary nature and presenting a superior vision for prosperity.

The raw material for this strategy is plentiful. Trump has already begun overplaying his hand by publicly urging companies like Walmart to “EAT THE TARIFFS” using the bully pulpit, aiming to hide the fallout of his failed tariff policies. Despite Walmart experiencing weekly cost hikes due to tariffs, which put ongoing pressure on the company, it could only partly offset these costs through other revenue sources, such as advertising. This will instill fear and frustration in other companies and provoke in them an ardent desire to replace Trump with a more competent president through lawful means.

This rage is not limited to economic policy. It extends to the aggressive cultural policing of the "woke right," which now treats standard business decisions as ideological betrayals. When Cracker Barrel, facing declining revenues, made a strategic choice to modernize its logo and interior to attract a younger demographic, it was not a political statement but a business imperative.

Yet, the MAGA ecosystem erupted, accusing the company of "gay race communism," calling for boycotts to "break the Barrel," and contributing to a significant drop in its stock price. For any rational CEO, this is an untenable position. They are caught between placating a volatile political base and making the necessary decisions to keep their companies competitive and profitable.

On a religious level, the dominance of ‘trad’ Catholics in the new right movement has fueled feelings of alienation among Protestant conservatives who, despite their numerical majority, see their influence diminish in Republican circles. This sense of discontent should be used to attract Protestants who value small government and freedom to join the anti-MAGA coalition, as they are systematically being excluded from influence in the conservative movement by integralist Catholics, making the case for them to embrace pro-individual-liberty stances to preserve the legacy of the Reformation in America against assaults from statist theocrats.

The Democratic Party has a key opportunity to position itself as the primary resistance against the proto-fascist tendencies of MAGA, becoming the alliance that liberals and libertarians can unite behind. Democrats should rebrand not as enemies of business but as the defenders of a stable, predictable, and genuinely pro-market system. The initial step is to reaffirm the core principles of a free market by clearly distinguishing genuine competition from the crony capitalism fostered by the MAGA regime. A true free market depends on competition and voluntary exchange, with the government acting as a neutral referee.

Conversely, cronyism is a rigged system where success hinges on political loyalty, arbitrary government favoritism, and resources wasted on influence-peddling rather than innovation. The Democratic message to economic elites must be straightforward: sustainable prosperity is only possible through fair rules and merit-based competition, avoiding the need to kowtow to a strongman’s patronage.

This is an appeal to the winner’s mindset. Most successful people believe they have earned their position through talent and hard work. The MAGA movement’s anti-expert, anti-intellectual posture is fundamentally at odds with the data-driven, analytical cultures of high-performing organizations.

Democrats can offer a compelling alternative: a vision of an "idea meritocracy," where the best ideas win, not the most loyal sycophants. The pitch is simple: we want to run the country with the same principles of competence and evidence-based decision-making that you use to run your companies.

It is worth noting that casting Trump as irredeemably corrupt and the incarnation of democratic rot is indeed the most truthful and potent campaign tactic Democrats can use in 2026 and 2028, complemented by footage of masked federal officers assaulting civilians and deploying armored vehicles in major cities.

To make this vision a reality, Democrats must create a highly visible and welcoming landing strip for "apostates" from the MAGA coalition. The first elites to defect face the greatest risk; therefore, they must be publicly embraced and empowered, signaling to others that there is a viable alternative where their expertise is valued and a path to redemption is available. This is not about demanding ideological purity, but about forging a strategic alliance to defend the republic. As defectors are welcomed, a permission structure is built, making it easier for the next wave to follow.

This will trigger a predictable cascade. Faced with elite defections, Trump will inevitably grow into a mad king, becoming more radical, purging dissenters, and escalating his paranoid rhetoric against the "traitors,” causing more of his allies to flee him or work behind the scenes to replace him via impeachment or sideline his allies, as party leaders toil to preserve themselves. This will further divide the MAGA coalition, resulting in a loss of supporters and moderates, and leading to social ostracism of MAGA.

The final step is to forge these defectors and existing opponents into a durable, pro-freedom coalition. This alliance, uniting Liberals, Libertarians, and even disaffected Progressives, cannot be built on uniform policy goals, given the vast disagreements among them.

Instead, it must be an "advocacy coalition" united by a shared commitment to the "deep core beliefs" of American democracy: the rule of law, free and fair elections, and individual liberty. This is very much like the alliance the founding fathers had as they jointly resisted British tyranny, which America needs, as Trump has acted like America’s own homegrown George III.

This coalition must offer more than just anti-Trumpism; it must articulate a positive, forward-looking vision for America rooted in its founding ideals. It must reclaim and broaden the definition of freedom to appeal to all its members: the Libertarian’s freedom from government overreach, the Liberal’s freedom of expression and conscience, and the Progressive’s freedom from want and oppression. These are not competing values but intertwined facets of a single, powerful ideal.

The choice before America’s elites is becoming starker by the day: a predictable republic governed by laws, or an unstable autocracy governed by one man’s whims. By providing a believable route to return to the previous state, proponents of liberty can divide the MAGA coalition and initiate the challenging process of rebuilding America to be better and freer than it was before.

A new vision is possible, and those who love America need to work hard to make America truly Great Again once the curse of Trump has been lifted from its soil and its founding ideals restored.