What's next for the MAGA MCU? (Part 1)
Trump's MAGA Corrupt-o-matic Universe: Phases 2, 3, 4, and beyond
[SPOILER ALERT]
Tony Stark is dead. Steve Rogers has retired. Thanos has been snapped out of existence. Yet, their absence hasn’t slowed Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe a bit. The MCU keeps chugging right along, scheduling theatrical features and Disney+ series as far out as the eye can see. They’ve already announced some of their plans for a Phase 6—stretching out through the end of 2025.
Might we expect the same from the Trump MCU—the MAGA Corrupt-o-matic Universe? Despite voters canceling Phase 1 (Mr. Trump Goes to Washington) in the last election, the franchise has continued to dominate our screens through Phase 2 (A Capitol Offense) This summer, we were treated to the first episode of Phase 3 (The Trials Balloon). With dark money budgets running to the billions of dollars, we can expect sequel after sequel after sequel. Trump’s MCU will endure long past the end of the single White House term of Dear Leader—the Supreme and Very Stabile Genius. But there are signs that, in Phase 4 and beyond, the franchise will evolve in new and unexpected directions. There are hints of panic that Trump’s wackadoodle picks for Senate may have doomed GOP hopes to regain the majority.
As long as Trump stays on the scene—even out of office—his vast cast of misfit followers have found it useful to remain in his orbit. Well, most of them have. At the margins, some are beginning to regret his influence and question their own loyalty to him. Where Phase 1 and 2 have been entirely dominated by Trump, leaks about Phase 3 and beyond are ripe with rumors that Trump’s role may be reduced, possibly even eliminated. The details of upcoming episodes remain fluid. They are still being broken out in the writers’ room.
You’re forgiven for expecting that Phase 3 of the Trump MCU will consist entirely of courtroom dramas. While some of those are certainly in development, the full slate shows much more variety. Senator Lindsey Graham has even teased an upcoming episode featuring a violent clash with Trump supporters rioting in the streets.
There is, of course, a fundamental difference between the Marvel and the MAGA universes: in Marvel’s world, not a single one of its hundreds of characters is autonomous. They show up onscreen only when Kevin Feige green-lights them. By contrast, the characters around Donald Trump all have agency. Though free to leave, they have, nonetheless, chosen to stay. Each of them have their own flocks to fleece, side-hustles to pursue, and big-dollar donors to serve. Up until now, they’ve concluded that they can best reach their own goals by continuing to aid Trump in meeting his. How much longer will that dynamic hold?
While his ego won’t allow him to acknowledge it, Donald J. Trump was never the Big Bad of his own universe. He’s neither a Thanos nor a Kang. He’s much more a Trevor Slattery, the pretend Mandarin who showed up in Iron Man 3—a failed actor, posing as a terrorist to boost his own ego while advancing the agenda of a villainous tech tycoon. Trump was allowed to play president in all his buffoonish, reckless, and vengeful ignorance only because he furthered the agendas of a vast rogues gallery of grifters, preachers, politicians, tycoons, foreign autocrats, tin-pot militia leaders, and Senator Lindsey Graham.
It’s an illusion to view the many players in the MAGA Corrupt-o-matic Universe as supporting players in Trump’s story. From their perspective, he’s a supporting player in theirs. They’re happy to fluff Trump’s ego because, in return, he amplifies their messages and draws a crowd to advance their purposes. For them, he’s simply their marketing department.
So far, in Trump’s MCU Phase 1 (his presidency) and Phase 2 (his post-presidency), they are happy to intertwine their stories with Trump’s in a complex web of mutual exploitation. But there’s no loyalty among them. All of them understand the game.
Everywhere Trump goes, people know the part he’s playing. When the end comes, he knows, he’s just a gigolo’s. Life goes on without him.
As we move into Phase 3 and Trump’s toxicity grows, here some of the players worth watching.
The Casting Director/Executive Producer
Leonard Leo has proven to be one of the most adept and strategic power brokers in modern U.S. history. He exploited Trump and Mitch McConnell to deliver on his goal of capturing of the United States Supreme Court for the corporatist and anti-abortion right. With a dark-money budget estimated at $580 million, Leo has managed to place a majority of the Court’s Justices—hand-picked, radical, rightwing, religious ideologues. Through Leo’s Federalist Society, candidates for the federal judiciary were recruited directly out of law school and groomed (yes, that word) through a pipeline of law firms, clerkships, and academic positions. Those that make it through, not only have lifetime appointments, but come to the Court at relatively young ages. If Leo were to disappear tomorrow, his legacy would last for decades.
But he’s not about to disappear. He’s stronger than ever.
Now with the resources of his new foundation, the Marble Freedom Trust, a $1.6 billion endowment, and the protections of a tax code that allows Marble to pose as a charitable “social welfare organization” concealing their donors, Leo is set to recruit, train, and advance a new generation of right-wing operatives and politicians. He will continue in the grand tradition of the Koch Brothers, Peter Thiel, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Richard Mellon Scaife, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, and many others as he bankrolls influence campaigns, and think tanks.
We don’t yet know the plot of Leo’s new spinoff. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse expects Leo’s next goal will be helping Mitch McConnell recapture the Senate. Whitehouse expects that Marble Trust may even spend in the upcoming election to try to overcome the curse of weak Trump-backed candidates—Mehmet Oz (PA), Herschel Walker (GA), J.D. Vance (OH), Blake Masters (AZ). But whatever Leo does, and whenever he does it, expect a blockbuster. Expect zero deference to Trump.
Of all the players in Trump’s universe, Leonard Leo is the most prepared to go independent.
$1.6 billion in the bank will do that for you.
The Big Brain
All presidents, of either party, rely on outside advisors. Karl Rove, for example, earned a reputation as Bush’s Brain.
Trump’s most important exo-brain (on the occasions that he deigned to consult it), has been Stephen K Bannon. Bannon was an early supporter of Trump’s bid for the White House and briefly served as chief executive of the 2016 campaign. He stayed on at the White House as chief strategist. In the very first month, he briefly upstaged—and annoyed—his boss by appearing on the cover of Time, for a story that asked, “Is Steve Bannon the second most powerful man in the world?”
Bannon left the White House in the summer of 2017 under a cloud. In the wake of the neo-Nazi Charlottesville rally, it was reported, that Bannon is the one who urged Trump to praise the “fine people on both sides.”
“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”—Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, (August 18, 2017)
Easy to dismiss because of his comically disheveled appearance, Bannon combines grandiosity, strategy, sleaze, and brazenness with wide knowledge and a deep network. He straddles public posturing for the masses and backroom dealing with power brokers.
If there are new plots to cook up in Phase 3 and beyond, Bannon will be cooking them.
Bannon, it should be remembered, has wide-ranging ambitions. He has fomented white nationalist movements not just in the United States, but internationally as well. In 2016, he was involved in strategizing not only the Trump presidential campaign but also in the Brexit “Leave” campaign. He was, at the time, V.P. of Cambridge Analytica, flush with Robert Mercer money, and a pioneer in the use of Facebook data to target voters in both Britain and the U.S.
Today, Bannon reaches a broad audience of MAGAts through his cross-media podcast, Bannon’s War Room, where he feeds their simmering sense of grievance. He draws from the stew of lies and distortions as Fox News—Biden stole the election, vaccines are deadly, the left favors immigrants over real Americans, the elites are pushing you around and marginal groups are threatening your way of life. But unlike Fox, which pretends to be a news station, Bannon is explicitly recruiting activists. He urges his followers to get into politics at the local level, take over school boards, infiltrate election boards. How effective the Bannonites will be at doing so, remains to be seen. If we see wild plots in future episodes of the MAGA universe, it’s a good bet that some of them will be cooked up by Steve Bannon.
His message to insiders: be ready to take over on day one of the second Trump administration. Bannon would like to see tens of thousands of mid-level bureaucrats summarily fired to decimate the “Deep State.” He’s recruiting to replace them with 4,000 “shock troops” to finish his project of dismantling the administrative state.
But first, he faces sentencing for Contempt of Congress.
The Sidekick (Did someone call him schnorrer?)
What explains Senator Lindsey Graham’s shift from calling Trump, “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” and a “kook” to going full MAGA? It could be as simple as the free golfing and buffets that Trump plies him with. But it’s more likely Graham’s life-long need to play sidekick to a stronger male.
This weekend, Graham went on TV twice to warn the Justice Department not to indict Trump. Graham opened with a predictable round of “but her emails” and then went on to threaten riots in the streets if Trump is prosecuted.
“How can you tell a conservative Republican that the system works when it comes to Trump? … If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there will literally will be riots in the streets. I worry about our country.”
In the index to Mark Leibovich’s book, Thank You for Your Servitude (a breezy survey of D.C. Republicans falling under Trump’s sway) Graham gets more mentions in the index than anyone else—an entire column’s worth.
Not only that, but he gets also his own chapter in the book, titled with Graham’s childhood nickname, “Stinkball.” (The chapter is a reworking of an article Leibovich wrote for The New York Times Magazine)
Leibovich says that since childhood, Graham has fallen in as sidekick to an alpha dog. For years, the late Senator John McCain was Graham’s alpha. But with McCain dying and Trump in the White House, Graham, cynically, traded up. Much more rewarding to be the loyal sidekick to a actual president than a fellow Senator. He told Leibovich, “I have never been called this much by a president in my life.”
Does Lindsey Graham have a role in a post-Trump MAGA world? Unclear. But knowing how Stinkball operates, he’ll find one.
There are many more players to meet. And we’ll meet more of them in Part II of the MAGA Corrupt-o-matic Universe, including The Brownshirts, The Head Writer, The Understudy, Wranglers, The Family, and Chorus.