Trump’s Maga machine is much more effective and more frightening than in 2016

IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA – Say what you will about Donald Trump Jr but he is a slick operator.

He steps onto a stage in Charleston and he’s ready with a joke and a smile, and a jab at Nikki Haley, who’s yet to win a state.

“I saw Nikki Haley on with someone yesterday. She was trying to convince them she had won a state and I’m like….,” says Trump Jr, pausing for comic effect. “I’m trying to figure out which one. It’s almost as deluded as Joe Biden himself. But I guess when you’re working for the Democrats, like Nikki Haley is right now, it doesn’t really matter.”

Donald Trump has many willing surrogates to make his case as he seeks a second term in the White House, among them senator Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy, two former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination who have now endorsed him.

But with Trump Jr, 43, the former president’s first child, you’re getting something unique. Reports suggest the relationship between father and son were not always easy.

But Trump Jr has emerged as one of his father’s most loyal and dedicated avatars, able to deliver a stump speech he’s made hundreds of times sound fresh for the audience he’s addressing.

And with Trump Jr, righty or wrongly, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) crowd can permit themselves to believe they’re hearing something authentic from a family member.

When Trump Jr speaks, the small audience chuckles, hisses or offers their own additions to his sentences. For those few minutes it feels intimate. Those listening sigh contentedly when he makes a point they agree on.

In any ways it’s a magician’s trick. Many of the policies Mr Trump enacted as president did nothing to help the working class voters who delivered him victory.

The Republicans Dec 2017 tax bill – a “big, beautiful tax cut” – did more to help the super rich than blue collar or middle class Americans. Independent analysis found 55 per cent of Americans, or 102 million households making less than $75,000 a year, received a tax cut of just $330 a year. The top 0.1 per cent got $175,000.

But telling the truth has never been Mr Trump’s strategy. In 2016 he vowed to bring back American manufacturing, and even rebuild the dying coal mining industry, but never did.

He did enact a travel ban on people from six Muslim majority nations travelling to the US, forced people seeking asylum at the US border to “remain in Mexico” while their claims were processed, and appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court. It was that final move that allowed the scrapping of Roe v Wade.

Lots of Republicans backed Trump, including wealthy industrials who admired his plan to scrap environmental checks. But his biggest appeal to the Republican base, was that in their view he “spoke like them”.

Putting aside the fact billionaire attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, flew into events with his own 747 – that was always a plus, not a negative – they enjoyed his unpolished diatribes and rants. “Lock her up,” they would chant when he attacked Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr has managed to pull off the same trick.

Most economists say the US economy has been rebounding after months of slow growth and high inflation. Yet Trump Jr claimed even “the son of a billionaire” feels “sticker shock” when he buys something for his children.

To an outsider it feels tone deaf. But the audience at the The Military College of South Carolina, lap it up. It is as though they feel sorry for this poor billionaire’s son.

The crucial thing is that in this moment, imagined or otherwise, before Trump Jr takes a private jet back to Manhattan, he is one of them.

The people here all seem genuine in their concerns. Annette Begner, 51, says under Mr Biden the situation at the US-Mexico border has got out of control. (Numbers of arrivals in recent months have hit record levels.)

She also still believes the 2020 election was unfair, despite no evidence that stood up to a court challenge being presented. “I know there was ballot harvesting,” she says.

Beverly Conner, 70, also feels Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. “It was rigged,” she adds.

When asked whether elections whose outcomes they approved – Trump’s in 2016 or the re-election of Texas governor Gregg Abbott in 2022 – people vacillate. “Perhaps they let some people through,” one Trump supporter told me this week, hinting of a levers of power being mysteriously pulled.

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Does it suit Trump that this supporters believe all this? Of course it does. It is crucial to his success.

It helps greatly their stream of “news” comes from the YouTube streams of conspiracists Alex Jones, or the extreme rightwing sites such as Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon, or Real America’s Voice.

In 2016, Trump’s campaign was similarly focused on tapping into voter’s perceived grievances, be it economic, cultural or a sense that the world had moved on without them. For each issue he found some group to blame – migrants from Mexico, “globalists” such as George Soros, or “weak” democrats such as Barack Obama and Clinton.

Yet his campaign was chaotic, poorly managed and understaffed and failed to think about issues such as ensuring supporters get out and cast their votes.

In 2024, his campaign is much more professional, is making better use of data, and has teams of staff and volunteers across the country to translate Trump’s brand, into victory.

The court cases against him appear to have boosted his support and he has already won Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Polls put him 30 points ahead in South Carolina, his rival’s home state.

Trump Jr is a master at playing it both ways. When he speaks to the crowd he can dismiss the likes of Antony Fauci, hated among many for his proposal Americans wear masks during the Covid pandemic, as the “ultimate bureaucrat”.

And when he speaks to the media afterwards, he can sound informed and reasonable, on a range of issues.

The i asked, how in the light of Trump’s claim he’d told a Nato country’s leader he’d encourage Russia to invade if its defence spending was not sufficient, America could reassure European nations that America was still a reliable ally?

“I think America is a reliable partner if Europeans are reliable allies,” he shoots back. “He did this the first time with Nato [and people said] ‘Oh my god he threatened Nato’. No, he just wanted to make sure that everyone contributed what they agreed to in paper, and that made Nato stronger.”

Was it wise for his father to have claimed he’d told a Nato ally he’d encourage Russia to invade if its spending was “delinquent”?

“You got to understand what my father is talking about [was] sarcasm but the reality is this – they have yet to articulate what victory looks like in Ukraine.”

He says the invasion happened two years ago. “We’ve spent $150billion they want another 60 billion And we don’t know what victory looks like yet. Other than for them it’s just prolonging it forever.”

Given polls suggest Mr Trump is going to beat Ms Haley by 30 points, what would a decent victory look like on Saturday?

“Thirty points – that’s a blowout, that’s not even a decent margin of victory. I mean, that’s unheard of,” says Trump Jr, claiming people picked holes in Trump’s wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, even though they set records.

“It’s going to be a blowout, but they did that in New Hampshire, which was also a blowout.”