What Happens When Trump Dies?
The cult will lose its leader; what then?
Donald Trump has dominated the American and worldwide press since his whirlwind campaign in 2015 brought him to the most powerful seat of American government. He served one term, lost his re-election bid, famously tried to subvert democracy in an attempted insurrection on January 6, and has since been a rabble-rouser on the right. He is the favorite to win the Republican nomination.
Trump has single-handedly built out the racist, militant wing of the Republican party into a rabble-rousing group of fascists hell-bent on sweeping their golden calf into the presidency again, then closing the door behind him. He’s got a cult of personality that has spawned what amounts to an actual cult with millions of followers who are willing to kill and die for him. That’s terrifying.
He’s also 77, has a penchant for fast food, and by outward appearances does not seem to be in the greatest health. His ability to string together sentences in a coherent manner is questionable at best, and I’m willing to bet cold hard cash that he is not, in fact, 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being overweight — I’m 5’10” and 236 right now, which makes me squarely obese by BMI standards. It’s just funny how vain of a man he is that he would report something that is clearly not even remotely true. It’s all in keeping with his macho, self-made image, though.
Biden gets a lot of flak for being old, but Trump isn’t far behind him on the age scale, and Trump seems to be in worse shape than Biden on several scales both mental and physical. These two aren’t the only old white guys in the government right now, but they’re two of the most notable, and the fact that Trump is, again, leading what amounts to an actual cult makes his age a bit more interesting.
So, what happens when a cult leader dies? The average life expectancy for a white male in the U.S. in 2022 was 73.7; again Trump is currently 77. While it’s certainly not unreasonable that he might live another decade or two, it’s also not unlikely that he might keel over from a heart attack while rage-tweeting on the toilet at 2:00 in the morning.
Look, let me be real here: I do not have the time or energy to thoroughly research cults and what happens to them when they break up, and I am not a historian or expert. This is not meant to be a scholarly article about cults, especially about the cult around Donald Trump — that’s best left for the history books twenty years from now. However, based on some simple research, it looks like there are four basic outcomes when a cult leader dies: continuation, dissolution, schism, or reform/revolution.
Continuation is what it sounds like: a new leader is named and the movement continues. Dissolution is also what it sounds like — without the leader, the cult dissolves. In a schism, the cult fractures into a bunch of sub-cults, generally with their own leaders trying to emulate the success of the original with varying degrees of success. Revolution or reform is what happens when the cult changes its approach or beliefs after its leader’s death to move with the times.
Let’s go through the options realistically. The cult of Trumpism is unlikely to be continued in the traditional way — the naming of a successor. Trump is too vain to name anyone to follow him after he’s gone, since by all accounts he is so self-centered that he would never deign to name someone who is on his level.
None of his kids seem up to the task, either. Don Junior and Eric have the charisma of a pair of moldy cabbages while Ivanka and Jared have avoided the spotlight that Trump brings after their New York friends shunned them. Tiffany has been antagonistic toward him for a while now, so she’s out, and Barron doesn’t have much of a public presence and is still a minor anyway, so who knows what he thinks.
As such, a proper succession seems unlikely. In the unlikely but possible event that Trump names a successor, I don’t think anyone alive right now would live up to his particular brand of populism, not that some aren’t making an effort.
Dissolution is also unlikely, at least immediately. There are tens of millions of people who idolize Trump, many seeing him as being hand-picked by god or Jesus to save America. I don’t think that something as trivial as his death would cause them to stop doing all of their awful, bigoted nonsense to wreck this country in his name. Honestly, it might cause a bunch of violence to break out if anything, which is terrifying to think about.
That leaves the last two options: schism, reform, or some combination. Per the last paragraph, I really don’t think the whole Trumpism movement would reform after his death. There are a whole bunch of people that are very heavily invested in the success of Trump’s attempts to strip away many of the guardrails of democracy and build a fascist theocracy. They’re not about to let something as simple as the death of one man stop them, no matter who that man is or what he means to the movement.
So schism is the more likely option here, I think. The cult of Trump will likely fragment around a handful of people who most embody his beliefs. There will probably be a “Team Trump” camp who fall in line behind Don Junior and Eric, the sons of the man himself. Another big group will probably line up behind Ron DeSantis, who has positioned himself as a youthful, modern culture warrior — Trump 2.0, as it were.
There will also likely be a group of Trumpers who simply decide that the moment is past and shift their votes to a more moderate Republican. These are more than likely the “hold your nose and vote R” folks who find Trump distasteful but reliably vote along their party line anyway. They will see him leave this mortal coil with a wide variety of feelings on the man and his methods, as many hate his tactics and image but love what he accomplished for the party.
The militant wing of the Trump cult might form its own sub-group, a sort-of nationwide proto-fascist paramilitary group aligned with the purpose of standing behind whoever winds up being the standard-bearer. They might also fracture into a bunch of warring factions, unable to agree on what to do. The militant ammo-sexuals on the right tend to be an unpredictable bunch in some ways, so they’ll either completely align or dissolve into infighting with little room in between those options.
Still, since the cult of Trump is so tied up in the Evangelical Christian movement, the movement will continue with a decent head of steam as the various megachurch leaders line up behind one potential leader or another. It will likely drive a bit of reorganization in the fractured cult, since people who disagree with their pastor may seek out one who is more amenable to their preferences.
The cards will fall where they will, and the various sub-cults will work together or against each other depending on how much infighting results in the death of the Glorious Leader. The cult of DeSantis folks might go to war with the cult of the Trump Sons, or they might just sort of agree to disagree and continue pushing their regressive and bigoted ideals on this country together.
All of this is speculation, but there isn’t much precedent for this kind of thing. Trumpism is almost explicitly a cult, and while there have been cultish world leaders in the past, most of them have wound up being killed or expelled as part of a war, civil or otherwise. I am not the best student of history, but I don’t know how to even begin to guess how this whole thing might go if Trump just died of natural causes.
There are tens of millions of followers in this cult, something that most cult leaders could only dream of. When a cult has tens of thousands of followers, the reactions of its followers to its leader’s death can be unpredictable. The cult of Trump is orders of magnitude bigger than a typical cult, to the point where the American system of government hangs in the balance here.
Who knows, cooler heads might prevail here and the Trumpism movement might just sort of fade away into nothingness in a few years. The right is not commonly known for its cooler heads, though, and goodness knows that the left is pretty reactionary to a wide variety of injustice, so violent clashes are not outside of the realm of possibility.
I can’t see the future, though, so who the hell knows what might happen? Mostly, though, I hope that America survives this whole series of unfortunate events and winds up stronger on the other end. Trump has done a great job of dividing us, but I am cautiously optimistic that things will turn out okay in the end. I think — I hope, anyway — that cooler heads will prevail in the end. After all, at the end of the day, progressives always win.
Be well out there.