The Last American President

Barry Gilheany 🔖 As we approach the first anniversary of the election for the second time of Donald J. Trump as President of the USA, it is time to stand back and reflect on how much the USA has travelled towards authoritarianism and societal and national disintegration leading to civil war that so many of us in the liberal/left camp have feared and forecast.

A useful shorthand but no less informative guide exists in the form of The Last American President written by New York Times author of over thirty books and social entrepreneur, Thom Hartmann. He succinctly describes in short but devastatingly accusatory chapters the making of Donald Trump; the system which enabled his rise to power courtesy of the failure of US democracy’s gatekeepers (primarily the COP elders) to rein him in and the related malfunctioning of its guardrails; the plutocrat class which backed this faux anti-system populist and “man of the people”; the hollowing out and degradation of US democracy since Trump’s return to the White House; how Trump fits into the global dystopia of Autocrats United and the breakdown of the post-1945 liberal internationalist institutional order and how democracy is dying in the US due to America’s peculiar style of ‘empathy deficit”. While the book is addressed to an American readership, Hartman’s concluding clarion call for activists to “Reform, Resist and Remember” is of import to anyone concerned about the future of democracy.

Hartman begins by reminding us, like other scholars of the future of democracy, that tyranny does not only “arrive with jackboots and blood-red banners, but goose-stepping soldiers also[1] and the midnight ‘knock on the door.’ Democracy does not just die through military coups as in Spain in 1936, Guatemala in 1954 or Chile in 1973 nor do democratic experiments end through external intervention as in Budapest in 1956 or the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968 (not forgetting the role of the US in Chile and other Latin American nations).

Instead, Hartman informs us, tyranny in 21st America “arrived in a designer suit (however ill-fitting), a private branded plane, and a social media account with millions of followers. It came through legal loopholes identified by cynical attorneys and billionaires’ chequebooks, riding the algorithms of outrage and our insatiable appetite for spectacle and show. It came packaged as entertainment (my emphasis).”[2]

Hartman then proceeds to take us though his chronicle foretelling the death of American democracy through the gutting of constitutional checks and balances, of free press and electoral processes to leave, in the manner of Victor Orban’s Hungary and Chavista Venezuela, the outward existence of elections, courts and newspapers but which barely conceals the emasculation of the substance of democracy and its replacement by the raw exercise of power untrammelled by democratic accountability.[3]

The book is divided into four parts encompassing fourteen chapters. Part One The Making of Donald Trump describes in Chapter One how the Trump family home in Queens, New York was an extension of father Fred Trump’s real estate business where the ethos was win at all costs and where empathy and compassion were seen as weaknesses.

In Chapter Two these life lessons were solidified for Trump through his apprenticeship in this 20s to the notorious attorney and New York power elite fixer Roy Cohn.

Chapter Three tells how the Mask of Success concealed Trump’s multiple bankruptcies and jaw dropping personal levels of debt. Trump evaded scrutiny and calling out through the Bank of Dad which set up and financed his serial ventures of grift and covered up his business failures. A far cry from the invention of Trump the Titan through The Art of the Deal book and The Apprentice TV show which in their brash, gaudy but televisually effective way spread a winner (or should that be loser) takes all parable for late 20th century and millennial America.

Part Two describes the system that built Trump, beginning in Chapter Four with how the Republican Party sold out its commitment to democratic values and social and economic probity by at first allowing Trump to seize its nomination for the Presidency in 2016 through deeming his racial dog whistling, his “liberal elite” shtick and shameless abandonment of any of the decencies of public life, exposed most starkly in the Access Hollywood tapes and his mocking of the POW experiences of Republican grandee Senator John McCain, prices worth paying for a return of the GOP to the White House.

Chapter Five covers the powering of Trump by networks of plutocrats such as the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Koch brothers and the father and daughter team, Robert and Rebekah Mercer who funded key nodes in the Alt-Right media ecosystem like Breitbart News which laid down much of the ideological grounding for Trumpism. Hartmann identifies the key moment in GOP’s plutocratic takeover of American politics as the Supreme Court ruling on 21st January 2010 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission when the court’s 5-4 Republican majority struck down key provisions of campaign finance laws dating back to the late 19th century, ruling that corporations and outside groups could spend functionally unlimited sums on elections through the Super Political Action Committees (PACs) the decision invented.[4]

Chapter Six outline the political economy of the death of democracy in the USA by the thousand cuts of the private corporations who were contracted to carry out the many performative cruelties of the Trump administration. For example, underpinning Trump 1.0 ‘s “zero tolerance” migrant family separation policy which tore more than 5,000 children from their parents with no adequate system to track them was a web of private contractors eager to profit. Caliburn International, operating the largest detention centre in Homestead, Florida charged the government $775 per day per child, roughly three times the cost of a room at the Trump International Hotel. CEO Group and CoreCivic saw revenues soar, making over $1.3 billion from ICE contracts from ICE contracts in 2019 alone. GEO Group’s stock nearly doubled in the months after Trump’s 2016 election victory. Internal documents from CEO Group revealed the company targeted an “occupancy rate” of 95 percent in immigration detention facilities, effectively creating a corporate quota for human beings in cages.[5]

Chapter Seven describes the lying industrial complex created by Trump and the media echo chambers around him which started with the Original Sin of Birtherism i.e. the false claim that Barack Obama was not a natural born American citizen and therefore ineligible for the post of Presidency that he held for two years right through to the Big Lie about the ‘stolen’ 2020 Presidential election.

Part Three goes though the global damage wrought by Trump starting in Chapter Eight with the processes of voter suppression which led to the purging of 4.7 million voters from the electoral rolls before the 2024 Presidential election on the false premise of “voter fraud” plus the over 2.1 million disqualified mail-in ballots for minor clerical errors; the disallowing of 585,000 in-person ballots; the 1.2 million “provisional” ballots rejected without being counted and the 3.2 million new voter registrations rejected or not processed in time. All this, in Hartmann’s judgment, was a coordinated national strategy, organised and executed by the GOP and several mostly billionaire-founded groups with it. For him this was the real stolen election, a heist of democracy that prevented the proper election of Vice President Kamala Harris.[6]

Next in Chapter Nine is the descent of America into ungovernability though DOGE and its laying off of 200,000 Federal workers; the watering down or elimination of environmental regulations by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Lee Zeldin, in March; the abolition the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the removal of mentions of climate change from public websites.

Chapter Ten describes Trump’s bromances with autocrats and aspiring autocrats around the world including Saudi Crown Prince MBS, Kim Jong Un, Gulf Arab monarchies, Egypt’s Sisi and Turkey’s Erdogan plus his more genuinely ideological soulmates such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Vladimir Putin in Russia who deploy white Christian nationalism as a cri de couer against globalism, multiculturalism, immigration, and religious diversity. His attraction to such figures is an adult replaying of approval seeking from the autocrats of his childhood and young adulthood, namely his father and Roy Cohn. His disdain, if not outright aversion to, for the leaders of democracies or at least democratic conventions, as witnessed most dramatically in his monstering of President Zelensky in the White House, likely reflects a “democracy is for losers” attitude learned from both toxic parent and mentor.

The likely planetary apocalypse caused by the actions of The Climate Collapse Presidency is briefly but scarily outlined in the two pages making up Chapter Eleven.

Part IV lays out the full potential of the dystopia facing America and the world in the era of The Last American President. There is the nightmare scenario in Chapter Twelve where the President of “Your Retribution” unaccompanied by any adults in the room presides over the hollowing out of democracy while maintaining the functional facades of democracy such as elections as has happened in the illiberal democracies of Hungary, Venezuela, and Turkey. Following Roy Cohn’s playbook, Trump weaponises the Department of Justice to pursue prosecutors such Laetitia James who investigated Trump; to remove security clearances from witnesses who testified against Trump and to have critics such as former National Security Adviser John Bolton arraigned on Trumped up charges (!). January 6th insurrectionists receive pardons while peaceful protestors and students on campus who write opinion pieces face federal charges. [7]

As the quality of empathy disappears from governance as described in Chapter 13, so democracy begins to subside. A nation lacking empathy is not a nation at all; in the words of the author, it’s just a crime syndicate with a flag and army and a conspiracy to use the powers of government to raise the powerful while suppressing the weak. As Trump implements Project 2025’s blueprint for the eradication of the administrative state, that is the course that America is set fair on.

The Making of a Monster

Since Trump’s upbringing and role model figures and consequent psychological patterning and their outworkings in his two presidencies have been so destructive for America and the wider world, then I feel that this book review should inquire more deeply into his formative years.

The journey begins at home. Or more precisely to the mansion in Queens, New York where Donald Trump was made. Part I takes us through the formative experiences of the young Donald who was born on 14th June 1946 to Fred C Trump, a successful real estate businessman and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump who hailed from the Scottish island of Lewis. Fred’s ruthless win at all costs approach to business mirrored his parenting style. As befits a man who, in the words of Donald’s niece, Dr Mary Trump a clinical psychologist. “believed that the world was filled with predators and prey – and only the ruthless would survive” Fred would tell his children – particularly his sons – “You are a killer … You’re a king.” Deprived of maternal affection from an ill and emotionally distant mother, the Trump children competed fiercely for their father’s limited approval and Donald soon concluded that weakness is fatal - a lesson that has shaped his worldview and, with calamitous implications for the US and the globe, inform his governing philosophy.[8] The effects of emotional starvation and the withholding of unconditional love in infancy and later childhood in terms of the development of survival personalities and often psychopathy in adulthood is well attested to by developmental psychologists and therapists. Just as tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein were lost to humanity through basic lack of good-enough caring in childhood, so that is applicable to Donald Trump.

The Trump household in the 1960s was one in which the transformational social movements of the era - the civil rights, feminist, anti-war and countercultural - were by-passed. But Donald did get early exposure to racial discrimination when in 1973, the Justice Department sued Trump Management for discriminating against Black rental applicants, a case that was eventually settled with a consent decree. Donald, who by then had joined his father’s business, was named as a defendant alongside Fred. Trump Management’s MO was quite blatant: Black applicants would be informed that no apartments were available, whilst white applicants visiting the same buildings on the same day would be granted multiple viewing options. [9] Donald Trump took from this exposure to racist business practices the value for his later political strategy of racial dog-whistles.

Before this introduction to the rawest divide in US society, Donald as an adolescent developed the attention seeking traits that would characterise his business and political careers. At the age of 13 after numerous disciplinary infractions at Kew-Forest School in Queens involving bullying peers and defiance of teachers, he was sent to New York Military Academy (NYMA). While he thrived to an extent in the hierarchical and competitive culture of NYMA, earning athletic honours, his compulsion to dominate led to his demotion from his student officer position for hazing younger cadets. So, a pattern was set; impress authority figures and achieve a position of power only to abuse it and then lose it and ten resume the cycle.[10].

Into early adulthood, Hartman describes how Fred Trump serves as both mentor and financial backer in business. Through the Bank of Dad, Trump, according to a NYT Pulitzer Prizewinning investigation, Donald received at least $413 million (in 2018 dollars), which opened door to key figures in the real estate business. Much of this largesse was funnelled through tax schemes that legal experts described as “improper” and in some cases outright “fraudulent.” This financial comfort blanket enabled Donald to take risks that other developers could not afford and to withstand failures and would have bankrupted those who could not avail of such generous family backing. Possibly the most valuable lesson in the credo of ego inflation that Donald learned from his father was, in the author’s opinion, the power of perception. Though the elder Trump’s business was solidly middle-class housing, Fred presented himself; a developer of luxury properties, understanding that the appearance of success was often more valuable than success itself in attracting investors, impressing lenders, and intimidating competitors. This business philosophy was to be expressed succinctly and startlingly in his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal in 1987. “I play it very loose… I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.” He further writes: ''I final key to the way I promote is bravado… I play to people’s fantasies.” He concludes “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration – and a very effective form of promotion.''[11]

So, there is the plea to and exploitation of the American id that has enabled Trump’s first and seconds periods of residence in the White House. There is the philological origin of the “alternative facts,” “American carnage,” “fake news” and the lying industrial complex around immigration and braggadocio about “ending eight wars.” No wonder that Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of this panegyric to bullshitting, has gone into mea culpa overdrive for his part in the creation of the Trump mythology.

While Tony Schwartz’s role in the burnishing of the Trump persona can be seen as accidental, the real imprint on The Donald of today is that of one of America’s most infamous legal figures – Roy Cohn. While so many young people have benefited from positive role models or mentors in their formative years – be they an inspirational sports coach, teacher or academic or dedicated campaigner – it was Donald Trump’s fate as a 27 year-old (preordained or not) to be introduced in 1973 at the time of the race discrimination suit faced by the Trump organisation to this than 46 year old attorney at Le Club, a Manhattan nightspot frequented by New York’s powerbrokers.

Roy Cohn’s name had been synonymous for two decades for character assassination, reckless accusation, and ruthless pursuit of power at any cost. His notoriety was forged in two key moments in 1950’s US history. As assistant prosecutor in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, he aggressively pushed for the death penalty, especially for Ethel, despite the seriously problematic evidence of the extent of her involvement in her husband’s spying. He later boasted in his biography that he had privately lobbied the judge for the death penalty. He later became chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous anticommunist hearing at the House for UnAmerican Activities. Together they promulgated a campaign of accusation, innuendo and character assassination that destroyed innumerable lives without uncovering a single Soviet spy. After the McCarthy hearings collapsed in 1954, Cohn resigned and relocated to New York when he reinvented himself as attorney and fixer for the city’s power elite and underworld including Mafia bosses John Gotti and Tony Salerno.[12]

By the 1970s, through maximising his extensive contacts within New York’s judicial system and media, Cohn had developed a fearsome reputation for ‘sorting’ problems, often thorough threats, and intimidation. In the words of a former law partner his MO “was to attack, attack. Even when he was wrong, especially when he was wrong.”[13] He then proceeded to inculcate the following life lessons into his protégé:

1. First never apologise or admit wrongdoing ever.

2. Second, always counterattack and always with greater force than you received.

3. Third, use the legal system as a weapon, not a recourse for justice.

4. Fourth, manipulate the media ruthlessly.

5. Fifth, use fear as both shield and sword.

6. Finally, build a fortress of loyalty around yourself.[14]

The most important and dangerous takeaway from Roy Cohn’s mentorship was that institutions can be twisted and broken if one is shameless enough, and persistent enough. Hartman takes through the outworkings of this lesson through explaining how Trump camouflaged his serial bankruptcies which impacted so severely on the small businesses that serviced his grandiose schemes; his grifting ventures such as Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and perhaps the most egregious of all, Trump University. This was an unaccredited series of seminars promising to teach Trump’s real estate “secrets” to ordinary American. His students, many of them elderly or financially vulnerable, paid up to $35,000 for courses that former employers would later describe as a “fraudulent scheme” designed to “separate people from their money”. Multiple lawsuits followed alleging fraud, resulting in a $25 million settlement in 2018n that provided refunds to over 6,000 students.[15]

But never mind. Trump was able to reinvent and sell himself as the archetypal American stratospheric business success through the faux wisdom of The Art of the Deal; the celebrity media circuit of Oprah and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and, most iconically, the make believe reality TV show The Apprentice which created another Trump reinvention – a man of business acumen when by the time of its initial screening in 2004 he had already corporate bankruptcy three time and his casino company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts would declare bankruptcy for the fourth time that same year, with Trump resigning as CEO.

By the time that Trump had thrown his hat into the ring for the Republican Party nomination for the 2016 Presidential Election, the GOP operatives and donors were well in the know about Trump’s record of catastrophic business failures, more evidence of which was revealed by another New York Times investigation into Trump/’s finances in May 2019 which found that according to Trump’s IRS tax transcripts from 1985 to 1994, he had sustained over $1 billion in tax losses. However, Hartmann describers how any principled and ethical objections from Republican grandees were quickly jettisoned as Trump’s racial dog whistles and performative aggression energised the base and, for a party that puts power before principle, proved to be electorally successful.[16]

Having described the making the Trump, Hartmann cautions us not to ignore the machinery that enabled his rise to power; it is an interconnected system that will outlast him. He starts his dissection of the system with the long descent of the GOP to Trumpism. From Nixon’s adoption of the “Southern Strategy” in 1968 to attract disaffected white Southern voters to form new Republican majorities; Reagan’s support for “states’ rights” and invention of the myths of the “welfare queen” and “liberal elites”; Newt Gingrich’s 1990 memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” instructing Republican candidates to refer to Democrats with words like “traitors”, “pathetic”, “sick”, “corrupt” and “anti-flag”; the hostile takeover of the GOP by the Tea Party and the steady purging of moderate Republicans who believed in governance and occasional across the aisle cooperation through gerrymandering of districts and ideological purity tests on culture war issues like abortion and gun control to its anointment of Trump, the Republican Party had completed its journey to a sect-,like movement that rewards extremism, cruelty and blind loyalty to the leader of the cult over the public good and policy knowledge.

The direction of travel did not deviate after Trump’s defeat in 2020 with the Republicans’ embrace of the Big Lie about election fraud and facilitated the attempted coup of January 6 and twice in the Senate blocked the successful impeachment of Trump. Now in Trump’s second term, the full consequences of the moral and constitutional abdication by the Republicans are now writ large as he surrounds himself with sycophantic toadies, defies courts, targets enemies be they Democrat city and state chiefs or former National Security advisor John Bolton, denudes and corrupts government agencies and continues to suck up to Putin.

And the rest is history foretold.

References

[1] Hartman, p.2

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid, p.56

[5] Ibid, p.71

[6] Ibid, pp.99-100

[7] Ibid, p.132

[8] Ibid, pp.8-10

[9] Ibid, p.11

[10] Ibid, p.12

[11] Ibid, pp.13-14

[12] Ibid, pp.18-20

[13] Ibid, p.20

[14] Ibid, pp.22-23

[15] Ibid p.31

[16] Ibid, pp.32-34

Thom Hartmann (2025) The Last American President. A Broken Man, A Corrupt Party, And A World On The Brink. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Oakland, Ca. 210 Pages. ISBN-13: 979-8890571847.

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.