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Notes -
The person who won is an elderly, lazy reality TV star with somewhat idiosyncratic political views with a long history across multiple careers of not honouring obligations to people who helped him out. He isn't seeking re-election and doesn't have a plausible dynastic successor (the Kushners don't want it, Don Jr and Eric aren't up to it, and Barron is a long way from 35) so he doesn't need you for anything.
The people who think they won will have exactly as much say as Trump (or whoever controls access to him if he becomes too senile to make decisions) wants them to. They can say they won't take no for an answer, but they say what they want and Trump does what he wants.
FWIW, my best guess is that both the upside and downside potential of the Trump administration will be limited by Trump's laziness and lack of attention to detail. This is what we saw in his first term, and also what we saw with Boris Johnson in the UK, who is a somewhat similar character.
He’s head of a movement though. And the movement is not a bunch of limp wristed hand wringing party loyalists. They support Trump as the guy who’s there to basically clean house of the establishment and in their view restore the republic to its glory days. They aren’t going to sit home and do nothing if that establishment doesn’t allow the changes to happen. They’re at minimum going to attempt (probably successfully) to primary any republicans who don’t give them what they want. And that’s if they’re nice. We also have a fairly good sized militia contingent who might not be so nice about it.
Trump is perhaps irrelevant except as figurehead. JD Vance is probably more aligned with the movement as I see it, and he’s definitely going to work to implement MAGA and Project 2025
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