Five Takeaways from Trump Victory

Here are some things that can clearly be observed as contributing to Donald Trump's success on Election Day and some thoughts of what can be expected of his administration.

They have lost 'total control'!

“If they (social media platforms - HS) don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control,” Hillary Clinton said in October via CNN. In other words, Clinton was calling for strong state intervention on social media and the curbing of free speech.

Donald Trump's victory shows that the control she was talking about is largely gone now. Remember what Twitter was like four years ago? The platform's pre-election blocking of an article in The New York Post about the corrupt business dealings of the Biden family? This was done directly by the influence of the US secret services, and it was in fact only a small part of the ways the posts deemed inappropriate by the authorities were censored and how the circulation of accounts, for example, those with more conservative views was limited. While such practices have not completely disappeared from the platform now called X, the situation is very different, and for that, we can thank entrepreneur Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in the autumn of 2022 and exposed and put an end to its entrenched censorship practices. As we know, X's unwillingness to cooperate with the authorities on censorship has also made Musk a personal target, with one influential Democrat suggesting some time ago that states could pressure Musk by threatening to arrest him. Since the candidate Musk backed won, it seems that fate no longer awaits him. And apparently, all sorts of censorship demands will have to cool down for a while.

'Legacy media' in a downward spiral

However, the possibility of free debate on social media really does mean losing control of the narrative for the ones considering themselves the political elite. This is shown by the fact that the so-called 'legacy media' did not change its behaviour compared to four years ago. For example, we can look at the results of one study which showed that 84% of the news broadcasts by the 3 major news networks about Kamala Harris in July-August this year were positive. At the same time, 89% of the coverage of Donald Trump was negative. This had no impact. As there was no visible impact on trying to frame Trump as a fascist criminal.

One more trend is that people are increasingly turning to social media for news and information – indeed, in the US and the UK, X has become people's first choice for news. But it is not only the platform that matters. Independent content producers have become much more important than news outlets. For example, Joe Rogan's YouTube channel has over 18 million subscribers, and his pre-election interview with Donald Trump was viewed 46 million times on YouTube alone. It should be noted that YouTube tried to limit the distribution of this interview at first, and was instantly called out for that. However, this is only YouTube – Rogan has millions of followers on other platforms as well. In comparison, CNN, for example, had 830,000 viewers in October on prime time. The result of this election is at least partly a reflection of the platforms chosen by each side to deliver their message.

RFK Jr. and the corruption in health agencies

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a promise: “Make America Healthy Again”. And backing Donald Trump has put him in place to deliver on the message. RFK Jr. is well known for his criticism of Big Pharma, and over the years has published much critical information on drug companies, their business tactics, regulatory agencies, and the harms that many medicines and vaccines can create. Not surprisingly, he has been accused of spreading misinformation in the process, even though the problems he talks about have a clear factual basis.

After moving to support Trump and now after Trump's election victory as well, RFK Jr.'s message has been unambiguously clear. “President Trump has asked me to do three things: 1. Clean up the corruption in our government health agencies. 2. Return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science. 3. Make America Healthy Again by ending the chronic disease epidemic,” RFK Jr. posted on social media.

However, this has alarmed a number of people who have enjoyed the benefits of the current system and for years have served the interests of the pharmaceutical companies, so much so they have attacked RFK Jr. himself. For one, Dr. Peter Hotez, who during the Covid crisis gave the impression of a salesman for the Covid vaccines, has already expressed worry, using a tried and tested trick to suggest it is only he who really knows what science is. “Many will endure hardships. For me (and committed colleagues), it means the struggle to defend science + counter antiscience forces becomes more complicated/daunting. This time we’ll need better support from the societies, college presidents, elected leaders who care. Tough times,” he posted after Trump's victory.

At the same time, Laura Helmuth, editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Scientific American, posted a series of emotionally charged posts on social media after Trump's victory in which she said that people who disagree with her political views are fascists, racists, sexists, fools and evil.

Bye-bye direct air capturers of taxpayer money

“We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia,” Donald Trump said during his victory speech.

It doesn't take much thinking to understand what this means. Talk of a climate crisis will be put on hold and energy policy will start making more sense. So-called renewables will no longer be subsidised, and other projects, the efficiency of which is questionable anyway, will not get the money either. For example, the Biden administration gave billions of dollars to companies that promised to remove CO2 from the atmosphere with huge fans sucking the air. As energy policy changes and subsidies are reduced, private investors will lose interest in developing large offshore wind farms. So Trump is also likely to deliver on his idea of wanting to be a whale psychiatrist – less large offshore development means less whale mortality.

No one cares what Hollywood thinks

Were celebrity endorsements more important in the past? Well, it is really clear that they are not any more. Kamala Harris clearly had a lot of A-list stars backing her. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Eminem, Harrison Ford, Lady Gaga, Arnold Schwarzenegger, LeBron James, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert de Niro, etc. Yet their support didn’t save the victory for Harris. It is worth noting that quite a few of these stars are also active in other policy debates – for example, constantly talking about the climate crisis. Maybe it also indicates the crumbling of this narrative?

Anyway, several of these stars did either now or already in 2016 say that they will leave the US if Trump wins. Most Americans told them: bon voyage if you want to go!