Nine months into the first year of Trump’s second term, here are some thoughts. Right now we’re in the slowdown or lull phase of the second term of Trump presidency, similar to his first term at this time. It was not until 2020 during the crisis that was Covid was Trump forced to take a leadership role. Otherwise, there wasn’t much going on, save for the occasional unsubstantiated threats or court appointments. There wasn’t much he could do being that the House and Senate were almost evenly divided in 2018, and still are.
Today the same pattern emerges: a nearly perfectly divided Congress, a flurry of executive orders shortly after entering office, the threat of nuclear war due to the Middle East instead of North Korea, and the Epstein scandal instead of Russiagate. Instead of the 2017 tax cuts, 2025 has seen the passage of the even more bloated ‘Big beautiful bill’.
But there won’t be a repeat of a crisis on the magnitude of Covid to kickstart things into action. Covid, when combined with the 2020 BLM riots, in the final year, changed the course of the Trump presidency. But now we’re living in a sort of ai-autopilot world where leadership has been outsourced to tech elites, who now for better or worse call the shots.
It’s better than wokeness, but it’s not MAGA either. Trump is obsessed with winning, such as beating China at the ‘AI arms race’, even if this means pandering to people whose politics are antithetical to the ‘MAGA movement’, while comparably somewhat snubbing his ‘base’. The thing is, as I said before, Trump doesn’t need to really ‘do anything’. He just needs to ensure that the economy hasn’t fallen off a cliff come 2028, after which he can hand the keys off to Vance.
Hence the judicial branch is much more important or consequential given the void of power in the other two. Courts wield enormous power, whether it’s indicting individuals, investigating companies for anticompetitive practices, or challenging or even overturning laws. Prosecutors have the sole discretion or authority by decree to take away anyone’s freedom; not even four-star generals or the POTUS has that power. (Of course, police can make arrests, but the DA can refuse to press charges).
There are instead effectively two pillars of power: the judiciary and big tech companies. This was evidenced last week when Alphabet, the parent company of Google, prevailed over a 2020 antitrust case brought by the DOJ that threatened to be break up the tech giant, sending its stock up 9%.
Because tech companies play such a large role in the economy and in U.S. competitiveness, they are often granted considerable leeway to operate as they see fit. And the courts are inclined to rule in their favor, like we saw last week (which I correctly predicted in 2021 that Google would prevail), compared to the 20th century where there are many successful antitrust cases brought against large companies, notably against Microsoft in 2000.
Moreover, they have the ear of the most important people, such as Trump, who also on that same week hosted a dinner with 33 CEOs of of the biggest and most powerful tech companies, such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Open AI’s Sam Altman. Every major name was present. Trump is famous for his closed door tech CEO meetings, particularly Tim Cook of Apple, as much as his supporters may decry said companies for wokeness or covid censorship.
This is also why Trump and his sons have promoted various crypto projects which have subsequently lost most of their value, but no closed door meetings with important crypto people. The implicit message, correctly, is that these crypto CEOs are not power players, but their gullible users are profitable nevertheless. Trump can launch a token and even if it loses 99% of its value, he still comes out ahead being that his effective purchase price is $0.
There are different levels or circles. Trump will not let you in his inner circle unless he considers you invaluable or indispensable, which is distinct from power. The media greatly overstate the influence that Yarvin, Fuentes, Thiel, Bannon and other outsiders impart on Trump–they are in the outermost circle, if even that. The ‘crypto people’ are probably in the penultimate circle. And the tech advisors (but not CEOs) in the third to last, and so on. Or another way: why does Trump and Vance need the advice of outsiders when they have already achieved the pinnacle of political success? What can they possibly offer?
Tech companies are important in the sense that the U.S. economy depends on them heavily, and hundreds of millions or even billions of people rely on them. They can also affect sentiment through the algorithmic suppression or promotion of content. This is why the TikTok ban was such a big deal, even if the company was not that important in the grand scheme of things economically, because so many people use it, so Trump was compelled to act to save it.
Tech people are so important, hence they don’t need to play the groveling game. The red carpet is rolled out for them. It’s not fair how this works, as they are hardly loyal to the ‘MAGA cause’, but that is how the game is played. This is dissimilar from past Republican administrations, like George W. Bush, who kept ‘defense guys’ close or consultants like Karl Rove close, who shared his politics and worldview. Republicans were never that big into eggheads; Trump is a notable departure from this.
It’s implicitly understood that partisanship should not come at the cost of economic competitiveness. Or the majority of his supporters don’t care that much. It may not make much sense, but what does anymore. We’re all, in a sense, living in Zuckerberg and Altman’s world. Whatever values they embody are shaping the future of society, whether we like it or not. I anticipated this years ago, which is why I invested in tech stocks and profited from the trend.
Doesn’t this agree with Curtis Yarvin’s ‘CEO as dictator’ concept? Not really, as the hierarchy of power is still inviolable. Public companies seek to earn profits whereas governments run at deficits. It’s more like these CEOs act as unappointed advisors, but with much more influence than the typical advisor, who are easily dismissed as we saw in 2016-2017.