Bread and Circuses
Emperor Donald
Long ago, in the first century, the Roman poet Juvenal wrote that Rome was losing its political virtue as it transformed from a republic (509 to 27 B.C.) to an empire (27 B.C. to 476 A.D.): ``The mob that used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything . . . reveals its anxiety for two things only: bread and circuses’’ (Satire 10).
Donald Trump may be modeling himself after a Roman emperor. Trump is offering to meet the needs of his new Republican base of working class voters -- material welfare (``bread’’) and entertainment (``circuses’’).
White working class voters (typically measured as white voters without college degrees) used to be the core of the Democratic Party coalition. Since the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the advent of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, however, most white non-college voters have been voting reliably Republican. The white working class has now become the core of the Republican Party coalition. They voted more than 2 to 1 for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris last year (66 to 32 percent).
Many of them are MAGA voters. Their loyalty to the GOP seems to have more to do with social and cultural issues (race, sexuality, immigration) than with economics.
After it narrowly passed the Republican Congress on a party line vote, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Budget into law on July 4. The new law calls for a huge reduction in social welfare spending, particularly for Medicaid and food stamps. According to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, the Medicaid cuts ($1 trillion over ten years) ``far exceed any other cut the United States has made in its social safety net.’’
The law will remove more than 11 million people from the Medicaid rolls, in addition to adding work requirements for able bodied Medicaid beneficiaries. Federal spending for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, popularly known as food stamps) would be cut by $267 billion over ten years, with more of the cost shifted to the states.
The Urban Institute estimates that over 18 million students currently enrolled in free school lunch programs could lose access to these programs. Summers writes, ``This law made me ashamed of my country.’’
At the same time, President Trump made sure to include some provisions in the law that will provide material benefits (``bread’’) to working class voters. The law eliminates most taxes on tips and overtime pay, important provisions for service workers. How many business and professional people do you know who depend on tips and overtime pay? While most of the tax cuts in the new law will benefit high income taxpayers, President Trump can point to these tax cuts and say to the working class, ``There’s something in there for you, too.’’
What about the ``circuses’’? As a former TV star, Trump knows all about media.
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reports that ``in 2025, the largest source of news in the United States’’ is social media, surpassing TV news for the first time. Social media is distinctive in that there are no professional editors or producers to verify information. Newsmakers like President Trump can say or write anything they want. No filters, no fact checking – newsmakers speak directly to their audience.
According to the Reuters Institute, they ``are attracting audiences that traditional media struggle to reach.’’ Some of the most popular personalities appeal to young men, with right-leaning audiences and with ``those that have low levels of trust in mainstream media outlets, seeing them as biased or part of a liberal elite.’’.
President Trump is in constant communication with his core supporters, sending out tweets, statements and calls to action at all hours. The image of the audience I carry in my head is that of young men sitting in their parents’ basement in their underwear, late at night, in front of a smartphone or a laptop, eating a burrito. Not during the Roman Empire, of course, but the audience may have been similar.
Nathan Taylor Pemberton, writing in The New York Times, calls it a coalition of ``internet-adjacent figures, from the tech elite to podcasters, streamers, gamers, anti-woke comedians, influencers and beyond.’’ Their specialty is ``rage-baiting, the groyper style of online politics – reactive, cruel, nihilistic, openly racist.’’ The man who invented this style of politics, Nick Fuentes, had a private dinner with Donald Trump in 2022.
There is one big difference between MAGA voters and traditional conservatives like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. MAGA voters are strongly isolationist, the way Republicans used to be before the Cold War. They don’t want to send U.S. troops anywhere or get involved in foreign conflicts. They call Cold War conservatives ``neo-cons’’ and ``globalists’’ – the opposite of ``America Firsters.’’
Rome was an imperial power. Roman emperors were expansionists. They built the greatest empire the world has ever known and ruled it for 500 years. Trump’s MAGA movement does not have imperial ambitions. They want the U.S. to be a model for the world, not a ruling power.
Those tensions are becoming apparent as President Trump is resuming U.S. military support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. President Trump said ``This is not Trump’s war,’’ even as he bolstered U.S. military support for Ukraine and threatened economic sanctions on countries that continue to trade with Russia.
Trump sees himself as the ``peace’’ candidate. He appears to be aiming for a Nobel Peace Prize. He got elected on a promise to end the war between Russia and Ukraine ``in a day.’’ Trump wants to establish a new international order more or less like the``Pax Romana’’ but not through military conquest. Trump wants to achieve U.S. supremacy through economic power.
``Circuses’’ could play a role, too. The Trump Administration has already opened a federal detention facility near an airstrip in the Florida Everglades, officially named ``Alligator Alcatraz,’’ to hold noncitizen migrants pending their deportation. If they manage to escape they will confront alligators and pythons. Nero and Caligula threw Christians to the lions for the amusement of Roman audiences. With the aid of broadcasting, Alligator Alcatraz could draw an even larger audience of bloodthirsty spectators.
Speaking of spectator sports, the Trump White House has announced an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout at the White House as part of the country’s 250th Birthday celebration next year. Trump is known to be a fan of UFC bouts, which he has sometimes attended. UFC bouts are mixed martial arts contests, a popular full-contact sport based on both boxing and wrestling. UFC fights are not slap-and-tickle. More like punch-and-gouge. Will President Trump have the power to pick the winner with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down gesture?