The Last Supper: For Trump or Liberalism?
A Gala with Trump and the New York Young Republicans Leaves a Foreboding Feeling
A week ago on the third night of Hanukkah, I sat a few feet away from Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as he delivered a dark satirical speech for the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC) Gala at Cipriani’s on Wall Street — a swanky freestanding ballroom with white-coat staff, home to New York’s swankiest parties. In light of legal troubles faced by Team Trump, Gaetz joked that fellow guests mayor Rudy Giuliani, “War Room” podcaster Steve Bannon, and President Trump would all share a room called “Cell Block A” and host “War Room: Prison Break” should they not win the election.
The joke felt too on the nose, yet everyone was laughing through their bow-tie bedecked throats. After the gala, club executive secretary Vish Burra — and recent aid to the fabulist former Rep. George Santos — insisted to me, “The point was that the left would carry that part of the speech to indulge their fetish of seeing us all in jail.”
I wasn’t so sure. J6-mania has since calmed down in most mainstream media. Not that protests are any indicator of mass discontent, but outside, less than two dozen protestors held “2023 = 1933” signs — a nod to the year Hitler was appointed as German chancellor. I’m not sure if the fetish for shouting “91 felonies” can sustain that long. Biden’s line that he is running because “democracy is at stake” is much easier said as a challenger, not an incumbent.
True, the next day, press fixated on President Trump’s keynote, where he “doubled down” on saying he wouldn’t be dictator if re-elected — aside from one day. Of the 80-minute stand-up Trump delivered a mere 10 feet away from my seat, I remembered him comparing himself to Al Capone — except Al had way fewer charges. Teflon-Don seems to be doing political aikido, turning his mugshots into merch and gangster status into higher polling.
The gala’s mood was jubilant but also serious because the stakes felt so high. The night’s thesis was this binary: if they don’t win, they are going to jail but if they do, watch out! It’s retribution time.
I’m not sure the other side is taking this as seriously.
Originally, I had pitched a piece to a magazine about this night being a “Last Supper,” but I didn’t know for who or what. Was Trump a kind of political Jesus on the eve of crucifixion, surrounded by apostles like convicted MAGA loyalist Steve Bannon to Trump’s lawyer former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was ordered to pay millions to Georgia election workers in a defamation case? As the night wore on, the dichotomy became clearer to me.
It was a Last Supper either for Trump, as he faces down the law, or for liberal democracy — by which I mean, a system of governance dominated by due process under law that also protects individual rights from the oppression of majorities and group think, be they progressive or conservative illiberal impulses.
For some Republicans, liberal democracy is already dead or close to dying. “The weaponization of justice and a two-tiered justice system is a real concern. People rightly look at these indictments and say [Trump] is being singled out because of who he is,” club vice president Nathan Berger told me, “Some of the mutual respect is starting to decay.” Additionally, they feel an imposition of progressive values on traditional communities (think culture war fodder from trans bathrooms to workplace DEI). What was the point of saving such a system that neither protects their due process nor champions their cultural values?
These days, I feel like no one — from ethnic, racial, religious, political fringe, or cultural minorities — feels like their rights or values are being protected. Increasingly, you hear these calls the system needs replaced, overhauled, revolutionized for the sake of saving a certain group for the sake of their identity, values, or nature. The vibes, my friends, are precarious.
Liberal Tears or Liberalism’s Tears?
I’m not one for hyperbole — of course this dinner is not the last dinner before Trump is behind bars (if ever) lest our government descends into some kind of authoritarianism (which, again, would probably be slower than we think). However I do think we are at a turning point. There is a global zeitgeist for eschewing individual liberties for collective welfare on the far left and far right — whether perceived in the New York Times newsroom (see this 17K word screed from a NYT former Op-Ed Editor) or witnessed through the rise of “illiberal democracies” like Orbán’s Hungary, respectively.
To simply blame Trump for the end of liberalism betrays the decades long march American and global governments have been on towards the consolidation of power, money, technology, and narrative that has made fighting for individual rights and welfare hard. The century of American and Western dominance is also being questioned by recent geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. With that decline comes the questioning of a tension the West has embodied: sometimes violating human rights in a fight to promote democracy or universal human freedom.
The New York Young Republicans, to their credit whether you like their beliefs or not, have created a space internationally to question the liberal world order and its values, on display during their 111th gala with its copious number of international guests. It was not my first black tie rodeo either. As part of my doctoral research, I had gone to one of their gala’s before in 2019 when they honored Bannon and military contractor, Erik Prince. In 2021, I saw them honor Rudy Giuliani and ex-Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis — now persona non grata at the club for taking a plea deal, in exchange for possibly testifying against Trump.
This gala included a large contingent of loyalist figures from nationalist-populist parties from around the world, including Miklós Szánthó, who gave a toast with “liberal tears.” Coming from the “illiberal democracy” of Hungary, he represented the Center for Fundamental Rights, a think tank that upheld traditional formulations of gender, sexuality, the family, and more. Others were there too:
MEP Dr. Maximilian Krah from Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland eurosceptic party
MEP Harold Vilimsky from the Freedom Party of Austria — of which it is journalistic malpractice to not acknowledge was once chaired by a former SS officer (though everyone in this crowd would remind you Democrats were once the party of the Confederacy)
MEP Susanna Ceccardi from Italy’s nationalist Lega party
Ambassador Takács, who at last year’s gala had accepted an award from the club on behalf of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
“Jeremy Fragrance,” a German perfume influencer who lost some brand deals for showing up at the gala
The Club president, Gavin Wax, took to the dais to remind the crowd he was standing exactly where Hillary Clinton was in 2016 when she delivered the “basket of deplorables” speech. Now, the deplorables were holding court in the most glamorous ballroom in New York. The foreboding anastrophe was only more pronounced when set to music, as world-famous Hungarian violinist, Zóltan Mága jumped down from the stage to serenade the President table-side.
Much like the upsidedown poetry of the deplorables taking over the Cipriani’s, this year’s global political outcomes have echoes of the anti-migrant European populist surge circa 2015, with the added flavor of “Retribution” – a favorite Trump refrain. It’s feeling like Brexit 2015 all over again, as I wrote recently. Last month handed parliamentary victory to Geert Wilders’ anti-Islamist Dutch Freedom Party on a platform of curbing migration. The day after the gala, Libertarian outsider Javier Milei, known for bringing a chainsaw to rallies to dismantle expensive state agencies, was sworn in as president of debt-embattled Argentina, a year after I encountered him while covering the Conservative Political Action Conference in Mexico City for Coda. As of October, the 10-year-old anti-immigration, far-right Alternative for Deutschland is now second in vote share to the Christian Democrats in Germany.
Liberal tears indeed.
Memetic Legitimacy of the Illiberal
Something I learned from my doctoral research was the way right-wing parties derive legitimacy and momentum from the success of other international parties — so much so they may adopt certain symbols, phrases, policies, or memes (cue “liberal tears” or “Make fill-in-the-blank-country Great Again”). This is a phenomenon I dub memetic legitimacy. In recent years, the NYYRC has been a legitimating force and global organizer for nationalist-populism.
A few months ago, Club President Gavin Wax addressed the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy Group – a nationalist group which had the highest net gain of new MEPs. The Club has publicized its embrace of such “illiberal” parties like Hungary’s Fidesz, Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), and the Freedom Party of Austria. Prior to Trump’s election, many European right-wing parties who critiqued the European Union, Muslim immigration, or multiculturalism were side-lined by the mainstream via accusations of being Nazi-sympathizers– often because in some cases, such as the Freedom Party of Austria or the then-National Front in France, founding party leaders indeed were.
All of these parties represented views that believed something about the post-war liberal consensus was not working. They find that their countries’ citizens don’t benefit from a globalized world with free-flowing trade, immigration, or spending. They are tired by the perceived imposition of values by certain cultures — be they Islam or “rainbow flag universalism.” Multiculturalism is questioned — is process enough to sustain a nation or is a common cultural bond required?
MEP Dr. Maximilian Krah from the AfD told me this had been his second NYYRC gala. Getting Trump this year legitimated the club, proving to him the club’s access to higher ranks and bigger relevance. For Dr. Krah, Trump “is a hope that we can stop endless wars, that the world can come into a period of peace and prosperity. He understands that different regions of the world follow different rules.”
To him the NYYRC represented a strategically important organization for networking the transatlantic right, particularly given their enviable and commutable location. He also sees the Club as promoting a vision of multi-polar foreign policy, distinct from interventionist neoconservatives, like presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, who see American power as uniquely exceptional and thus legitimating their global policing.
Being anti-interventionists means not policing the world by means of war but also not proselytizing European ideas of universal human rights repackaged as an evangelical “wokeness,” which Dr. Krah saw symbolized in the rainbow flag. “The western modernity that ruled the world for 300 years is coming to an end,” he mused. He felt Germany needed to embrace BRIC trading partners as a pathway to peace, not sanction them based on values they don’t themselves hold.
To uphold Western traditions domestically but reconfigure a more isolationist international posture sounds like the product of young people reacting to “forever wars,” cultural anomie, and financial crises – less that of geriatric conservatives trying to keep a status quo. Like their peers on the left but with different goals, they want something new, something revolutionary.
Thus, maybe I wasn’t so wrong. The gala could be read as a “Last Supper” for Trump and his associates, or for liberal democracy – depending on 2024 outcomes. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder if organizations like the NYYRC were just really good at throwing flash fiestas for roughly $400 a plate — the cheapest price if you got the member Black Friday Discount which is a steal in New York event planning. (At that price or even the highest, I doubt they do much by way of fundraising so this isn’t about the money). Their news-catching speeches seem to be their greatest cultural and political export.
Club president Wax wrote in his book The Emerging Populist Majority, doled out in goody bags filled with pins and organic American grown cigarettes: “The populists are more ideologically flexible at the policy level but unrelenting at the principle and visionary level.” We shall see if they built the transnational conservative alliance in pursuit of the multi-polar world they are looking for, or if they’ll just get more “deplorable" speeches making headlines from Cipriani's.
Regardless, it is a mistake to confuse the headlines for the soul of this movement. If media outlets either refuse to pay attention to these far-right sentiments so as “not to feed the trolls” or, conversely, only fetishize and fixate on Trump’s stand-up dictatorship quips, we miss the deeper story here. World order is changing, the most visible movements appear illiberal, and we ought to spend time asking why before we inadvertently leave liberalism behind.