Succession: The Trump Drama

I made a short video today about autocrats and their bunkers, that focuses on Putin and Trump. You can watch it here.

I am happy to tell you that the very talented cartoonist Ivan Ehlers, with whom I collaborate on occasion, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and this piece we did together, “How Authoritarianism Creeps In,” was singled out by the Pulitzer committee. It is an honor to work with Ivan. We brainstorm ideas and story arcs and then he brings them to life visually. You can find his work in the New Yorker, LA Taco, and the Los Angeles Times, where this piece appeared in September 2025.

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Here are a few things we know about autocrats and why they don’t exactly welcome discussions of who will come after them. They are particularly paranoid people, prone to purging any government official who is amassing too much power for their tastes. They play a game of “divide and rule,” pitting subordinates against one another to prevent them from conspiring against them. Many of them got to power in an extra-legal fashion, removing other leaders; they know that the same thing could happen to them.

So much of what autocrats do is designed to keep them on top of what in Russia is called the “power vertical.” They use violence, corruption, kompromat, and other tools to bind and indebt elites to them, they transform the judiciary and other government institutions into instruments of self-protection, and they create personality cults that proclaim them to be omnipotent, infallible, and in office by divine dispensation. They alone can guide the nation to greatness. TINA (There is No Alternative) is their mantra. The most successful at manage to cling to power for decades. Voluntary exits are rare.

TINA (There Is No Alternative) and the Leader as "A Vehicle of Divine Providence"

Autocrats also routinely rearrange things within the state as part of “coup-proofing” strategies to prevent others from amassing too much power (cue President Recep Tayyip Erdogan abolishing the post of Prime Minister) or buying themselves more time in office (see Putin amending the Russian Constitution to keep himself in power until 2036).

All of this complicates the issue of succession, a word that, in some regimes, can be dangerous even to mention.

It’s easier if you can keep it in the family. In North Korea, which is a dynastic one-party state, supreme power is seen as something you inherit from generation to generation, assuring continuity of rule.

Yet involving family in governance, such as the “kitchen cabinet” of Nicolae Ceausescu, or the many sons-in-law of dictators who have been assigned moneymaking and “corruption management” roles, does not resolve the question of direct succession.

“Dictatobrats,” as politics scholar James Loxton refers to the children of former dictators, have come to power via elections in countries such as Panama, Kenya, and South Korea. Yet many of them have to wait a long time to assume the mantle of power: thirty-six years went by between dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s exit and the entry of his son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in the Philippines.

Authoritarians and their Sons-In-Law from Mussolini to Trump: Partners in Corruption

The Succession Situation in the United States

Whether succession is up in the air or subject to the laws of dynastic authority, the obvious and evident deterioration of the head of state brings the question to the forefront. This is the case in the United States, where President Donald Trump is declining physically and cognitively before our eyes. So many have become versions of the amateur Kremlinologists who in the 1980s scrutinized the aged and often ailing USSR dictators for signs of decline, and gossiped about potential successors.

Vice President J.D. Vance was supposed to be the future of MAGA. Funded in business and politics by the billionaire Peter Thiel, Vance was supposed to bring Christian, technofascist, and populist far-right forces together: he was supposed to be the Hillbilly of Silicon Valley, uniting all constituencies and doing the bidding of the powerful. Too bad for MAGA that he is supremely unlikable and has unfortunate political instincts and timing: coming out as Catholic and then attacking the Pope is just one example.

Charlie Kirk was another hope, and his murder robbed MAGA of a young and charismatic hero with a superb ground game.

That leaves the Trump clan. During Trump 1.0, Trump was product-testing the smart and photogenic Ivanka, even inserting her into the leader photo of the G20 summit he attended in Japan in 2019. Yet Ivanka has said her priority is her family, even as she keeps busy assisting Syrian and other billionaires with their foreign real-estate deals.

Ivanka inserted into the G20 summit head of state photo in Japan, 2019. Credit: Brendan Smialowski

Not everyone can be Bashar al-Assad, who had a tranquil life as an eye doctor and agreed to take power in Syria, learning the craft of mass murder and guiding the country to be a major center of production and circulation of the drug Captagon.

The mention of stimulants leads me to the most probable-improbable heir apparent, Donald Trump Jr., who would have the virtue of not falling asleep in Cabinet meetings. While Polymarket puts his odds of winning the 2028 Republican nomination at just four per cent, well behind Vance (39%) and Marco Rubio (21%), the fact that Amazon (backer of the reputation rehab film about Melania) has reportedly been in talks to revive the Trump vehicle “The Apprentice” with Don Jr. in the lead role is an indication of a desire to create a new Don Jr. product for political consumption.

Donald Trump Jr. addresses the Republican National Convention, 2020. Screengrab.

“For MAGA, familiarity may matter more than experience,” states an article in The American Conservative about Don Jr.’s chances. There is truth to this. What matters most, in fact, is not governance abilities, but skill in furthering the aims of the Trump clan: generating money from public office, amassing enough power to escape accountability, and realizing the aims of autocratic allies.

With a domineering and megalomaniac individual such as President Trump, who is on a crusade to have people believe he occupies a “world-historical” place in history, no one, his son included, will be allowed to advance if it means eclipsing him. The giant arch, the desire to be everywhere (on buildings, passports, stamps), is in relation to the fear of his decline that likely gnaws at him.

Trump could legitimize his son succeeding him, or tolerate the advance of a man he has broken, such as “Little Marco” Rubio. Or he could see the rise of a current MAGA cult heretic such as Tucker Carlson. In the end, none of it will matter. What he of the Big Macs and cankles can never escape is his own mortality.