Trump’s Real War Is Against the People Who Know Things

I. The Quiet Revolution Isn’t Quiet Anymore

Donald Trump doesn’t hate elites. He flies on a private jet, lives in a gold-plated penthouse, and hosts billionaires for dinner. No, what Trump hates—what the MAGA movement fears—is a very specific kind of elite: the kind that doesn’t get rich off branding deals, but off ideas. Lawyers. Professors. Scientists. Civil servants. Journalists. People whose power doesn’t come from wealth or brute strength but from knowledge, facts, data, and rules.

The kind of people who believe in institutions, not instincts. Who read the Constitution and not just the headlines. Who tell the President, “Actually, you can’t do that,” and back it up with 50 pages of precedent.

This isn’t just populism versus elitism. It’s not red versus blue. It’s not even Trump versus the deep state.

It’s a war against the professional class.

And if you think that sounds dramatic, you haven’t been paying attention.

II. When They Say “Elites,” They Don’t Mean CEOs

Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. When MAGA Republicans rail against “elites,” they’re not talking about hedge fund managers, real estate developers, or tech billionaires test-driving cybertrucks through San Francisco. They’re talking about teachers with tenure. Journalists who fact-check. Librarians who curate banned books. EPA scientists. FBI agents. District attorneys. Ivy League professors. Pentagon lawyers. Think-tank policy nerds.

These aren’t people who inherited their power. They earned it through education, credentials, expertise, and—yes—endless bureaucracy.

And for Trump and his movement, that’s exactly the problem.

In their view, this class of people—let’s call them what they are, the knowledge class—has imposed a regime of rules, norms, pronouns, fact-checks, ethics briefings, climate regulations, and Title IX hearings on the “real” America. They see this not as a public service, but as an ideological occupation.

So now they’re trying to purge it.

III. The War Has a Blueprint. And It Was Written Long Before Trump

This war isn’t improvised. It’s not chaos. It’s not even a tantrum. It’s a strategy. And not a new one.

Trump didn’t invent the war on experts—he just branded it better. He gave it a slogan, a hat, and a villain in every lab coat and lecture hall. He didn’t write the playbook, but he sure as hell read it. Loudly. Onstage. To a stadium full of people who were already looking for someone to blame.

This isn’t a revolution of the people. It’s a revenge tour against the people who read the fine print. The ones who say, “You can’t actually do that, sir, because the Constitution, or the law, or the science, or just the basic principles of not screwing everyone over.” They were the ones holding the clipboard, not the bullhorn. And in a world that rewards noise over knowledge, they never stood a chance.

This resentment has been simmering for decades—against the teacher who gave you a C, the scientist who said the water’s not safe, the judge who told you no, the bureaucrat who told you to wait in line. In Trump’s hands, that slow, bitter burn became a bonfire. Now it’s the fuel behind purging civil servants, gutting universities, neutering regulatory agencies, and replacing professional judgment with blind loyalty.

And the goal isn’t to fix the system. It’s to discredit it. To make truth negotiable. To make knowledge feel elitist. To make people who spent their lives learning things sound like they’re part of a conspiracy.

This isn’t a war on the elite. It’s a war on the very idea that anyone should know better than you.

And it’s working.

IV. This Isn’t Just American

Donald Trump didn’t invent this war on expertise. He just gave it a catchphrase.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán calls it “illiberal democracy”—and he says it with a smirk. He’s gutted academic freedom, banned gender studies, placed loyalists in every corner of the judiciary, and turned the nation’s press into a government mouthpiece. Sound familiar?

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro fired public health experts mid-pandemic, dismantled environmental protections, and installed generals in civilian agencies. He didn’t believe in climate change or COVID. But he did believe in loyalty over facts. Brazil paid the price—in rainforest destruction, body bags, and international isolation.

And in India, Narendra Modi has fused populism with nationalism so tightly they’re now indistinguishable. His government has rewritten textbooks, jailed journalists, demonized dissent as “anti-national,” and vilified elite institutions for producing too many critical thinkers. When students at Delhi University protested, the police responded with batons—not dialogue.

These aren’t isolated events. They’re part of a pattern.

What connects all of them—Trump included—isn’t ideology. It’s strategy. Replace civil servants with cronies. Replace scholars with ideologues. Replace facts with feelings. Rewrite the rules until the truth depends on who’s in power.

You don’t need tanks in the streets. You just need a legislative majority and a compliant media. You don't have to jail critics—just defund them, discredit them, or accuse them of treason. And you certainly don’t need to stage a coup when you can just reclassify your enemies as “woke” and fire them before lunch.

Project 2025 isn’t some spontaneous MAGA fever dream. It’s a franchise. The Hungarian model. The Bolsonaro blueprint. The Modi method. America’s just the next stop on the world tour.

And if you think it can’t happen here, take a long look at what they’re already promising—and an even longer look at what we’ve already allowed.

V. Schedule F Wasn’t a Typo. It Was a Declaration of War.

Let’s talk about Schedule F.

In his first term, Trump signed an executive order to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as “Schedule F,” removing their job protections and making them easy to fire. Translation: fire the experts, hire the loyalists. You don’t like the analysis from the budget office? Fire them. Don’t like the lawyers at the DOJ telling you you can’t prosecute political opponents? Fire them.

Biden rescinded it on Day One. But in his second term, Trump has vowed to bring it back—and expand it. His allies at the Heritage Foundation call it Project 2025, and it reads like a fascist’s Christmas list: fire tens of thousands of civil servants, replace them with ideologues, defund regulatory agencies, consolidate executive power, and dismantle the administrative state altogether.

And that’s not exaggeration. That’s their mission statement.

What happens when you remove the independent professionals who make government work and replace them with cronies? You don’t just get bad governance. You get authoritarianism.

Now look—I get it. Bureaucrats are not sexy. They don’t give TED Talks. They don’t trend on TikTok. They write memos in passive voice and speak in acronyms. They can be slow, inflexible, and yes, sometimes maddening. But they’re also the ones who keep your drinking water clean, your planes in the sky, your medicine safe, and your elections fair. They are, at their best, the ballast in a storm. They remember the rules—and in a democracy, someone has to.

You don’t have to love the bureaucracy. But you damn well better protect it. Because when the system’s gone, what replaces it won’t ask you for your opinion. It’ll tell you what it is—and it’ll be final.

We may be imperfect messengers, but we’re the last ones left who believe facts still matter.

VI. Harvard vs. the State: The Opening Act of a War on Academia (in the voice of Aaron Sorkin)

Let’s stop pretending this is business as usual.

Harvard—yes, that Harvard—is in a standoff with the federal government. And not over some dry tax ruling or accreditation snafu. No, this is something much bigger. Much louder. And much more dangerous.

The Trump administration handed Harvard a list of demands:
End all DEI programs.
Scrub your admissions policies.
Crack down on student protests.
Start tracking the political leanings of your faculty.

Harvard said no. And in response, the government froze over $2 billion in research funding. They're threatening to pull the plug on student loans. On international enrollment. On the very autonomy of the institution.

Let me be clear: this isn’t a policy dispute. It’s a power play. It’s a President trying to turn the most iconic university in the country into a cautionary tale.

And for what? For refusing to turn its lecture halls into loyalty tests? For refusing to become a propaganda arm of the state?

This isn’t about Harvard. This is about the idea of Harvard. The idea that knowledge matters. That expertise matters. That truth isn’t whatever polls the best on Truth Social that morning.

What Trump is doing to Harvard is not a sideshow. It’s the opening act.

When China launched its Cultural Revolution, intellectuals were the first to go—not because they were dangerous, but because they were inconvenient. They asked questions. They kept records. They knew better.

Authoritarians don’t hate smart people. They hate people who remember the rules. Because rules are what keep power in check.

So here we are: a sitting President threatening to dismantle the nation’s oldest university. Not because it broke the law. But because it produced too many liberals.

This isn’t reform. This is revenge.

And if Harvard falls, every other institution of higher learning will get the message loud and clear: say the wrong thing, teach the wrong book, allow the wrong protest—and the full weight of the federal government will be waiting for you on the other side.

So no, this isn’t about campus politics. It’s about whether the truth still gets to stand on its own two feet. Whether facts still matter in a democracy. Whether education can still be a search for knowledge—or just a pipeline for obedience.

Because the moment universities become extensions of the state, we stop educating citizens. And we start training subjects.

VII. Journalism: The Enemy of the People Was Always the Truth

When Trump calls the press the “enemy of the people,” it’s not a metaphor. It’s a mission statement.

His rallies aren’t just political events—they’re public executions of truth. Reporters are boxed into pens and jeered like criminals. The rest? He’s banned them, sued them, and had them arrested. Not because they lied. But because they told the truth.

In his second term, Trump allies are already laying the groundwork to revoke licenses, defund public broadcasting, and sue media organizations out of existence. And they’ll do it under the banner of “bias” and “national security.”

But the real reason is simpler: journalism makes it harder to lie.

And Trump’s entire political project is built on a single truth: that he alone tells the truth. Everything else is fake. Every fact is negotiable. Every expert is compromised. Every institution is corrupt—except him.

You don’t have to destroy the press. Just convince enough people not to believe it.

VIII. Science and the Silencing of Reality

During Trump’s first term, his administration scrubbed climate data from government websites, pressured the CDC to alter COVID guidelines, and banned scientists from speaking to the press.

Now, the gloves are off.

The new EPA administrator is a former coal lobbyist. The Department of Energy’s climate modeling team has been disbanded. The NIH’s funding for gun violence research has vanished again. And the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy? Replaced with a Christian nationalist “Committee on American Innovation.”

Science isn’t being debated. It’s being replaced—with slogans, slogans that rhyme, slogans that chant well at rallies. Truth is what gets the most retweets. Reality is whatever makes the base cheer.

We’re no longer in a battle over climate policy. We’re in a battle over the definition of reality.

IX. What Happens When the Experts Are Gone

Here’s the part they never tell you: firing the experts doesn’t just hurt Washington. It hurts you.

In Flint, Michigan, government scientists warned early about lead in the water. No one listened. The pipes corroded, the kids got sick, and the damage was permanent. Why? Because elected officials wanted loyalty and cost-cutting over science and safety.

In East Palestine, Ohio, a train derailment released toxic chemicals into the air and groundwater. The town still doesn’t trust the cleanup. Why? Because regulations had been rolled back, inspectors were sidelined, and nobody wanted to upset the rail industry.

In 2006, EPA toxicologist Dr. Deborah Rice warned about the neurological dangers of flame retardants in household products. The chemical industry lobbied for her removal. She was kicked off a federal advisory panel—not for being wrong, but for being right too soon. The products stayed on the shelves. Years later, studies confirmed the damage she predicted—especially in children.

At the FAA, career engineers raised red flags about the Boeing 737 Max. Their concerns were ignored. Planes crashed. Hundreds died. Why? Because the agency had become too cozy with the company it was supposed to regulate—and because engineering took a backseat to profits.

These aren’t abstract warnings about governance. They’re body counts.

When you purge public health officials, people die of preventable diseases. When you silence environmental regulators, kids drink poison. When you gut civil rights offices, discrimination flourishes. When you defund journalists, the corruption keeps growing in the dark.

And when you replace judges, professors, scientists, and watchdogs with people who answer to one man, the next time a whistleblower tries to speak up—there’s no one left to hear them.

This isn’t just about politics. It’s about whether the bridge you drive over is safe. Whether the meat you eat is inspected. Whether the medication in your cabinet actually works. Whether your vote counts.

It’s about trust. And once it’s gone, once the people who used to say “this isn’t safe” are all out of the building, you’ll miss them. Desperately.

Because the scariest part of dismantling expertise isn’t what happens on Day One. It’s what doesn’t happen on Day 1,000—when the pipes burst, the levee breaks, or the cancer cluster shows up and there’s nobody left who even knows how to find the data.

The end of facts doesn’t look like fire and brimstone.

It looks like a shrug. A press conference. And then a funeral.

X. Bureaucrats Are the New Revolutionaries

Let’s talk about bureaucrats for a second.

They’re not glamorous. They’re not on MSNBC. They don’t get standing ovations. They write 400-page manuals, speak in acronyms, and drink bad coffee at the GAO.

But they are patriots. And they’re the last line of defense.

They’re the ones who issue subpoenas when the Justice Department’s being hijacked. They’re the ones who flag suspicious transactions when someone’s funneling Russian money through a PAC. They’re the ones who protect whistleblowers and maintain voting systems and monitor chemical spills and enforce fair housing laws.

Which is exactly why Trump wants them gone.

Because they remember the rules.

And authoritarians hate referees.

XI. The Endgame: Replace Them All

This isn’t scattershot. This isn’t incompetence. This is the goal.

Dismantle the institutions that give unelected professionals power—education, journalism, science, the civil service—and replace them with institutions that answer to Trump: the military, right-wing media, religious organizations, and corporate donors. That’s the architecture.

That’s how you turn a democracy into a personality cult.

You don’t outlaw opposition. You just label it elitist, corrupt, and un-American. Then you fire it.

This isn’t just a war on woke. It’s a war on wisdom.

XII. What Happens If We Lose

If Trump wins again and follows through on Project 2025, America doesn’t just change presidents. It changes forms.

Civil servants will be purged. Universities will be censored. Journalists will be prosecuted. Science will be rewritten. Expertise will be punished. And millions of Americans will be told that the only truth that matters is what Dear Leader says it is.

And the worst part?

It’ll be legal. It’ll be popular. And it’ll be fast.

Because the hard part of building institutions is that it takes generations.

The easy part of burning them down? Just one match.

And yes—some of this didn’t happen overnight. Democrats, liberals, institutions—we’ve had our blind spots. We underestimated how deep the resentment ran. We let process become complacency. We let facts be taken for granted. And we’ve been slow to fight for the very systems that make those facts matter.

XIII. The Counterrevolution Begins Now

There’s still time. Because if history has a rhythm, it’s this: authoritarians rise fast—but they don’t fall quietly. They fall when people decide the truth is worth fighting for.

So fight back. Defend institutions. Celebrate expertise. Support good journalism. Fund education. Protect civil servants. Elect leaders who believe in something bigger than themselves.

Don’t just resist Trumpism. Replace it—with a politics that honors facts, reveres knowledge, respects process, and tells the truth even when it’s unpopular.

So what does that look like? First, Congress must move swiftly to pass legislation that permanently blocks Schedule F and codifies job protections for civil servants. Second, state legislatures—and universities themselves—should enact clear academic freedom protections that prevent political interference in hiring, tenure, and curriculum. Third, we should restore and expand federal funding for independent media and public broadcasting, which have been relentlessly defunded in the Trump era. Finally, we need serious reform in how federal education dollars are allocated: tie them to the integrity of institutions, not to the whims of populist anger.

These aren’t culture war battles. They’re the firewall.

Because democracy isn’t just about voting. It’s about valuing the people who make facts matter.

The truth isn’t elitist. It’s democratic. And it doesn’t need to trend—it needs to be defended.