The Telegraph thinks a tax-dodging billionaire who guts worker protections is the new FDR. Is anyone buying that?
There are op-eds that provoke thought, and then there are those that provoke disorientation. Jeremy Warner’s recent piece in The Telegraph - "Trump is becoming one of America’s most Left-wing presidents ever" - belongs to the latter category. Donald Trump—a man who rose to power by galvanizing white grievance, dismantling regulatory safeguards, and stacking wealth for the already-rich—is not a “Left-wing” president. This is a thesis so profoundly cynical and historically illiterate that it almost defies belief.
Published under the pretense of ideological novelty, Warner’s article reads like a hall of mirrors: surface-level policy gestures are mistaken for genuine political alignment, and opportunistic populism is recast as principled progressivism. The piece is less journalism than a kind of ideological fan fiction, where the only requirement for being called “Left-wing” is daring to touch a talking point previously associated with the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. But stripping these moves from their moral, systemic, and redistributional context is not analysis.
“Trump is not just the billionaires’ president, he also frames himself as a ‘blue collar’ leader determined to uphold the interests of the working man.”
Framing is not policy. Posturing is not governance. Trump has long styled himself as a friend to “the working man,” yet his actual labor record—from suppressing union organizing to backing corporate-friendly deregulation—paints a different picture. The appointment of one union-endorsed figure or a photo op with Teamsters does not offset years of policy aimed at disempowering workers. A Democratic president who appointed a single Goldman Sachs alumnus would be crucified in this very publication.
“Trumpism similarly fuses Left and Right-wing populism… he is – astonishingly – shaping up to be one of the most Left-wing presidents in US history.”
Trump’s “fusion” of populisms is not ideological synthesis—it’s opportunism. Populism is not inherently Left or Right; it’s a style of politics that can be yoked to vastly different ends. Left populism seeks structural redistribution. Right populism seeks cultural purification and scapegoating. Trump may echo a few redistributive ideas to court disaffected voters, but his governing record—from tax cuts for the wealthy to attacks on the social safety net—remains firmly plutocratic.
“Trump has alighted on a number of what would normally be regarded as Left-wing, or progressive, ideas in order to boost his popularity.”
Let’s isolate the logic here: if a politician uses a formerly “progressive” idea to increase their own popularity, this makes them Left-wing? That’s like calling a kleptocrat a philanthropist for occasionally donating stolen goods. Lowering drug prices or taxing the ultra-rich are not inherently Leftist if stripped of their intent and replaced with spectacle. When these gestures are not accompanied by an agenda of systemic reform, but rather by culture war demagoguery and oligarchic enrichment, their origins become irrelevant. They’re branding tools, not commitments.
“He’s also publicly supported the elimination of preferential tax treatment for private equity and hedge fund bosses.”
This point would matter more if Trump hadn’t presided over one of the largest upward transfers of wealth in American history. The 2017 tax law—his signature legislative achievement—delivered permanent corporate tax cuts and temporary middle-class relief, exacerbating inequality. The idea that a single rhetorical jab at carried interest reverses years of coddling the investor class is not only misleading—it’s insulting to readers who remember reality.
“What he proposes is essentially the same as what Bernie Sanders… pledged when he was running for the Democratic nomination.”
This comparison is absurd on its face. Sanders’ platform was anchored in structural change: Medicare for All, wealth taxes, a Green New Deal. Trump’s noise about drug prices lacks legislative detail, implementation mechanisms, and—most importantly—political will. And while Sanders fought corporate lobbies tooth and nail, Trump routinely cozied up to them, using his presidency as a personal branding engine. This is not a policy parallel. It’s a simulation.
“The truth is that pharma prices in the US are basically just a racket. It will be the ultimate irony if Trump succeeds where Left-leaning progressive have failed.”
If Trump somehow enacted meaningful reform on drug pricing, it would indeed be worth coverage—though not because it makes him a Leftist. The act would be welcome, but the motives, mechanisms, and broader context still matter. Ending a racket doesn’t erase the hundreds he has enabled. Furthermore, “progressives” didn’t fail due to lack of trying, but due to a Senate dominated by corporate-aligned Democrats and Republicans alike. Blaming the Left while absolving the systemic roadblocks that Trump himself reinforced is dishonest.
“Trump is not a ‘trickle-down’ president. He’s an interventionist straight out of the populist, Left-wing tool box.”
Trump’s so-called “interventionism” is not grounded in social solidarity or class justice—it is ethno-nationalist protectionism. Slapping tariffs on foreign goods while gutting labor protections at home is not a Left strategy. It’s Bannonism. And while Warner gestures toward Trump’s crackdown on DEI and immigration as quirks of his conservatism, he downplays how these are not afterthoughts but foundational to Trump’s ideology. This is a presidency built on hierarchy, grievance, and exclusion, not redistribution or equality.
The article makes no effort to interrogate its own framing. Why call these policies “Left-wing” if their purpose is to distract from authoritarian creep? Why ignore the authoritarian methods behind their delivery? Why take populist branding at face value while dismissing decades of actual Left policy as naïve or unserious?
Trump is not becoming “one of the most Left-wing presidents ever.” He is a hard-right nationalist who occasionally raids the rhetorical toolkit of his enemies when it suits his aims.
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