2026 Jay Blumler Lecture with Guest Speaker Professor Jeffrey Alexander

"Theory of Trump"

In November, 2024, a majority of American citizens elected Donald Trump to a second term and for months after this second accession continued supporting him. They no longer do. In fact, it seems increasingly likely that, after the mid-term elections in November 2026, the President will be facing impeachment. Yet, even as a majority of Americans have – once again – come to view the President’s decision making as arbitrary and his actions as dangerously authoritarian, he has sustained the support of his MAGA minority. In 2016, Trump declared, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.” By any voters, Trump meant MAGA ones, and in the 10 years since nothing has changed. How we can explain the nature of this loyalty, which is indeed incredible, and its implications for democracy? That is one of the questions I will address in this lecture. Another is why, over the last 10 years, the MAGA minority has twice been joined by non-MAGA conservatives and Independents, a coalition that allowed Trump to be elected and then reelected, both times fairly and squarely, to the most powerful position in the “free world.” What are the social and cultural conditions that have allowed an amoral real estate tycoon – selfish, greedy, authoritarian, and emotionally deeply unstable – to enter into power and relentlessly exercise it, not once but twice, without being expelled from the American civil sphere, the discursive and institutional world that an American President is sworn to represent? There is a third question I will address as well. How is that Trump’s twice-winning coalition, the hardcore MAGA base and the ambivalent, conservative-cum-Independent center, eventually became unglued – in the middle and later years of his first term and, more recently, in the latter months of year one and the early months of year two of his second term – such that the American civil sphere has been able to be revivified once again? 

My lecture will be organised in the following sequence: The Conjuncture of the Structure: On Not Punishing Deviance; The Structure of the Conjuncture: Frontlash and Backlash; Trump as Collective Representation; Conservativism Becomes Reactionary; Binary Discourse and Apocalyptic Narrative; Trump II:The Man on the White Horse; Erecting a Counter-Civil Sphere via Executive Order; The Civil Sphere Fights Back; Minneapolis as Punctum: Yes We Can. 

Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Yale University, Founder and Emeritus Director of Yale's Center for Cultural Sociology, and co-editor of the American Journal of Sociology. Among his recent works are Civil Repair (2024), Frontlash/Backlash (2025), "The Civil Sphere in War and Peace: From Athens to Kyiv" (2025), and "Civil Sphere Theory in the Shadow of Authoritarianism" (2026).

Event Information

This is a free public event and all are welcome. The hour-long lecture will be followed by a buffet reception and drinks. There is no need to register, but please email Media Research Support (mediaresearchsupport@leeds.ac.uk) if you wish to attend (just so we have an idea of numbers for catering purposes), or for more information.

Livestream

This event will be live-streamed via this link.