One of the most influential intellectual groupings on the Trump administration are scholars associated with the conservative Claremont Institute. For those that see the Trump administration as wholly anti-intellectual it is worth stating that all American presidential administrations are influenced by scholars who want their ideas to have consequences. During the Reagan administration, conservative intellectuals like Charles Murray, George Gilder and Norman Podhoretz tried to shape the policy agenda and gain positions within the administration. During the Trump presidency the most influential scholars on the administration have arguably been Michael Anton, John Eastman and Patrick Deneen. Anton and Eastman are part of the Claremont Institute’s inner circle and are referred to in Laura Field’s excellent Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (2025) as “Claremonters.” Apart from strongly supporting Trump, the Claremonters have long been obsessed with America’s founding and founders.
What do the Claremonters think about the founding and how does it relate to their views on contemporary American politics? In recent times Claremonters like Charles Kesler have claimed their connection with the founders by contending that they are following the “Founders’ Constitution” as opposed to the “Progressive Constitution”. What is remarkable about Kesler and other Claremonters’ interpretation of the founders’ true intentions is that these intentions apparently permitted Trump’s response to his 2020 election loss and the events of January 6, 2021. For many others this election denialism and the vandalism of the Capitol Building were a perversion of the US Constitution and the founders’ core intentions.
Federation does not have the importance that America’s Declaration of Independence does to American conservatives.
Australian conservatives do not tend to be as obsessed with Australia’s federation (its independent founding) as they are often monarchists, so federation does not have the importance that America’s Declaration of Independence does to American conservatives. American monarchists – who want the UK to return to playing a constitutional role – are few and far between in American conservative circles. In her book, Laura Field writes of the importance of the founding to the Claremonters and its connections to Trump, that their “ideology is in some respects spiritually adjacent to originalism, except that rather than appeal to the text of the Constitution, the Claremonters appeal to the first principles of the founding (an approach that some scholars have called ‘Declarationism’). Between 2016 and 2024 it became attached to a radical form of counterrevolutionary activism, inspired by Anton’s famous essay ‘The Flight 93 Election,’ from September 2016, in which he had defined Trumpism.”
Michael Anton was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department during the first year of the current Trump administration. This is a storied position that was first held by George Kennan and has subsequently been occupied by many of America’s most influential foreign policy analysts. As Director of Policy Planning it has been reported that Michael Anton wrote the “initial draft” of the 2025 National Security Strategy. In 2016 Anton was writing under the pseudonym of “Publius Decius Mus” on a blog grandly titled the Journal of American Greatness. He authored the now famous “The Flight 93 Election” essay which begins with these dramatic claims:
“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”
How does this relate to the founding of America? For the Claremonters like Anton, America’s founding was a triumph of Western Civilization that is being undermined by woke ideas and non-white immigration. Trump emerged for them as a refutation of these trends. We can see Anton’s worldview in the section on Europe in the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) where it is argued the policy of the US Government is to assist in “restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.” Immigration is blamed in the 2025 NSS for European “decline”, just as the Claremonters have blamed immigration for American “decline.” Later in the 2025 NSS it is claimed that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties [far-right populist parties] indeed gives cause for great optimism.” These statements are very similar to views Anton has been proclaiming for years.
America’s founding has been used for many different purposes by a vast array of political movements.
America’s founding has been used for many different purposes by a vast array of political movements. The Claremonters’ use of the Declaration of Independence to promote their notion of white Western Civilization is a repudiation of Martin Luther King’s inspiring contention that: “When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Despite important triumphs, King’s vision of America has never been fully realised. The current backlash against civil rights, voting rights and non-white immigration – in which the Claremonters have played a central role – is a reminder, in America’s 250th year, that the arc of history often does not bend towards justice.
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