What happens when you put four of the Trump right’s leading intellectuals together in a room? You see what it looks like when a political movement gets high on its own supply.

The conversation in question is a recently published two-hour video roundtable hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization dedicated to educating and connecting young conservatives. The panelists are tech monarchist Curtis Yarvin, “postliberal” political theorist Patrick Deneen, the culture war activist Chris Rufo, and globetrotting journalist Christopher Caldwell.

Prior to Trump, Caldwell was the only member of the panel with a claim to real influence. Since, however, each has become a defining figure in the pro-Trump coalition. Yarvin’s ideas helped inspire DOGE. Deneen is a major influence on Vice President JD Vance. Rufo shaped Trump’s war on higher ed, and Caldwell’s ideas influenced its attack on civil rights law.

On a casual watch, their conversation seems like a debate over the American experiment. Yarvin is opposed, repeatedly suggesting that the US take lessons from French autocrats like Louis XIV and Napoleon. The other panelists disagree, arguing that it’s possible to build a better America by making the current system more right-wing.

But what’s actually important is how much all four of them agree about what a “more right-wing” America should look like.

“We all have strong opinions — agreements, disagreements — but it all seems like we’re moving in the same direction,” Rufo says near the roundtable’s end. “We can hash out the ideas among ourselves [because] we had the big debate with the left between 2020 and 2024. I think we’ve effectively won that debate.”

That overall direction, it is clear, is giving more and more power over our lives to Donald J. Trump. Over and over again, the speakers praise Trump’s consolidation of power over the executive branch and urge him to go further, ignoring or mocking concerns about legality and democracy. Yarvin’s authoritarian provocations aren’t immediately dismissed or scorned by his co-panelists, but serve as a conversational focal point that permits the others to indulge their own........

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