By responding “not at all” to the electoral risks of his foreign policy, Donald Trump did not only display his arrogance. He spoke to its most radicalized core: the Jan-Sixers. Between presidential pardons, permanent mobilization and confrontational diplomacy, this logic redraws the Trumpism of the current second American term.
When Donald Trump was asked about the risk of an electoral backlash linked to the economic consequences of his foreign policy, his response was terse: “Not at all. “He added: “I do what I want. » This formula could prove to be one of the most revealing of his second term. Not because it only expresses a form of arrogance, but because it signals an audience choice.
Trump was not speaking to the still-persuadable independents, moderate voters, working-class defectors, or MAGA isolationists who believed he would lower prices and avoid external commitments. He was speaking to the new emotional center of the movement: the Jan-Sixers.
The mistake many analysts make is to see Trump’s increasingly brutal rhetoric as either an ideological inconsistency or a sign of personal decline. Some read it as a form of senile drift. Others are still looking for a grand strategy hidden behind the noise. Both readings perhaps miss the point: Trump’s language functions less like classic political communication than like emotional conditioning intended for a specific audience.
This audience is no longer the country as a whole. In ordinary political logic, a president weakened in the polls would seek to reassure, to broaden his coalition, to return to the center. Trump is doing the opposite. He no longer seems to want to convince the independents, the suburban moderates, the women or the casual voters who helped him return to power in 2024. These voters have served their purpose. The priority is no longer persuasion, but mobilization.
The hard core of Trumpism
What emerged after January 6 is not just a protest, a riot or a legal controversy. It is the consolidation of a political core within Trumpism: a faction convinced that institutions become illegitimate as soon as they obstruct Trump.
For this core, January 6 has become a founding myth. MAGA may remain the brand, but the Jan-Sixers are increasingly its command psychology. Narrower, more furious, more militant, they organize themselves less around a program than around a feeling of persecution, loyalty and permanent mobilization.
The Jan-Sixers are not just the people physically present in Washington that day. They designate a broader political constituency, emotionally shaped by this event: those who did not perceive it as a riot or a defeat, but as a founding act of resistance. Those who interpret the pardons subsequently granted by Trump as a rehabilitation, not as a controversy. Those who consider that institutions are only legitimate when they produce results favorable to Trump.
Trump speaks their language. Not by explicit instructions, but by a code built around betrayal, stolen power, internal enemies, humiliation and strength freed from institutional constraints. Ordinary populism attacks elites. The Jan-Sixer code goes further: it treats any institutional defeat as intrinsically illegitimate. Every investigation becomes a persecution. Every setback becomes a theft. Every counter-power becomes proof of a conspiracy.
The repetition of lies, Trump’s central technique, then counts more than coherence. In the Jan-Sixer ecosystem, claims about stolen elections, deep state sabotage, or elite betrayal cease to be arguments. They become an identity. Trump’s rhetoric looks less and less like an attempt to convince the country. It mainly aims to keep your core activated.
It is in this context that we must understand the massive pardons granted to the defendants of January 6. Trump did not pardon them out of simple gratitude or personal loyalty. He often showed that he could push aside his allies when they became troublesome. These pardons served a colder objective: to exploit presidential power itself.
The message was clear: those who cross lines in the name of Trump and his movement will be protected. The pardons transformed January 6 from a democratic warning into a political myth of martyrology. Above all, they created an incentive structure for the future, looking towards 2026, 2028 and any future moment of confrontation. The Jan-Sixers are not abandoned soldiers. They are protected by presidential power.
Diplomacy as an extension of the internal headquarters
This logic also sheds light on Trump’s foreign policy as the midterms approach. Trump himself is not on the ballot in 2026. His political survival depends less on rebuilding a broad coalition than on maintaining a congressional shield. If Republicans keep Congress, it remains protected from investigations, subpoenas and institutional siege. If the Democrats clearly retake the House, this shield collapses.
Foreign policy then becomes one of the rare areas where Trump can still act quickly, project force and regain control of the narrative. This does not mean that every external decision is pure theater. Its pressure on burden sharing within NATO, customs duties against China, coercive diplomacy towards Iran or Arab-Israeli normalization have an identifiable strategic content. But under domestic pressure, these impulses are increasingly filtered through personal domination, media spectacle and political survival.
Republican institutional preparation makes this dynamic more worrying. Unlike 2020, where the party had largely improvised in electoral disputes, it now seems better organized: legal infrastructure, redistricting battles, electoral mobilization, procedural advantage. Trump may therefore feel less exposed than four years ago. In 2020, he improvised after the defeat. In 2026, he seems to be preparing before the result, not only to contest possible setbacks, but to reactivate the resentment of the “stolen elections” with a view to 2028.
If Republicans hold on to Congress despite low approval ratings, Trump will likely see it as a validation of his entire approach. Confrontation works. Agitation works. The Jan-Sixer core works. Foreign policy could then become even more theatrical: increased pressure on allies, escalation of trade wars, greater tolerance for provocations and shows of force designed as much for internal emotional consumption as for external strategic objectives.
A narrow Democratic gain could be even more destabilizing. Trump would probably speak of sabotage rather than rejection, while intensifying the mobilization of the Jan-Sixer ecosystem. Foreign policy could become an instrument of political recovery, through military signals, emergency summits or sudden confrontations intended to restore its dominance over the domestic narrative.
A decisive Democratic victory would further constrain him institutionally, but could also increase volatility abroad. Trump would then be tempted to oscillate between isolationist rhetoric and sudden demonstrations of force. The logic would no longer be strategic coherence, but survival through permanent crisis.
The deeper danger, then, is not just Trump’s foreign policy itself. It is the transformation of American foreign policy into an extension of domestic siege policy, emotional conditioning and permanent political warfare.
The answer “not at all” was not an accident. Trump is betting that he can alienate marginal voters, betray some of the promises that brought him back to power, govern by provocation and still survive thanks to congressional protection, institutional preparation and the Jan-Sixer core. It is this bet which now structures his power. The question is how long he can hold out.
