Make America the West Again?
Image Courtesy of Arya Chanda made using public domain content from Wikimedia commons
Amid the buzz surrounding Donald Trump’s unorthodox cabinet picks following his November victory, one appointment has slipped under the radar: Jon Voight. The Academy Award-winning actor and father to Angelina Jolie, has been named Special Ambassador to Hollywood. Joining him in this peculiar new post are Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, but it is Voight’s involvement—and his most famous film—that captures something about Trump’s political imagination.
In 1969’s Midnight Cowboy Voight plays Joe Buck, a Texan dishwasher who heads to New York City dreaming of riches and success, only to be reduced to hustling as a male prostitute. Through his cowboy persona and attire, Joe clings to an ideal of independence and opportunity until the bitter end, when the harsh reality of urban decay finally forces him to abandon his costume and resolve to find a regular job. This story seems to reflect Trump’s view of modern America: a nation whose once-vital Western spirit has been crushed and neutered by an out-of-touch, ineffective establishment.
Trump’s personal favourite film, Sunset Boulevard (1950), also touches on this disillusionment. Its hero, Joe Gillis, a failing screenwriter chases the dream of Hollywood success only to be met with a tragic end, shot by a silent film actress, unable to accept that her era is over. Both films depict broken dreams that Trump’s 2025 inauguration speech sought to revive. Gone was the rhetoric of “American carnage,” which Trump spoke of in 2017; in its place, he delivered an optimistic vision for an America where the Western spirit of exploration and innovation could thrive once again.
The idea of the West has been central to Republican identity since the party’s inception. As historian Heather Cox Richardson notes, “The Republican Party’s roots lay in the struggle to control the destiny of the American West.” Founded in the 1850s, the party sought to block the expansion of slavery into Western territories to ensure that honest labour and free enterprise could flourish. The Western spirit of expansion and opportunity shaped the presidencies of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, both of whom Trump namechecked in his speech. Their belief in the American Dream championed the idea that any man could manifest his own destiny.
By the 20th century, Republican leaders increasingly leveraged their ties to the West to bolster their appeal. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, with their Californian roots, embodied the promise of innovation and rugged individualism. Reagan, in particular, drew heavily on the cowboy archetype, framing himself as a symbol of strength and straightforward values. Even the Harvard and Yale educated son of a President, George W. Bush, embraced the persona of the Texas rancher, donning the costume of the West to project a self-made image of authenticity and grit.
In his 2025 inauguration speech, Trump called for a new American “Golden Age,” declaring that “the spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.” He promised a nation reinvigorated by ambition, energy, and opportunity—a return to the pioneering ethos that once defined the West. Trump’s imagery of “liquid gold” in America’s oil reserves and his commitment to “drill, baby, drill” recalled the great gold and oil rushes of the 19th century, reframing natural resources as the key to a prosperous future. Meanwhile, his pledge to send astronauts to colonise Mars invoked the spirit of manifest destiny, launching the new boundaries of the frontier into space.
Of course, the history of Western expansion is a reminder that the frontier has always been a place of opportunity and brutality. The conquest of the West came at a devastating cost: the massacres of Indigenous Americans, the perilous journeys of settlers, and the countless failures of those who sought a fresh start but were unable to achieve one. Moreover, the cowboy archetype Trump seeks to revive carries its own complexities. The cowboy’s overt masculinity, resonates with an administration poised to curtail women’s reproductive rights, aligning the revival of the frontier spirit with a narrower, male-dominated vision of progress. Meanwhile, the new Westerners of Silicon Valley - who have risen to prominence in Trump’s circle - resemble the Gilded Age industrial tycoons of the Northeast far more than the rugged individualists of the frontier. Whether the spirit of exploration and innovation or monopolistic corporate consolidation triumphs remains to be seen.
Ultimately, the ball is in Trump’s court. With control of both Houses of Congress, a sympathetic Supreme Court, and a clear popular mandate that eluded him in his first term, he has every opportunity to bring his vision of the West to life. The future of the frontier is unwritten. For now, we can only wait and see how the next chapter unfolds.