PALANTIR, VANCE, AND THE POST-TRUMP RETURN OF THE DENIABLE DOG WHISTLE

Yesterday, for some reason, Palantir's X account tweeted out a 22-point summary of CEO and co-founder Alex Karp's 2025 book, The Technological Republic. Some of this summary reads like the work of a basement-dwelling underachiever recycling fourth-generation Reagan-era talking points ("it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet"). Some is Palantir essentially saying, Civilization won't survive unless you build an Orwellian hellscape using our technology ("The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose"; "Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime").

And then there's point #21:

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures ... have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

This is ... really racist. It's Bell Curve-level racist.

But it's not Trump-style racist or groyper-style racist. It's vague enough that it slides under many people's anti-racist radar.

I think this and not the open bigotry of Nick Fuentes and young-Republican message boards is the future of the post-Trump GOP. I addressed the subject of GOP anti-Semitism in a post last month: Despite the popularity of open anti-Semitism among young right-wingers, I believe the party will still remain friendly to right-wing Jews and Christian Zionists, while quietly sending signals to bigots reassuring them that they're welcome in the party. That's what likely 2028 presidential nominee J.D. Vance does every time he downplays the seriousness of chat-group bigotry among young Republicans and refuses to condemn bigots. Vance has also told us in multiple speeches that he believes some people just aren't Americans, even if they come to America and believe in American ideals.

America is not just an idea. We’re a particular place, with a particular people, and a particular set of beliefs and way of life....

You cannot swap 10 million people from anywhere else in the world and expect America to remain unchanged. In the same way, you can’t export our Constitution to a random country and expect it to take hold.

That’s not something to lament, but to take pride in. The Founders understood that our shared qualities—our heritage, our values, our manners and customs—confer a special and indispensable advantage.

As Josh Kovensky recently noted at Talking Points Memo, a Texas group that campaigns against Muslims says it fights on behalf of "heritage Americans." It's a term that doesn't raise the same alarms as overt racial slurs or open declarations of white superiority. I think the post-Trump GOP will focus on euphemisms like this rather than the open insults of the groypers and the message-board youth -- and get away with it.

DON'T ASSUME THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WILL COLLAPSE WITHOUT A CULT LEADER

In a New York Times roundtable discussion conducted after the fall of Viktor Orban, and also after a series of failures by J.D. Vance, David French says this about a possible end to our current political era:

French: Look, political eras do end, parties do reform, so when it comes to when will this era end, I feel confident it will at some point. I just don’t know when and how much damage will be done before it does. And that’s very much an open question. And I do think in JD Vance’s failures, we’re beginning to see maybe how this political era ends. Because the question has always been: Who is getting the baton from Donald Trump? Who is the next standard bearer?

And for a long time it’s been JD Vance. JD Vance is sort of the heir apparent, and he has been faceplanting time and time and time again.

And one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he’s got all of the toxicity of Trump and none of that real charisma that Trump has. It’s charisma that I don’t fully understand. It’s never landed with me. Although I will say, early on I did enjoy “The Apprentice.” But it has never really landed with me, this hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn’t have it.

Michelle Cottle replies:

Cottle: No, the man can’t order a donut without alienating people.

That's true. I get it. I really do. Vance is not loved. He or Marco Rubio could lose in a blowout two years from now, the way John McCain did in 2008.

Or he could be George H.W. Bush -- also an unloved, charisma-challenged successor to a beloved figure in the GOP. Bush wasn't the spiritual leader of the right on Election Day 1988. Nevertheless, he won 40 states and a 426-111 Electoral College blowout.

What this tells us is that the conservative movement can survive an uncharismatic leader, because the leader of the Republican Party and conservative movement doesn't have to be a GOP president or presidential candidate.

During that election, arguably, the leadership of the right passed into the hands of Lee Atwater, who ran the most vicious presidential campaign in living memory. Bush took control of the conservative movement during the Gulf War, but he was unpopular by 1992 and lost his reelection bid badly. By that time, however, power on the right was passing into the hands of Rush Limbaugh and his fellow radio talkers. Soon the leadership of the party would be shared with Newt Gingrich in the House. Eventually, it would settle on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, at the headquarters of Fox News.

The point is that the GOP can survive the loss of a charismatic leader. During periods without such a leader, the party might not control all of government, but even if a Democrat is in the White House, it will have the power to make his life miserable. Gingrich's congressional majorities did that to Bill Clinton. A generation later, the Tea Party's congressional majorities did that to Barack Obama. The Republican Party did just fine without an object of cult worship in the White House.

Democrats' mission in 2028 is to engineer a repeat of 2008 rather than 1988, but Democrats don't have a Barack Obama in their likely candidate field, so they're at risk of running a candidate who's mocked and othered the way Mike Dukakis was. You might think Vance is a national laughingstock, but he beat Gavin Newsom and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by 3 points each in an early-April survey from UMass-Lowell/YouGov.

But even after the 2008 election, the GOP regrouped, making a comeback with the help of the Murdoch media and the Koch-funded Tea Party movement. There was no Reagan then. There was no Trump. There was just lots and lots of right-wing billionaire cash and lots and lots of propaganda. After Trump, sadly, the GOP will be just fine.

WHY WE PROBABLY CAN'T REPLICATE WHAT JUST HAPPENED IN HUNGARY

Alan Elrod of Liberal Currents understands the assignment for Tryump opponents in 2026 and 2028:

The goal must be to sweep the Republican Party out of power and to do so thoroughly that a new political project can begin to emerge in the aftermath. Failing to understand this is failing to meet the moment on a world historical scale. That’s because dislodging a competitive authoritarian regime takes significant effort, especially in a system as skewed as the United States is by the Electoral College and our chronic underrepresentation in the House.

In Hungary, Péter Magyar's Tisza Party just demonstrated what needs to be done in America. Not only did Tisza defeat Viktor Orbán's Fidesz Party, it won a two-thirds legislative majority that will allow the party to rewrite Hungary's constitution and unwind changes that empowered Orbán.

How do Donald Trump's opponents replicate that? Elrod writes:

This time, the opposition [in Hungary] refused to let factionalism threaten their mission. Rather than let a crowded field enable Orbán to retain power, parties stood down their candidate to maximize the vote behind Magyar and his Tisza party. This matters because Magyar, while a pro-EU and a pro-democracy small-l liberal, is ... center-right....

As speculation about the 2028 election heats up, we’re already being subjected to debates about who various constituencies will and won’t support against a future Trumpist or MAGA candidate. The biggest kerfuffle so far kicked up around Hasan Piker’s declaration that he wouldn’t support Gavin Newsom in a hypothetical matchup against JD Vance. This is the wrong position. It’s politically and morally simple-minded and short-sighted. But it isn’t so hard to imagine that some more conservative-minded folks might raise a similar opposition to a nominee like, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This would also be wrong.

I'm optimistic about the 2026 midterms, but I'm doomy about 2028. This is the main reason. I don't think there'll be a united front in 2028. I'm sure there'll be defections. There might not be enough defections to elect Vance (or whoever the GOP nominee is), but the opposition won't be fully united the way it was in Hungary this year.

In part, that's for an obvious reason: Trump won't be on the ballot in 2028. He's effectively on the ballot this year, which is the main reason Democrats are winning special elections and appear ready to win the midterms (at least in the House).

But Democrats have never managed to persuade more than a small handful of the electorate that the Republican Party is the problem. Mainstream Democrats don't try because they fear alienating swing voters. Progressive Democrats don't try because they think mainstream Democrats are problematic as well, even if, like AOC, they align themselves with the Democratic Party and endorse some Democrats who are more mainstream.

Magyar and Tisza were intensely focused on one clear goal: removing Orbán and Fidesz from power. The country was ready to dump Orbán and his party. In 2028, however, our Orbán won't be on the ballot, and our Fidesz, in all likelihood, won't be seen as the source of the country's problems.

One reason America won't be able to generate the same level of frustration and disgust is that Trump will have been in power for only four years. Orbán had been in power for 16 years. Beyond that, it seems very hard to get Americans to change their minds about the GOP if they've been amenable to it in the recent past. Texas, for instance, hasn't elected a Democrat in a statewide election in this century. At a time when the overwhelming majority of voters believe the country is on the wrong track, you'd imagine -- if you didn't know any better -- that this would give Democrats in Texas the potential for a Tisza-style sweep. But while James Talarico might win the Senate race, it's unimaginable that Democrats can dominate the midterms in Texas. The same is true in states like Florida, Missouri, Iowa, and Ohio, all of which used to be swing states: Democrats might do better than usual this year, but there's no chance that they'll wipe out the GOP.

I keep thinking about this piece by Politico's Alexander Burns:

... Orbán’s ouster represents a new triumph for a particular brand of disruptive politics: one defined by reformist candidates who launch new parties and blow up old ones, winning elections by rendering traditional political structures obsolete. Hungary’s Peter Magyar, the leader of the anti-Orbán Tisza party, is the latest victor in this mold....

It would be difficult but not impossible to do what Magyar did in America:

The American party system is heavily armored against disruption. It would be all but impossible to replicate here what Magyar has done in Hungary — or what France’s Emmanuel Macron and Argentina’s Javier Milei did before him — and turn a fledgling political organization into a personal vehicle and bring it to national power in a flash. We do not have secondary political parties that can surge to prominence in a single campaign, like Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia or Rob Jetten’s D66 in the Netherlands.

Yet as Trump himself has shown, it is possible to devour a major party from the inside — commandeering an old institution with grassroots support, casting aside its entrenched leaders, remaking it in a new image and earning a fresh look from voters who didn’t like the old version. Mark Carney has done something similar in Canada, with a very different political agenda. So has Lee Jae Myung in South Korea.

I think a billionaire like Mark Cuban could mount a viable third-party campaign. Widespread dissatisfaction with both parties might carry him to victory. But it's also quite possible that Fox and other GOP propaganda outfits would succeed in keeping Republican voters loyal to the party, while Democrats and the Cuban party split the anti-Republican vote.

Could someone who isn't an insider take control of the Democratic Party, the way Trump took control of the GOP? Burns writes:

If Democrats want to take the hint, they’ll give a closer look to the leaders frustrating their peers in Washington and defying their home-state political bosses, and less time measuring the applause meter at various special-interest conventions and donor retreats.

I'm sure he's referring to crypto-Republicans like John Fetterman and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, even though his words could just as easily apply to many progressives. But a Fetterman presidential campaign wouldn't tap into Americans' frustration. To do that, Fetterman would have to say that the whole system sucks. But Fetterman clearly believes that only Democrats suck. He's fine with Republicans.

In 2028, the Democrats will run a mainstream pol. The Republicans will run either Vance or Marco Rubio. And maybe the Democrat will win because the Republican won't distance himself from the current president, the way John McCain refused to distance himself from George W. Bush's widely reviled Iraq War in 2008. But a race like that won't lead to a Tisza-sized blowout. And we could just as easily have a repeat of 1988, when George H.W. Bush overcame Reagan fatigue and his own Vance-ish lack of charisma by viciously portraying his Democratic opponent as a dangerous freak, with the media's eager assistance.

DONALD J. BIEBER?

Katie Rogers of The New York Times writes:

In a 12-hour span this week, President Trump promised that the war with Iran was ending soon. He picked a fight with the pope on social media. He threatened to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve. He posted an illustration of himself receiving an encouraging hug from Jesus Christ.

This is what it looks like when Mr. Trump is under pressure and burrowing his way into a more flattering news cycle. And anyone who has been paying even a little bit of attention over the past decade can pinpoint where we are in a well-established routine, when, intentionally or not, the president tosses out little rhetorical grenades meant to shift attention elsewhere. (It often works: Remember last week, when he threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization?)

... What makes this different from all the other times is that he cannot post his way out of a war he started without congressional permission or without the support of voters.

It's the same old same old from Trump, and also it isn't. I agree with Stephanie Grisham, whom Rogers quotes:

When the moment calls for him to put the phone down or back away from a critic, he hits back harder.

“He’ll double down, lie more and say that everything’s perfectly fine and great, and then do all his bonkers postings,” said Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary for Mr. Trump.

But she added: “He’s being erratic, even for him.”

Is he being dementia erratic? Or experiencing some other form of mental illness that's new, or at least worsening?

Trump's White House is a massive flattery bubble -- but outside its walls, Trump knows how many people dislike him. I think, consciously or otherwise, he's looking for evidence that he can still get away with anything. So he's acting like a self-indulgent pop star.

I'm not a Justin Bieber fan, but a few days ago I found myself reading this account of Bieber's appearance at Coachella, and it made me think of Trump.

Three years after retreating from the spotlight, [Bieber's] Saturday night set was set to be his biggest performance in years.

What fans hoped for, it seems, was vintage Bieber. They wanted the hits: “Baby,” “One Less Lonely Girl,” “Sorry.” They wanted nostalgia; they wanted a dance party. They wanted a pop star with a microphone headset and a flock of backup dancers. They wanted choreography.

Bieber had other ideas.... The singer appeared on stage alone, with a pink hoodie pulled over his head and sunglasses across his eyes. He selected his backing tracks manually from a Mac on the side of the stage. Occasionally, he scrolled through comments on the Coachella livestream to pick his next songs....

Things got weird a third of the way through the set when Bieber started playing through his old material. Or rather, his computer did. The singer sat perched in front of his Mac, searching for his old music videos on YouTube. He shared his computer’s screen so that the crowd could see.

When he clicked on the video for “Baby,” the audience’s reaction was immediate....

And then, after a minute, he pulled the plug. He searched for another song, “Favorite Girl,” and did the same routine: one minute, then on to the next.

One possible reaction to being a massive celebrity is that you might indulge yourself the way Bieber did just to prove to yourself that your fans will stay on board, and also to draw attention to yourself, at a time when you seem to be past your peak and less able to make the world pay attention to you. And you feel you can get away with self-indulgence because you've been told you're great by the flatterers who surround you.

You become late-period Elvis, stumbling through "Are You Lonesome Tonight?":



Elvis had drug problems, and Bieber has spent time in rehab. Bieber also -- like Trump -- got away with a lot when he was at the peak of his popularity. Here's Bieber in 2013:

In a video posted Wednesday by TMZ, a young man the publication identified as Bieber appears to be urinating into the yellow plastic mop bucket as his friends cheer him on.

"That's the coolest spot to p**s, you know, you will forever remember that," someone tells a staffer as the man identified as Bieber is shown from the back. "You're not going to remember him p***in' in the restroom. Everybody does that."

The publication reported Bieber was exiting an unidentified nightclub through the restaurant kitchen at the time.

At the end of the video, the man identified as Bieber is seen spraying a photo of Bill Clinton with a cleaning solvent and saying, "F*** Bill Clinton," the publication reported.

You might even get this way if you're a leading figure in a subculture. I'm thinking about the time when Bradford Cox, the frontman of the acclaimed indie-rock band Deerhunter, responded to a heckler by leading his band in an hour-long version of "My Sharona." About halfway through,

Cox instructed–rather, demanded–that the bewildered crowd take off their clothes and shake their chairs above their heads, all the while shouting “seemingly intoxicated defenses about his art” and simulating felatio. The nightmarish charade reached a screeching, welcomed, and equaling head-scratching end when Cox invited the remaining spectators on stage, triumphantly proclaiming that the show was “the death of folk music and the birth of punk.”

He later told Pitchfork, "I am a terrorist. As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity."

None of this diminished his standing in the indie-rock world, and Deerhunter went on to release three more acclaimed albums before Cox, who's struggled with depression, went into semi-retirement.

When you're a star, they let you do it. And if they let you do it, that means you must still be a star.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY MIGHT LOSE THE OHIO GOVERNOR'S RACE AND THE NEW YORK TIMES SEEMS AFRAID TO SAY WHY

This morning, The New York Times published a story about Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign to become governor of Ohio, which might not succeed, despite Ramaswamy's many advantages.

Almost a year before the May 5 Republican primary, Vivek Ramaswamy, the loquacious billionaire entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, had almost completely cleared the field contending to become Ohio’s next governor. That alone made him the favorite, since a Democrat has not held the office for 15 years.

He has been endorsed by trade unions, farm associations, dozens of county sheriffs and President Trump. He has visited every county in the state, often feted as a celebrity by local Republican leaders. Perhaps most formidably, his campaign and the super PAC backing him have amassed nearly $40 million — a record-breaking sum that does not include the many millions he’s ready to spend from his own pockets.

The only matter remaining is whether a majority of Ohioans will vote for him.

Ohio is a state that has voted for Donald Trump three times. In 2024, Trump won the state by double digits. The current governor, Mike DeWine, won reelection in 2022 by 25 points. So why is Ramaswamy struggling against his likely Democratic oppponent, Amy Acton?

The Times has a few theories:

Perhaps Mr. Ramaswamy’s showing in the polls is simply a function of the current national mood, as rising costs, economic uncertainty and an unpopular war drag down the popularity of the president and his party.

Or perhaps Mr. Ramaswamy, 40, is facing a challenge he faced in his campaign for the presidency in 2024: that his fast-talking self-assurance just rubs some people the wrong way.

And ...? Could some other factor be involved?

This is a 27-paragraph story. Only starting in paragraph 23 are we told this about a primary opponent with the rather on-the-nose name Casey Putsch:

Mr. Putsch rails against data centers, “billionaire tech bros” and foreigners, Indians in particular, who are granted H-1B visas for high-skilled jobs in Ohio. Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Putsch said to his supporters, “is a globalist Trojan horse.”

Mr. Ramaswamy has said he does not think that anti-Indian bias will be much of a factor in his race....

In other words, there's barely a mention in this story of the possibility that Ramaswamy is struggling to close the sale because his ancestry isn't European and his religion isn't Christian. Okay, there's also this:

John Adams, a retired pastor in Erie County who is active in local Republican politics, said that people were still learning about Mr. Ramaswamy. Most everyone knew him as a figure in Mr. Trump’s orbit, but many didn’t know he had grown up in Cincinnati.

“For some folks, I hear them say, ‘Well, he’s an outsider, we really don’t know him very well,’” he said.

Ramaswamy didn't just grow up in Cincinnati -- he was born there. But his parents are Indian immigrants and he's Hindu. Surely that has at least some influence on some voters.

I read this story a day after reading Josh Kovensky's report at Talking Points Memo on Frisco, Texas, a thriving and rapidly expanding city of a quarter million people that's now the focus of right-wingers who fear a "Great Replacement" because of the number of Indians who live there.

But for a coterie of area activists and influencers, the influx of Indians — some on H-1B work visas, others citizens of Indian descent — is a real-life example of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Under that idea, elites are replacing white Americans — sometimes referred to by right-wing activists as “Heritage Americans” — with nonwhite foreigners in a bid to gain political power. That narrative about Frisco has been magnified in recent days by national political figures. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), who represents a district near Frisco, cited the city’s demographic changes during a recent podcast appearance to demand an end to the H-1B worker visa program.

“We’ve got communities like Frisco that have been totally transformed, whether it’s Islamic immigration or immigration from anywhere else in Asia,” Gill said. “I don’t want to hear Muslim calls to prayer in my community. I do not want the caste system socially in the schools that my kids are going to because we’ve had so many people come to the United States who are not assimilating into American culture.”

That would be this Brandon Gill:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Congressman Brandon Gill (@repbrandongill)

(Gill says these things despite the fact that he's married to the daughter of Dinesh D'Souza, a right-winger of Indian descent.)

Kovensky tells us that Steve Bannon is in on the hatemongering, unsurprisingly:

Others, like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, have trained a spotlight on Indians in the city in recent weeks, using a video by political activist Tyler Oliveira depicting Indians in the city to call for “a moratorium of at least 10 years on all immigration” and a “special deal” for American citizens.

Thanks to the flattening effects of the media, I don't imagine there's a huge difference between Texas Republicans and Ohio Republicans on this subject. Ramaswamy is neither an immigrant nor a Muslim, but it seems highly unlikely that most Ohio voters know that. They look at him and see a brown person. I'm sure that's an immediate dealbreaker for quite a few of them.

The campaign against Indians in Frisco takes advantage of the fact that right-wingers will believe anything about people they hate or fear:

One [video], titled “The Muslim and Indian Takeover of Texas” by TPUSA contributor Savanah Hernandez, featured Sara Gonzales recounting an email she received from someone near Frisco describing an Indian couple supposedly inviting a cow into their home before exulting over its urine and feces.

Oh yeah, I'm totally sure that happened.

In 2022, Pew reported that 45% of Americans say that the United States should be a Christian nation. That includes 67% of Republicans and Republican leaners. In this group, 76% believe that the Founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation.

So I think is more of a factor in Ramaswamy's struggles than the Times is letting on.

DID THE NEW YORK TIMES ED BOARD JUST SAY DEMOCRATS SHOULD RUN ON BERNIENOMICS?

The editorial board of The New York Times responds to the victory of Peter Magyar's Tisza Party in Hungary by telling us that Democrats should take notes:

Hungary is obviously a very different country from the United States. But Mr. Orban’s rise and his use of power were long models for Mr. Trump. Now, Mr. Orban’s demise can be a model for the Democratic Party and any other party that is trying to defeat an authoritarian right-wing threat.

How exactly?

First, [Magyar] focused on the bread-and-butter issues that often guide the decisions of swing voters, and not just in Hungary.

And what did he propose?

The campaign platform of the party Mr. Magyar leads, Tisza, was titled “Foundations of a Functional and Humane Hungary.” It criticized the inefficiency of government services. Its agenda included tax cuts for working-class families, expanded health care, increased pensions, larger child benefits and a pay increase for support staff members at schools. It said it would help pay for these programs through both a wealth tax on the very rich and the recovery of European Union transfer payments reduced because of Mr. Orban’s anti-democratic policies.

Yes, you read that correctly: An overseas politician endorsed a wealth tax on billionaires and the ed board of The New York Times said "Bravo!"

What else?

Crucially, Mr. Magyar made corruption a core campaign issue....

On the campaign trail, he linked Mr. Orban’s corruption to Hungarians’ frustration with their stagnant living standards. In his victory speech on Sunday night, Mr. Magyar promised a country where citizens could rely on their government to help provide good medical care, a decent family life and a dignified retirement. What should matter, he said, was not political connections but the kind of person somebody was.

So you're saying that Magyar denounced oligarchy? You mean, like these guys?

Obviously, this can't be mainstream political commentary without a swipe at the left. It's a familiar one:

The second lesson may be harder for Democrats — and center-left parties in Europe — to absorb. Mr. Magyar, who identifies as center right, won partly by avoiding the social progressivism that dominates elite left-leaning circles and alienates many voters. He ran as an economic progressive and a cultural moderate if not conservative.

And what are some of the things he said and did that the dogmatic lefties in America's Democratic Party won't do?

He used patriotic symbols like the flag....

Have you seen the invocations of the flag, the Statue of Liberty, and the Constitution at No Kings rallies?

He campaigned in rural areas that Mr. Orban’s previous challengers had overlooked.

Many Democratic politicians don't do this, but do any Democrats object to it? Hell, even Chuck Schumer visits every county in New York State annually, even the red ones.

He declined to attend a Pride march in Budapest, making it harder for Mr. Orban to paint him as captive to L.G.B.T.Q. activists.

Okay, now we're talking: The Times ed board wants us to understand that Magyar's party won in part by throwing LGBTQ people under the bus. But some 2028 Democratic aspirants are already throwing trans people under the bus, and it's not helping them break from the pack. Note that J.D. Vance beat Gavin Newsom in a recent UMass-Lowell/YouGov poll.

On immigration, which has shaped recent elections around the world, Mr. Magyar called for even tighter restrictions than the Orban had government imposed. He said he would keep a border fence, repeal a guest-worker program and allow no guest workers from outside the European Union.

This is a tougher one. Polls show that Americans don't like the heavy-handed and brutal way Trump is handling immigration, but they're in favor of at least some deportations. I think Democrats could start reframing the issue by saying that Americans want immigrant criminals prioritized for deportation, and the Trump administration has prioritized the most law-abiding immigrants, because it's easier and less dangerous to round them up. Democrats can also talk about an immigration system that prioritizes the rule of law rather than warfare in the streets.

The implication of this editorial is that Democrats lost in 2024 because they didn't campaign this way. But to a large extent they did. Kamala Harris didn't campaign on social issues. Democrats had supported an immigration reform bill that accepted many of the GOP's ideas. And it didn't help.

But in the area of economics, Democrats campaigned on incremental change. Would a platform of serious economic populism have changed the outcome?

The Times ed board seems to be implying as much. Okay, fine -- let's try that.

NO, THAT TRUMP-AS-JESUS POST ISN'T CAUSING THE BASE TO TURN ON HIM (updated)

Last night, President Trump wrote a Truth Social screed denouncing Pope Leo, who has now joined the many others living rent-free in Trump's head because he's criticized the war in Iran and has chosen to spend this Fourth of July greeting immigrants on an Italian island after turning down an invitation to attend Trump's own vainglorious Independence Day festivities, while also spreading word that he might avoid the United States altogether while Trump is president.

The New York Times summarizes Trump's post:

“Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise,” Mr. Trump wrote in a lengthy social media post on Sunday night. “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

When he sent the post, the president was fresh off a weekend of attending a mixed martial arts fight in Miami and spending time with supporters at his golf club after negotiations with Iran had failed. He criticized Leo as “weak on crime” — an insult he usually reserves for Democratic mayors — and “terrible for foreign policy.” He said that he much preferred the pope’s brother Louis because of his support for the MAGA movement — “He gets it!” Mr. Trump wrote. The president also accused the pope of “catering to the radical left” and then offered a piece of advice, to “focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”

This story has left much of the liberal social media community angry at the Times, for some reason.

Pro-Trump media bias: frame world events as a reality show with Trump as protagonist. As @larryglickman.bsky.social explains, it’s absurd to cast the Pope saying war is bad as a “punch” Trump is responding to. But also, he didn’t take any action. He just said words nonsensically insulting the Pope.

[image or embed]

— Nicholas Grossman (@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social) April 13, 2026 at 8:08 AM

It's not a counterpunch, guys. The pope didn't throw a punch. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/u...

[image or embed]

— Will Saletan (@saletan.bsky.social) April 13, 2026 at 7:52 AM

No, "counterpunch" is fine. As I noted above, Leo threw a punch. In fact, he threw several punches. And good for him. It's clear from Trump's howls of pain that the punches landed.

Trump followed that Truth Social post with a bit of blasphemy.

The Washington Post claims that this post is getting Trump in trouble with his Christian allies:

... the image evoking Jesus drew swift criticism from some evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics who have otherwise expressed near constant support for Trump’s decisions.

So he's losing right-wing Evangelicals and Catholics? Nahhh. He's losing right-wing Christian commentators, just the way he lost some right-wing commentators (Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones) by going into Iran.

So, sure, some prominent commentators with seven-figure X followings are angry at Trump:

Michael Knowles, [a] conservative Catholic podcaster aligned with Trump, said online it “behooves the President both spiritually and politically to delete the picture, no matter the intent.”

Riley Gaines, a conservative podcaster, former collegiate swimmer and prominent critic of transgender participation in women’s sports who spoke at Trump rallies and was recently a guest at the White House, also criticized the post. “I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this? Either way, two things are true,” Gaines wrote on X, continuing to say that “a little humility would serve him well” and “God shall not be mocked” — a reference to scripture.

But what were the responses to these tweets? Most look like these responses to Knowles:

The Pope is inserting himself into anti-Trump globalist politics. Trump's sharing a picture someone made for him. Trump values our freedom of speech. If anyone earned the right to speak his mind it's Trump. I'm tired of people judging the man. Let Trump be Trump. Chill out folks!

— DAMON (@DamonLatigid) April 13, 2026

No. Hell no.
Trump posted a stylized AI image that triggered every fake Christian and regime apparatchik into meltdown mode. It exposed the pearl-clutchers who cheer baby killing while screaming blasphemy over a troll. It forced the selective peacemaker Pope and Iranian mullahs…

— MAG🔫1775🇺🇸 (@realMAG1775) April 13, 2026

The WOKE Pope meet with David Axelrod and the next day he attacked president Trump

This was coordinated and of course the Panican's like you fall for it

Go cry about it with Megyn Kelly pic.twitter.com/O6UxqYHflc

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) April 13, 2026

Hey if Pope Leo wants to jump in the ring with a boxer...

Yes, I'm Catholic. And I'm disappointed by the leftist politics and open border/globohomo agenda pouring forth from the last two papacies.

— Jess Hettig (@Grotto_NH) April 13, 2026

And in response to Gaines:

This was a meme shared by a reverend on X back in February. The Reverend stated that America has been sick for a long time and that God was using Trump as a vessel to heal the country. This is not Trump mocking God. if you all would just calm your panties down for five minutes…

— Tracey Patrick (@grl_fit) April 13, 2026

Maybe he’s saying he feels lead by God in all he does.

Or maybe he is telling the Pope “you do your job and I’ll do mine!”

Either way, he’s got us talking about it. I’m not offended. I’m offended by a pope who wants to run our country while leading his faith to woke leftness,…

— Wendy0027 (@Wendy00271) April 13, 2026

President Trump is the most pro Christian president we’ve had in the last half century.

He isn’t mocking God, he’s showing how God works through him. I can’t believe you’d parrot the democrat’s talking points. pic.twitter.com/71bJkQ6eui

— Joey FAFO (@JoeyFAFO_JK) April 13, 2026

Somebody is always asshurt about what Trump does get the Fck over it pic.twitter.com/aLSUQrKhjc

— MAGA🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@Dale45899684) April 13, 2026

There are replies that are critical of Trump, but it's all but certain that the vast majority of Trump supporters will just mentally rewrite their standards about what's acceptable to include this image. They'll shrug this off the way they shrug off everything else Trump does that violates their beliefs.

*****

UPDATE: He took it down.

“I did post it. I thought it was me as a doctor,” Trump told reporters at the White House, denying claims he was meant to appear as Jesus.

“It was supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better,” he said.

He took down the Obamas-as-apes post a few weeks ago, but the post didn't cause his base to turn on him, and this won't either.

*****

UPDATE: Trump insulted Riley Gaines:

Trump ... gave a phone interview to CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell in which he was asked whether the objection raised by Gaines, a prominent voice in his administration’s efforts to ban transgender competitors from women’s sports, had influenced his decision to hit delete.

“I didn’t listen to Riley Gaines,” the president answered. “I’m not a big fan of Riley, actually.”

And now she's staying in the MAGA tent.