THE FANTASY WORLD TRUMP SEEMS TO LIVE IN WAS CREATED BY FOX NEWS

President Trump was just interviewed by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump for Fox News. One of Trump's claims in the interview has been contradicted by ... Trump himself:

One reason people would be surprised to hear that Trump has left Iran’s “military alone” is that earlier this month Trump said he had “completely destroyed Iran’s army,” and that “every single ship they had is resting underwater at the bottom of the sea.”

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) May 31, 2026 at 6:27 AM

You might say he's sundowning, but I'm reminded of what Mark Cuban said about Trump back in 2015:

“He’s like that guy who’s going into a bar and he’ll say whatever it takes to get laid. Only in this case he’s not trying to f*** some girl, he’s trying to f*** the country.”

A few weeks ago, when Trump said he'd "completely destroyed Iran's army," he was trying to impress us with his display of manly force. Now, when he says he hasn't destroyed Iran's army but implies that he could destroy it any time he wants to, he's acknowledging the fact that we can all see Iran is still fighting, so he needs us to believe that this is only because he hasn't gotten really mad yet.

But there are other falsehoods in the interview that just seem delusional.

Trump: "California's elections are a fraud"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 30, 2026 at 9:24 PM

It's not just the suggestion in this clip that California could go red if it weren't for all the (imaginary) voter fraud. (Trump has been saying that since his first term.) It's also this claim about fraud in government programs:

On the economic standpoint, if we find half of the fraud that's going on in this country -- and we will -- we're gonna have a balanced budget very soon.

Trump said this in his State of the Union address earlier that year. (“If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.”) Stephen Miller also made this claim in late May, and Trump subsequently repeated it.

Stephen Miller: "Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 26, 2026 at 2:32 PM

Trump claims preposterously that if Vance does a good enough job rooting out fraud, "we'll have a balanced budget without having to do anything. This is the kind of money they stole. I hope Todd is gonna do a real job."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 27, 2026 at 12:08 PM

This is false, of course:

It is implausible that eliminating all fraud in government programs would balance the federal budget. The federal deficit was $1.8 trillion in 2025. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government lost $233 billion to $521 billion to fraud annually, including schemes that were undetected. Eliminating all fraud in government programs across the country would reduce the federal deficit by a third.

Stephen Miller, who's not stupid, knows this is false, but he says it anyway. Trump, who is stupid, apparently believes this is true.

From the beginning of his career in business, Donald Trump openly admitted to shading the truth. This is a quote from Trump's first book, The Art of the Deal:

I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

But when Trump was a businessman, he had to live in a world where other people disagreed with his grandiose claims -- bankers, politicians, journalists (though not enough of them), the buying public. However, when he discovered Fox News, he entered a world where truth is subservient to narrative. Trump subsequently took over the political party that uses Fox as its media wing, and now Fox, along with the rest of the right-wing media, is subservient to his narrative.

Long before there was a Trump cult, there was a Fox News cult, which persists to this day. The cult members think anything that contradicts what they're told by Fox is a lie. The cult leaders -- Fox prime-time hosts -- tell the cultists that every Democrat is a communist and a jihadist sympathizer hell-bent on destroying America with debt, crime, multiculturism, and transgenderism. The leaders say that every undocumented immigrant and asylum-seeker is immediately registered as a Democratic voter upon crossing the border -- or was until Sheriff Trump showed up. It's one lie after another, and millions of Americans believe them all.

Fox hasn't been alone in this, of course. Talk radio hosts were cult leaders too, and podcasters are leaders now. QAnon and health conspiratorialists also built the narrative of the cult, as did sites like Breitbart and the Daily Wire.

Trump is a cult member as well as a leader. Many of the delusional things he says are things he "learned" from Fox. And when he tells his own lies, no one in the cult will contradict them. The cult affirms his greatness:

Lara Trump to her father in law: "Obviously, you have set the country up so perfectly to make life more affordable on the other side of the Iran conflict. What is your message?"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 30, 2026 at 9:25 PM

It's possible that Trump utters more falsehoods now because his aging brain can't distinguish the truth anymore -- but I think his problem is that he lives in the hermetically sealed information bubble of the right-wing media, which affirms his delusions and feeds him additional delusions to believe.

So I still believe it's not dementia that's rotting Trump's brain. It's Fox.

REPUBLICANS ARE EXTREMIST WEIRDOS AND DEMOCRATS SHOULD SAY THAT EVERY DAY

If you're wondering what will happen to the Republican Party when Donald Trump leaves the scene, the answer is obvious: It will continue to be what it is now -- a party dominated by extremist weirdos.

Sometimes the extremist weirdness is merely ridiculous. We all know that Republicans are accusing James Talarico, the Democrats' Senate nominee in Texas, of having low testosterone and being secretly transgender. But Utah senator Mike Lee decided that those smears weren't weird enough, so he went here:

James Talarico will put you first

On the altar to Moloch https://t.co/V5So901u9g pic.twitter.com/pZfTcq07VX

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 28, 2026

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee recently likened Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico to a child-sacrificing worshipper of the ancient god Moloch....

Lee's post was accompanied by an AI-animated video of an 1800s illustration of Moloch surrounded by flames and worshippers offering him a baby.

Moloch is “a Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and is mentioned in the Old Testament as an example of the polytheistic gods that the Hebrew God forbade Moses and his followers from worshipping.

In more recent years, far-right conspiracy propagators have alleged that global political and business elites worship Moloch in secret and enact policies to appease the sadistic deity.

The only thing stupider than this attack is the likelihood that hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Republican voters find the Moloch conspiracy theory completely believable.

Sometimes the extremists are more menacing. This week a former Trumpworld hero, Greg Bovino, traveled to Portugal to speak at RESUM26, a conference on "remigration" of immigrants (legal and otherwise), and also of "Non assimilated naturalized migrants in paralell [sic] societies." As anti-fascist researcher Jeff Tischauser notes, Bovino shared the stage "with no fewer than five people who idolize Hitler, including one who joined a group created by two Nazi SS members. Another guy is a self-described racist who refers to women as 'cockroaches.'" (You can read more about the "cockroaches" guy, Afonso Gonçalves, here.)

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A post shared by Remigration Summit (@remigrationsummit)

Bovino also gave an interview to the white nationalist VoxEuropa Herald in which he made his white nationalist allegiances clear.

In his interview with a white supremacist blog, disgraced former-CBP officer Greg Bovino also said he supports the neo-Nazi AfD party in Germany. 2/3 More on AfD from @globalextremism.bsky.social here: globalextremism.org/post/ein-pro...

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— Jeff Tischauser (@jtischauser.bsky.social) May 28, 2026 at 12:22 PM

In the interview, Bovino goes on to say:

Your daughters are being raped and your sons killed in Europe by aliens just like here in the United States. Same problem over different geographic regions. Why not unite and solve this problem once and for all worldwide?

A final solution, you might say.

Another proud Republican hatemonger is the lieutenant governor of Indiana.

Indiana's lieutenant governor is facing criticism from Muslim advocacy groups after comments he made about Islam during a Christian talk show appearance.

... Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith appeared on the Christian talk show "Flashpoint" on May 21. Around the 43-minute mark in the video, he expressed his hatred for Islam, saying they have "radical, jihadi mindsets."

"I am going to call on others to hate it because I hate Islam," Beckwith said. "It is a death cult. Now, I love Muslims, because they make great Christians when Jesus gets a hold of them. But I hate Islam. And we need to be OK with hating again."

But not every Republicans is a proud hatemonger. Some are just performative macho whackjobs.

Consider Colorado gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx:

The self-described “high-risk missionary” recently sat for an interview with 9News’ Kyle Clark where, among other things, he:

* Claimed to have been forced to kill a man at age 7.

*Got upset at Clark for asking if he’s killed people as an adult.

* Took credit for helping rescue 43 missing children in Florida, yet could offer no proof of that, nor of rescuing more than 45,000 women and children ― which he’s also previously asserted before removing the claim from his campaign website.

* Declined to address a claim that, as a civilian, he once called in a military airstrike that killed 70 fighters from the Islamic State group.

And here's my favorite:

* Told Clark how he performs exorcisms over the phone.

Victor Marx performs exorcisms, commanding demons to be cast off.

Marx says he doesn't charge for exorcisms but instructions appeared in a $99 Spiritual Warfare Guide on his website.

"Do you understand why so many of your critics think you're a con man," I asked.

"No," he said pic.twitter.com/4fEnISBVGy

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) May 28, 2026

In the only available poll of the Republican primary, Marx leads his nearest rival by 29 points and has a +32 net favorability rating. Marx has been endorsed, unsurprisingly, by Ted Nugent, Mike Flynn, and Lauren Boebert.

And that's just from the past few days.

This is who Republicans are. They hate everyone who doesn't worship like them or eat like them or enjoy the sports and vehicles they prefer. They hate whoever doesn't live like them in every way. Many of them claim to be superheroes cleansing the world of evil, but they're usually lying or fantasizing, or their voters are fantasizing on their behalf -- see every AI image and video of a buff, youthful Donald Trump conquering his enemies without breaking a sweat.

I'm old enough to remember that even at the height of Ronald Reagan's popularity, his religious-right allies became objects of mockery for being slimy, finger-wagging, money-grubbing moral hypocrites. They alienated much of America, including many people in flyover states who weren't liberal but had no use for their moral rigidity and sanctimoniousness. Also, their public displays of wealth were ridiculous and tacky.

Democrats should describe the current crop of Republicans as extreme weirdos because that's what they are. Millions of normal people don't want to hate everyone who's unlike them and don't want leaders who have chest-thumping delusions of masculine grandeur. Tim Walz was saying the right thing about Republicans in 2024 before the consultants persuaded him to stop.

DONALD TRUMP COULD BE CHARLES FOSTER KANE

In the opening monologue of his latest podcast, Ezra Klein tells us that he has a theory: that President Trump doesn't want to help Republicans win the midterms, and might be happier if they lose.

My pet theory right now is that President Trump is not trying to win the midterm elections. I’m not saying he’s trying to lose them, exactly. I just don’t think he cares.

What he cares about is controlling the Republican Party. The Republican Party is his power base. The Republican Party is his protection. The Republican Party is how he can wield power far into the future, long after his presidency, and so control of it is what he’s prioritizing.

Klein gives us the conventional wisdom about how a president helps his party in midterm elections.

Well, if he wanted to win the midterms, he’d be moving to the center. He’d be focusing on the things that Americans are angry about, disappointed in him about. He’d be supporting the strongest Republicans in contested races and doing everything he could to bolster Republicans in vulnerable states and districts.

He’s not doing even a little bit of that. Instead, he’s doing the opposite.

Klein's theory is that Trump is attacking electable Republicans who have challenged him because he cares more about keeping Republicans loyal than about winning the midterms.

He fears a Republican Party in which members of Congress begin to participate in the investigations of his scandals or they abandon him as his fortunes fall. And so he’s made his choice. He is showing them that to oppose him, even from the right, is to light your political future on fire.

I think there's something to that -- if Republicans ever join Democrats in taking on Trump, he's vulnerable. (That will never happen, of course.) But this doesn't explain why Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race -- neither one was likely to break with Trump. It doesn't explain why Trump is pursuing staggeringly unpopular policies -- tariffs, public displays of self-aggrandizement, the war in Iran.

And, as Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist, reminds Klein on the podcast, Trump is obviously doing quite a few things that will help Republicans in the midterms, or that he thinks will help them. He's demanding pro-GOP gerrymanders. He's pushing for the SAVE Act.

What's my theory?

I think Trump believes he won two elections -- actually, he thinks he won three -- despite saying and doing things that were supposed to doom his campaigns, and he's smarter than the pundits and consultants and is doing what it takes to win, even though his genius is going unrecognized. Part of him undoubtedly believes that the polls are fake news and Americans really love him. I think he believes that the tariffs are a brilliant idea, that he really is the one president who can conquer nations that bedeviled previous presidents (Iran, Cuba), and that the public likes his tasteless self-glorification.

But I think he knows the polls are bad for Republicans, and he can't dismiss those polls outright. I think he understands that the GOP might get shellacked. Klein thinks Trump might prefer that outcome starting in 2027.

A Democratic-controlled Congress gives him an enemy to fight. I think he gets a little lost without an enemy. It frees him from the tedious work of trying to pass legislation. It puts him back in the place he’s most comfortable, which is not wielding power; it’s claiming persecution.

But I think he's looking forward to claiming persecution long before the next Congress is seated. If Democrats are winning, he'll say the elections were rigged right away, and he won't stop. We could have a "stop the steal" period between November and January -- and probably beyone January -- that's even more dangerous and divisive than the one we had in 2024. This time, Trump's entire administration will participate, particularly the Justice Department. And ordinary Trump cultists will participate fully expecting that the law won't touch them. (Trump will explicitly offer them preemptive pardons.)

The movement could fail. The courts are likely to affirm Democratic wins. And public opinion won't be on Trump's side.

But this could give Trump the best of both worlds: the enemy party running Congress and a Republican narrative asserting that he actually led his party to victory.

Trump could be Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane -- the newspaperman who failed in a bid to become governor, and ran a paper that was ready for victory or defeat:

CAN JAMES TALARICO AVOID BEING DUKAKISED?

I'm watching the Republican campaign against James Talarico in Texas and I'm having flashbacks to 1988. That year, a decent, non-macho Democrat named Michael Dukakis, who was the governor of Massachusetts, tried to win a presidential election saying things like this:

... this election is not about ideology. It's about competence.

... It's about American values. Old-fashioned values like accountability and responsibility and respect for the truth.

The 1988 election wasn't about ideology or competence. It was about one thing: Do you believe Michael Dukakis is a dangerous freak? That was the question Republicans had Americans asking themselves, whether they recognized it or not.

Republicans portrayed Dukakis as a freak in part because he wasn't tall or manly and because he didn't look good in the helmet he wore while riding a tank in a campaign photo op. Republicans portrayed him as dangerous because a criminal named Willie Horton who was released on a furlough program on Dukakis's watch committed a violent assault, something that wasn't unique to the furlough programs that had been established at that time by every state and the federal government. Republicans also portrayed Dukakis as dangerous because in 1977 he'd vetoed a bill requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance, a mandate that had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court a couple of decades earlier; because he opposed the death penalty; and because he was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The attacks on Talarico feel similar to these attacks on Dukakis because, in both cases, positions that seem reasonable in more liberal and tolerant parts of America are easy to portray as bizarre and civilization-threatening in conservative America.

The first general election ad from Talarico's opponent, Ken Paxton unloads nearly everything Republicans have got on Talarico:



It's all cultural -- there really isn't anything here about policy. What doesn't make the cut in this ad shows up in the messaging of Paxton's surrogates:

What the hell is he eating?

It’s not BBQ—because Talarico is passionately anti-meat.

Is that a tofu log? https://t.co/J9Uvch1RY7

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 27, 2026

(Talarico isn't vegan, though he said during his 2022 state senate bid that he was running a "non-meat campaign.")

It's a huge problem for the Democrat Party that you take one look at the men they run for elected office and just know that they couldn't name a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s. https://t.co/fKmt8jhUoL

— Dan Weldon for Congress (FL-14) (@TampaDan) May 27, 2026

(Yes, this is how we decide who runs the most powerful country in the world.)

Watters: Talarico is also 37 and not married. He says he has a girlfriend. He called her his best friend. He’s not revealing her identity because he wants to protect her privacy. Why haven’t we ever seen her before? Does she exist? If he wins, are they going to have a coming out… pic.twitter.com/yFskJ7tcsm

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 27, 2026

It's middle school gay-baiting, but it might work. And Stephen Miller took it a step further, describing Talarico as the Democrats' "first transgender senate candidate." The party, to its credit, responded quickly and vulgarly -- "shut up you ugly fuck" -- but I think Marisa Kabas is right:

as much as i appreciate the democrats responding with vigor for once, the fact that republicans are using "transgender" as a slur for a political candidate is fucking horrifying and dems need to quickly figure out a way to address it head on. calling stephen miller ugly isn't a long-term fix.

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 27, 2026 at 2:29 PM

Over the course of my lifetime, there's been a significant positive change in how non-gay Americans see gay people, but I don't see any sign that we're approaching a day when the majority of cis Americans will be similarly at ease with trans people, or at least accepting of their rights. Talarico is a trans ally, and he might not be able to win a Texas election for that reason alone.

One big difference between Talarico and Dukakis is that Talarico appears to understand the assignment. Unlike Dukakis (and John Kerry sixteen years later), he's not ignoring the GOP's most vicious attacks and hoping they'll just go away. This is from a new CBS interview:

Pressed on a comment he made that God is nonbinary, Talarico said he was being "intentionally provocative," but added that "what it means is that God can't be defined by human categories." On his comments about gender, Talarico said "I know there are two sexes, men and women. I also know there's a very small percentage of people who have these chromosomal abnormalities, and I believe they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect."

Asked by O'Keefe about the criticism surrounding his diet, Talarico said he is not a vegan, noting that he's an eighth-generation Texan who's "been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment."

(Talarico, as you can see in the Paxton ad above, has said that there are six biological genders.)

Talarico, by taking these attacks head-on, might remain competitive in the race, but I wonder if he can really neutralize them. This campaign should be about Ken Paxton's criminality and moral failings, about Donald Trump's incompetence and corruption, and about the Republican Party's failure to make life better for ordinary Americans. But I don't think it will be about that. I fear it will be about whether the Democrat is a big old weirdo. Talarico might win anyway, but he'll have to win on the GOP's turf.

IN TEXAS, DEMOCRATS DIDN'T VOTE FOR THE CRAZIEST S.O.B. (D.O.B.) IN THE RACE

You know about the big headline from Texas last night: Not only did highly corrupt extremist and Donald Trump endorsee Ken Paxton beat incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary runoff, he trounced Cornyn, winning by a 64%-36% margin. Paxton appears to have won all but 2 of Texas's 254 counties.

And that's not the only Texas race in which extremism seems to have prevailed. Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo reports:

The Republican primary runoff ran for the open Texas Railroad Commissioner position was too close to call as of Wednesday morning, with extremist candidate Bo French leading the incumbent by less than 15,000 votes, according to the Associated Press’ unofficial tally of returns....

French waged an eye-popping campaign for the seat on a platform that had little to do with the actual work of the office, supporting the deportation of 100 million people and railing against what he described as the “Islamification” of Texas.

As Kovensky previously reported, French

largely campaigned on culture war intangibles, like cleansing Texas’ oil sector of Islam, fighting DEI, and deporting 100 million people. While chair of the Tarrant County GOP last year, French earned condemnation from fellow Texas Republicans for posting a poll that asked whether Jews or Muslims posed a greater threat to the United States....

He’s called Muslims “savages” and demanded their deportation; he’s said that Texas mosques are “training centers” for an “ideology” of people who “get to rape your wife and daughter.” ...

When the city of Corpus Christi began to run out of water this year, French pinned the blame on a nearby plastics factory, which is majority-owned by the Saudi government. French played that up. In a recent runoff campaign ad, French attacked Wright, accusing his opponent of selling the city’s water to a “Muslim foreign government” and claiming a Delaware court had caught the plastics company trying to “enact Sharia law in America.”

“Do you really want a commissioner who would sell out his own neighbors to a Muslim government? I don’t,” he concluded.

A couple of days ago, I quoted a 2017 observation by Thomas Massie, the libertarian Kentucky congressman who's now a lame duck because he crossed Trump. Massie talked about voters who backed Trump in 2016 after previously supporting him and fellow libertarians Ron and Rand Paul.

"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."

In yesterday's runoff, Texas Republicans voted for the craziest son of a bitch for both U.S. senator and (apparently) railroad commissioner.

You know who didn't vote for the craziest son of a bitch -- or, rather, daughter of a bitch -- in yesterday runoff? Democratic voters in Texas's 35th congressional district.

Progressive sex therapist Maureen Galindo lost the Democratic runoff for Texas’ 35th District after being accused of antisemitism and facing condemnations from within her own party.

Johnny Garcia’s victory over Galindo on Tuesday has national and Texas Democrats breathing a sigh of relief.

They had moved en masse to disavow Galindo after she said in a recent social media post that she would write legislation to turn a local ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.”

The Instagram post on Galindo's campaign site didn't just call for the imprisonment of Zionists. It said they should be castrated.

Galindo lost the runoff 64%-36% after leading Garcia in the primary by 2 points.

Americans think both parties have an extremism problem. A Pew survey from last year found this:

61% say the phrase “too extreme in its positions” describes the Republican Party very or somewhat well; 57% describe the Democratic Party as too extreme.

But only one party is routinely defined as extreme. In a new Washington Post/ABC poll, respondents were asked to express in their own words what they don't like about the two major parties. For Democrats, the top answer (at 12%) was summarized in the poll as "Too liberal/socialism/race/gender/abortion/crime positions." For Republicans, the top answer was (also at 12%) was "Trump/Loyalty to Trump," while there's no all-encompassing ideological characterization of Republicans. "Lack of concern for ordinary people/cruelty" is at 6%, "Authoritarianism/disregard for rule of law/anti-democracy" and "Racist or anti-diversity politics " are at 4%, but extremism is not front of mind for most voters when they think about Republicans, and there seems to be no Republican equivalent of the W word for Democrats, as used by one survey respondent:

Too woke, focus on issues not central to Americans (economy and jobs).
— California woman, 50s, independent

And there's this:

Gone too far to the left, they are more in line with the communist and socialist parties.
— New York woman, 50s, independent

In reality, hardly any viable Democratic candidates are extreme in the way that Bo French and Ken Paxton are, and Democrats aren't accepting of unrepentant hatemongers, while Republicans increasingly embrace them. But the public still doesn't see that.

THAT CONSENT WON'T MANUFACTURE ITSELF

Paul Krugman struggles to understand the culture of flattery that surrounds President Trump:

On Memorial Day the New York Times published an article with the headline “Trump is the only person who can save America, according to his cabinet.” The article offered a quantitative analysis of senior-official sycophancy. As the article notes, Donald Trump likes to hold long, televised cabinet meetings. In these meetings, according to the Times,

On average, at least one of every six sentences either flattered Mr. Trump, gave him credit or criticized his political opponents.

Yeah, you know:

And it continues this morning, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tells us that Trump is the only president who's ever worked the phones on a holiday weekend, and is the only president who can get other world leaders to talk to him over a holiday weekend that actually isn't a holiday weekend in their countries:

Burgum: "It's obviously President Trump two moves ahead of his critics as always. Nothing short of aspiration for peace in the Middle East. I mean, who on a Saturday afternoon over a holiday weekend can pull together all of the world leaders from the gulf state allies, get 'em all on a phone call?"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 26, 2026 at 7:44 AM

Obviously, Trump has an off-the-charts need for praise -- he might be the most emotionally needy person who has ever lived. But as Krugman notes, this exaltation of a Republican president is not unprecedented:

The truth is that the right wing attempt to build a cult of personality around a deeply unpresidential figure, while it has reached new levels of absurdity under Trump, isn’t new. Republicans tried to do the same thing for George W. Bush. Remember this?

And readers of a certain age may recall that the right’s canonization of Ronald Reagan began while he was still in office.

Why do Republicans do this? Sure, Democrats sometimes respond to their political heroes as if they're rock stars: Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. But it's more that we find them cool and like the job they're doing. At most, it's fandom, not worship. We don't exalt them. We don't imagine them as royalty, or as gods and goddesses.

I think two things are happening with the Republicans. First, they like traditional hierarchies: women subordinate to men, people subordinate to God. It feels natural for them to conclude that an especially favored president belongs near the top of the great chain of being, as a monarch or a god.

But it's also a way for them to manufacture consent for their party leaders' policies. When they tell us that one of their presidents is worthy of worship, they're trying to make us believe that everyone, or at least everyone normal, supports their leader and their party. They might never have fully succeeded in persuading the public that everyone loves Trump (except perhaps in red states), but they sustained Bush's popularity for years after his post-9/11 popularity spike, and they've created an aura around Reagan that persists after his death. (Even some liberal pundits recall him as a unifying president who was very different from the current crop of divisive GOP culture warriors. In reality, he was one of those divisive GOP culture warriors.)

As Bush's popularity faded, his handlers largely abandoned efforts to manufacture exaltation propaganda. By 2007 and 2008, you weren't very likely to see him positioned in such a way that his head would be framed by an apparent halo, as in a 2003 AP photo, or placed in front of Mount Rushmore, as in a photo from 2002.

With Trump, they're still doing it, even though most of America hates him now. (And unless he salvages the Iran surrender deal soon, I guess most of America will continue to hate him.) I suppose it keeps the base on board, so it's not an entirely wasted exercise for the GOP. And if Trump dies in office, it's groundwork for posthumous sanctification efforts of the kind we saw in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death.

If Trump dies soon, I don't think the general public will respond the way Republicans hope. But the base will never stray. Trump will never be Richard Nixon, a president nearly everyone now agrees was justifiably driven from office. We'll never have universal agreement on Trump's awfulness.

DON'T BE SO SURE THAT TRUMP'S IRAN SURRENDER WILL BE A LOSS FOR HIM

In The Atlantic, David Frum declares that President Trump lost his war with Iran, and lists the reasons why. One reason, Frum writes, is this:

Trump is reckless. Trump is not a plan-ahead guy. He plunges into desperate adventures without any clear endgame in mind. What really was Trump’s plan on January 6, 2021? After Mike Pence was seized by rioters and forced at gunpoint to recite the magic words Trump wanted him to say, what was supposed to happen then? The 81 million American majority who’d voted against Trump in 2020 would submit? The military, CIA, and FBI would follow blatantly illegal orders? In 2021, Trump provoked violence and hoped it would all somehow work out. He followed the same approach again in 2026.

This got me thinking: Did Trump really fail on January 6?

I don't know what Trump's plan was, but at minimum it was to save face. Trump wanted to be perceived as someone who went down fighting (even though he left the fighting to his followers, the way the owner of a resort might ask the help to tidy up the rose bushes). In that sense, he got what he wanted.

But I think it can be argued that January 6 was a success for Trump -- just not right away. During the "stop the steal" period after the 2020 election, Trump turned an electoral defeat into a Lost Cause. He persuaded millions of Americans that he was the legitimate winner. Then he dodged accountability -- he wasn't arrested, he wasn't convicted after impeachment, and he wasn't successfully prosecuted. Many of his followers went to prison, but he succeeded in making them martyrs -- martyrs whom ordinary Trump admirers found relatable. In the primaries, it's quite possible that he beat Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and other challengers precisely because of January 6 and "stop the steal." What Republican base voters want most of all is to own the libs. Even a vote for DeSantis, a tireless culture warrior, didn't seem as lib-owning as a vote for Trump, who had persuaded the base that the libs stole the presidency from him.

In the way that historians such as Heather Cox Richardson argue that the South ultimately won the Civil War, I think we can argue that Trump won January 6, even if it took four years for him to collect his winnings.

If fall arrives and Trump's Iran surrender has lowered gas prices to an approximation of where they were before the war, while he's persuading gullible rubes that he saved America from an imminent Iranian nuclear attack, then he might ultimately win this time, too. Maybe the outcome would change if Democrats were willing to compare and contrast Trump's deal with the nuclear deal negotiated during Barack Obama's presidency, which cost America nothing in blood and treasure -- but apart from Obama himself, Democrats have never been willing to defend that deal, much less boast about it.

So at the very least, I think Trump will emerge from this debacle in better shape than he's been for the past three months.