I DON'T THINK TRUMP KNOWS WHETHER HE INTENDS TO STAY IN THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HIS TERM ENDS

At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Paul Campos writes:

It remains possible that Trump and the GOP will lose a wave election 75 days from now, and he and his minions won’t have the necessary coherence and organizational discipline to seriously contest that, and he will decide to give up on his current plans to stay in office after 1/20/2029, and King Leer will crawl unburdened towards death. I admit this is possible: I think it’s unlikely.

In short, I think we’re in a disjunctive, paradigm-shifting political and cultural situation, and that Trump does not intend to leave office, or to recognize the results of elections he loses, and that instead he and his inner circle intend to overthrow the current political system with some sort of authoritarian “managed democracy,” that retains the trappings of the old system superficially, but replaces it with a functional one-party state. I don’t know, of course, whether they can manage to succeed in this ambition, but I do believe it is their actual plan, on the basis of their words and deeds, both since 1/20/2025, and most particularly since 1/6/2021....

I don't think we should be talking about "[Trump] and his inner circle" as if they're having the same thoughts about the future. I believe that J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, and possibly Pete Hegseth and some other Trump insiders are expecting a normal election cycle in 2028, and their plan is to win the presidency, not to overthrow our constitutional system. Whether any of them intend to overthrow or undermine that system after winning is a different question, of course. But on the subject of 2028, I don't think they want Trump to lead the government for the rest of his life. They want to take over.

You'll argue that other insiders will be afraid of the consequences of elections, and will want the Trump administration to continue forever. I think they know that a Democratic victory probably won't lead to the "Nuremberg trials" so many ordinary liberals and progressives dream of -- Democrats are just too feckless -- and they also know that a Republican really could win an election in 2028 despite the extreme unpopularity of Trump. They assume that electing a Republican successor will ensure their safety from prosecution for at least four years, and permanently quash any momentum an accountability movement might have.

I believe the possible Trump successors might very well move us in the direction of "managed democracy," simply because they don't believe in genuine democracy as long as Democrats can sometimes win elections. They'll do it because they think Republicans should rule forever, not primarily to extend the rule of Trumpism specifically.

I don't believe Trump thinks in those structural terms. He cares only about himself and his family, and he cares about his family only to the extent that he sees the money his family makes as his money.

I believe this, but I also believe Trump might refuse to leave office on January 20, 2029. I don't think he has a plan yet. I think he's keeping his options open.

Trump isn't very good at planning. On some level, I think he knows this. Look at how he's approaching the 2026 midterms: he's trying to subvert them in advance, but in ways that probably won't be effective. Last week we learned that the Trump Justice Department plans to send 1,000 monitors to the polls in the fall. Do you know how many precincts there are in America?

The 2020 survey by the United States Election Assistance Commission found a total of 176,933 precincts or precinct equivalents in the United States, of which 175,441 were in the 50 states plus the District of Columbia and 1,492 were in overseas U.S. territories.

A thousand troops is a wholly inadequate number if you're really planning to subvert democracy. Also:

For Michigan’s primary this month, the Justice Department sent monitors to four Democratic-leaning cities — Detroit, Hamtramck, Lansing and East Lansing. Democrats openly worried that the monitors would interfere with the primary, but state officials said they behaved professionally and did not cause problems.

This is half-assed authoritarianism.

Trump is also trying to prevent the Postal Service from processing mail ballots in states that won't provide the administration with lists of eligible voters, but the administration has lost 21 straight court battles in its effort to get those lists. A capable authoritarian would send armed troops or FBI agents into state capitals to seize that information at gunpoint. Trump hasn't done that.

I have a theory about how authoritarian Trump really is. I think he actually believes in the system, and believes he isn't operating in defiance of the system, his evidence being: Well, the system didn't stop me, so I guess I can do that thing I just did. He's used to the way the law works in the business world: you can cheat someone and get away with it if you can afford better lawyers than the people you're cheating, you can file endless appeals to delay the outcome in a case you're likely to lose, you can wheedle and finagle and wear the system down. Sometimes you lose, but you can fight to the bitter end, blow deadlines when you're required to comply with a court order, and then, finally, comply after you've been given a warning.

When I say that Trump is the worst president we've ever had but not the worst president we will ever have, this is what I mean. In his own way, Trump respects the system. A future authoritarian won't -- J.D. Vance, for instance. See this 2025 Politico story by Ian Ward:

In several instances dating back to the start of his Senate campaign in 2022, the vice president has explicitly said that a second-term Trump should defy the courts — even the U.S. Supreme Court — if they stand in the way of him exercising executive authority in ways he deems fit.

Vance’s most comprehensive statement of this radical position came in an interview I conducted with him in January 2023 for a profile in POLITICO Magazine. During the interview, I referred to comments that he had made on a conservative podcast in 2021 suggesting that Trump, if reelected, should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, [and] every civil servant in the administrative state … and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

I asked Vance if this was still his view.

“Yup,” he responded.

I think Vance, if he were in Trump's position, would declare a massive election-fraud emergency and -- in defiance of the Constitution -- declare that any elections conducted in November will be in defiance of the law, and their outcomes won't be recognized. The courts would declare that he isn't allowed to do this and he'd defy those courts, perhaps even ordering some lower courts disbanded or defunded. Trump won't do that.

What I think he will do is dispute Democratic wins after the fact, citing nonexistent voter fraud, slow ballot counts, and the presence of a trivial number of people on voter rolls who are ineligible as evidence that the midterms were rigged. I think Trumpists in the states will try to help him do this by not certifying elections, and Republicans in Congress will challenge key Democratic wins. I think courts will reject all of this. It will be a mess, and will be horrible for democracy -- once again, the majority of Republican voters will believe they've been cheated rather than outovted.

Even if there's another January 6 -- or multiple January 6 incidents in the states -- Trump will see himself as having operated within the law. In a way, you can't blame him. He'll be able to claim he was acting as a president rather than as a Republican, so, according to the Supreme Court, he won't be subject to criminal prosecution. It won't be possible to get a two-thirds vote to convict him after an impeachment, if there is one. So, he'll think, it was all legal.

That's more or less how I think he'll approach 2028. Trump likes to troll us with "Trump 2028" merchandise, but he also seems to recognize that he can't legally run again -- "the law’s very strong on that," he has said.

I think we'll have a relatively normal 2028 election. I think Trump, fearing consequences after he leaves office but not being a very good planner, will try to tip the scales in the GOP's favor, more or less the way he's doing it now. I doubt that it will be enough to rig the election.

If the Republican nominee wins, Trump will quietly leave office -- any Republican who could win the nomination will be sufficiently pro-Trump to shield him from consequences. But if the Democrat wins, then Trump might decide that his only recourse is to declare fraud and barricade himself in the White House.

That's how I imagine it will go: Trump won't decide on open defiance until a winner is declared, and then he'll create a constitutional crisis only if he thinks he needs to. But who knows?

NATALIE HARP IS A SYMPTOM, NOT THE PROBLEM

Jamelle Bouie thinks the real Natalie Harp scandal isn't the fact that she's a conventionally attractive young blonde who appears to be an aging, doddering president's most trusted aide -- it's the information diet she feeds him.

Bouie quotes a New York Times story by Shawn McCreesh and Maggie Haberman:

As long as Ms. Harp is around, he enjoys an unvetted flow of information, some of it poisonous and counterproductive, at least as far as a number of his other advisers are concerned. She supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes) and provides him with a view from the world outside official Washington, of which he has always been mistrustful.

Bouie writes:

... the reason [the Harp story] matters is that it is further confirmation of one essential fact of the Trump White House: that the president exists in a degraded, chaotic information environment.

He rejects information that is gathered and collected for the purpose of informing him and is highly reliant, instead, on counsel from people who have no incentive to contradict him and every incentive to tell him what he wants to hear or what they want him to hear....

Harp, it appears, is a key part of that. A total devotee, she shapes his world. The result is a chief executive who is detached from the information he needs to avoid disaster, much less successfully govern the country. Accordingly, Trump has neither avoided disaster nor managed to put the country on stable footing. Instead, he is carelessly careening toward catastrophe. So far, it’s only been a matter of luck that we haven’t crashed.

But Trump has always rejected information that contradicted his upbeat viewpoint. He's always wallowed in happy talk. If Harp weren't the one telling him what he wants to hear, it would be someone else.

Remember 2019, when he fired pollsters because they told him he was on his way to losing swing states, and thus the 2020 election, to Joe Biden? That was years before Harp became a Trump aide. Trump did go on to lose that election. However, he subsequently leveraged that election loss to create a stolen election myth that is accepted as truthful, or at least possibly true, by an overwhelming majority of Republican voters. This "lost cause" myth probably won him the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and possibly the election.

No matter what happens, Trump believes that things will work out (at least for him). In a New York Times interview in May, Tucker Carlson recalled a conversation he'd had with Trump about the president's decision to go to war with Iran:

... he said to me, Everything’s going to be OK. Because I was getting overwrought. Don’t do this. The people pushing you to do this hate you. They’re your enemies. This will destroy you. This will gravely harm our country. We’ve got kids. I’m hoping for grandkids. Let’s not go there. And he said, It’s going to be all right, and he said, Do you know how I know that? And I said no, and he said, Because it always is.

In a June Truth Social message about the Iran war's critics, Trump wrote:

But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively “chirping,” at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever. Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - It always does!

This isn't happening because of the influence of one sinister personal assistant. This is who Trump is. He's a lifelong believer in the Power of Positive Thinking.

And to some extent it's understandable. It all has worked out for Trump, more or less. The reason is that he's operated in arenas where people like him get multiple additional opportunities when they screw up.

Our plutocracy, particularly in the post-Reagan era, allows well-off people who fail to keep going until they're not failures anymore. Even when you're a billion dollars in debt, someone will lend you money or provide you with opportunities to recoup. The system is rigged in favor of people who've attained a certain level of wealth -- it's nearly impossible for them to completely fall through the cracks, the way an ordinary person with $20,000 in medical debt might. It's also nearly impossible to beat the rich in a court of law, no matter how illegal or lawsuit-worthy their actions are.

Now Trump operates in another field where the game is rigged for people like him: Republican politics. If you're a Republican with enough voter appeal to win elections and you're a congenital liar, our political culture will keep you afloat even as you continue to lie. Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media will back up your falsehoods -- about election fraud, about the glories of your failed economic policies and failed war, about how evil your enemies are -- and the rest of the media and the opposition party, cowed by decades of Republican ref-working, will never fully challenge you. A supine GOP Congress and a Supreme Court rigged for the Republican Party will let you get away with things no other president was ever allowed to do.

At long last, Trump may have come up against troubles he can't outrun: a dug-in Iranian regime, a bond market that's tired of his economic nonsense, restive voters in a heretofore solidly red heartland.

But until now, Trump's delusional positivism has made a horrible kind of sense. Things always did work out for him. Maybe only now, at age 80, is his luck running out.

SEE THE MEDIA COVERING VANCE AS IF HE'S A NORMAL POLITICIAN FROM A NORMAL ADMINISTRATION

A few months from now, J.D. Vance will announce that he's running for president, despite the fact that he carries an albatross around his neck named Donald Trump. What will the media do when Vance announces? If this New York Times story is any indication, the media will carefully removed the albatross:

Drawing on His Rust Belt Roots, Vance Campaigns for Republicans

Vice President JD Vance traveled to his hometown, Middletown, Ohio, and spoke at a steel factory where his grandfather once worked.

This headline is written as if the second Trump presidency isn't happening, as if the Times is prepared to turn the clock back to the days when Vance was seen as a thoughtful memoirist with many important things to tell coastal liberals about Heartland America.

The story isn't much better.

In his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” JD Vance described a community in crisis.

The steel mill where his grandfather worked for nearly 40 years had been neglected and had endured layoffs in the 1980s, turning his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, into “little more than a relic of American industrial glory.”

“There is a lack of agency here,” Mr. Vance wrote. “A feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.”

On Friday, Mr. Vance returned to his roots with promises of a better future, and plenty of blame to go around.

There are a lot of ways the author of this story, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, could have approached it. He could have said that Vance arrived as an emissary of an administration that's unpopular: Trump won Ohio three times, scoring a double-digit win in 2024, but his approval in the state is now -16 according to Civiqs and -26 according to YouGov. I think that would have been part of the lede if a Democratic VP turned up in a state that had once supported a Democratic president but had largely turned against that president. The word "embattled" would undoubtedly turn up somewhere, as would the fact that the party's gubernatorial and senatorial candidates are struggling in the polls. (A few paragraphs down, we're told, neutrally, that Republican Jon Husted "is trying to hold onto his seat in a race against Sherrod Brown, a former senator from the state.")

We're told two things instead: Vance is still a figure whose backstory is fascinating, and he has many positive things to say about current Republican policies and many negative things to say about Democratic policies, all of which we should take very seriously.

Surrounded by union workers in the factory where his “Papaw” once welded steel, Mr. Vance said politicians of both parties had for decades embraced pro-immigrant and free trade policies that redirected jobs away from places like Middletown. He said the Democratic Party no longer resembled the one his grandfather once supported.

And with an eye on the November midterm elections and his political future, Mr. Vance drew on his Rust Belt roots to persuade voters that President Trump’s tariff and immigration policies would protect factory jobs and revitalize struggling towns.

“The future of our homes and communities is going to be built right here in Middletown,” Mr. Vance said.

This is not reported as a credulaity-straining prediction, one that's completely at odds with Ohioans' lived experience. We're not even told that Trump/Vance policies have failed to revitalize Rust Belt economies so far. It's just our normal political discourse, our normal pre-Trump political discourse -- GOP economic policies good, Democratic economic policies bad, Democrats elitist, Republicans (or at least Trump Republicans) pro-Volk -- and it's presented as if there's no evidence that the policies are failing.

“Who do these Democrats put first? Everyone else,” said Mr. Vance....

“You know who the Trump administration puts first?” Mr. Vance asked. “Americans.”

In answer to that second question, I wish someone had yelled out "Himself."

Kanno-Youngs acknowledges a few wispy gray clouds.

Mr. Trump also campaigned on resurrecting the U.S. manufacturing industry, although his on-again, off-again tariff policies have contributed to rising consumer prices.

They also haven't increased employment in the U.S. manufacturing sector, which has shed 75,000 jobs in Trump's second term, a fact that goes unmentioned here.

And while Mr. Vance blamed immigration for threatening American jobs in the heartland, Ohio’s Republican governor has called the Trump administration’s plans to deport Haitians in the state a “mistake,” arguing that the move would hurt the local economy.

No explanation is given for why Governor Mike DeWine said this. In fact, immigrants such as the Haitians who revitalized the economy in Springfield, Ohio, before Trump and Vance attacked them as pet-eating parasites have provided labor and served as additional consumers buying U.S. goods and services. But every Republican voter "knows" that immigrants do nothing but take, and Vance's rhetoric reinforcing that falsehood is essentially allowed to stand.

Ultimately, we're told:

Whether Mr. Vance is correct about the Trump administration’s investment improving the quality of life in Middletown will not just be key for local residents and Republican prospects in November, but also his own political future. Widely considered a potential heir of the MAGA movement, Mr. Vance and his origin story will only be scrutinized more if he seeks higher office.

Vance's origin story is not relevant to the question of whether Trump's policies are working! But Kanno-Youngs thinks Vance's autobiography is such a solid news peg that he mentions it even here.

As for that improvement in Ohio's quality of life, Vance is quoted telling his audience that it's already happening:

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or it’s all going to happen overnight,” the vice president said. “But in just 18 months, we have seen an explosion of rebuilding in the American heartland.”

We're given this quote, which is utter nonsense, and the story ends. This wild assertion is never fact-checked.

Of course it isn't. Republicans care about the Rust Belt and are generally excellent stewards of the economy has been an unchallenged notion in our political culture since long before Trump entered politics.

Vance is being portrayed here as a man with a fascinating life history, and as an heir to other Republicans who were depicted by the media as normal and rooted in the soil -- Ronald Reagan, even the Bushes. Vance should be struggling to shake off Trump's stink, but here, he's portrayed as if he's fresh as a daisy.

DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE LESS CONCERNED WITH TRUMP'S POLLING FLOOR AND MORE CONCERNED WITH THE REST OF THE GOP'S POLLING FLOOR

Here's a headline at Zeteo:

Trump Advisers Worry He Could ‘Sink to the High 20s’

Asawin Suebsaeng writes:

I have seen a lot of you making the same complaint, and it goes something like this: Donald Trump is such a horrendous U.S. president on so many different personal and policy fronts; I know his poll numbers are garbage right now, but how is it even possible that he’s consistently clinging to more than 30% favorability in the polling? What does a doddering fascist have to do to crack the 20s?

...You’re not the only ones wondering that. Some very well-connected consultants and Trump whisperers are thinking about the scary 20s, too – and they’re not pleased about it.

Trump's numbers have been very bad lately:

“Trump approval falls to 33%, lowest of his presidency, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds,” Reuters reported on Monday....

American Research Group (which doesn’t have the reputation other pollsters do) clocked him at an even 30.

And sure, things could get worse for Trump.

Private polls commissioned by different organizations and arms of the Republican elite “aren’t much better,” I’m told by an operative close to the White House who has knowledge of data causing a sustained bedwetting from much of the party that President Trump is going to drag them down hard in the critically important midterms.

Democrats are overwhelming favorites to win the House, and have a decent shot at winning the Senate. Trump really is dragging his party down for the midterms.

But if Trump's floor could sink to the 20s, a couple of his fellow Republicans surprisingly appear to have a much higher floor, according to a new Emerson poll:

In this poll by Emerson, Pete Buttigieg is +5 on either JD Vance or Marco Rubio; Jon Ossoff is +5 on Vance, +3 on Rubio; Gavin Newsom is +5 on Vance, +2 on Rubio; Kamala Harris is +4 on Vance, -5 on Rubio; AOC is -2 on Vance, -5 on Rubio bluevirginia.us/2026/08/thur...

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— Blue Virginia (@bluevirginia.bsky.social) August 20, 2026 at 10:30 AM

In 2028 matchups against the Democratic Party's A-list, Emerson says that the floor for both J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio is 44%.

Maybe that would be understandable for a Republican governor who'd never worked in the Trump White House, but these are two of the most prominent figures in his administration. Why aren't they in disgrace, too? Why do they have a reasonable chance of winning the presidency two years from now?

Democrats attack Trump, and Democratic candidates attack their own opponents, but Democrats don't attack the Republican Party as a whole. This is one of the consequences.

You can't expect voters to intuit that the disaster of Trumpism is partly Vance and Rubio's fault. More than any other presidency in our lifetime -- or in American history -- the second Trump presidency seems like the work of one person. Every bad decision, every failure, every screwup seems like Trump's fault and Trump's fault alone. Maybe Pete Hegseth seems to share a little bit of the blame on foreign policy, or Stephen Miller and (formerly) Kristi Noem on immigration policy, but Americans appear to believe the failures of Trumpism are overwhelmingly Trump's responsibility. Voters don't even seem to see his top subordinates, in the executive branch or in Congress, as enablers who share the blame.

Obviously, Democrats will try to hang Trump's failures around the necks of Vance and Rubio starting next year, when they announce that they're running. I hope it works. I hope voters don't conclude that they were just helpless observers of a one-man presidency. What's unlikely, this year and in 2028, is a widescale 1932-level rejection of the Republican Party. That leaves the door open for someone in the GOP -- maybe a congressional or gubernatorial Trump loyalist -- to win in 2028 if Vance and Rubio become too toxic. And they clearly aren't too toxic yet.

IN 2028, COULD THE CRAZIEST SON OF A BITCH IN THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL RACE BE ... PETE HEGSETH?

Most people were paying attention to other stories early this week and missed this:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday is traveling to Iowa in his “personal capacity,” the Pentagon said in a statement, further fueling speculation that the former Fox News personality is mulling a run for president at some point.

The visit ... comes five months after Hegseth was scheduled to appear at a political rally and fundraising event with Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), who is running for reelection this year. That trip was postponed after several U.S. troops from Iowa were killed early in the war with Iran.

(Emphasis added.)

Monday's appearance was on behalf of Congressman Nunn, who won in 2022 by just four points and is in a competitive race now. So even though Hegseth has a -22 net approval rating according to recent polls from both Quinnipiac and Marquette, he's popular enough among bubble-dwelling Republicans that Nunn apparently said, "Sure, Pete, come campaign for me. That would be awesome." (Among Republicans, Hegseth's job approval is 79%, according to Quinnipiac.) Previously, in May, Hegseth campaigned for Ed Gallrein, who went on to defeat Thomas Massie in a House primary.

We know that millions of Republicans still think Donald Trump is doing a great job and apparently feel the same way about Hegseth, but is that enough to win him the Republican presidential nomination two years from now? Matt Gertz of Media Matters thinks it's possible:

Hegseth, a bombastic former Fox News weekend host ... may be uniquely attuned to the right's attention economy. He could become the presidential candidate of the right-wing media’s id, running a furious culture war campaign fixated on domestic political enemies that checks all the boxes for authoritarian-minded pundits indifferent to traditional policy issues.

Anti-Muslim. Hegseth ... has decried the “Muslims’ birth rates” in multiple states and fearmongered about the success of Muslim political candidates, warning that “Islamists” are trying “to seed the West with as many Muslims as possible.” ...

Anti-DEI. At Fox, Hegseth was at the forefront of the right’s assault on policy initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.... He’s now put that into practice at the Pentagon....

Anti-press. ... He’s smeared news outlets as unpatriotic for not running headlines like “Iran increasingly desperate,” and mocked and derided individual reporters, even denouncing his former Fox colleague Jennifer Griffin as “the one who misrepresents the most intentionally.” ...

Anti-immigrant. ... “When you import the Third World, you get Third World hierarchy, values, and chaos,” he said in a November 2024 Fox segment.... As defense secretary, he used a speech in France marking the anniversary of D-Day to attack the “invasion” of migrants hitting European beaches, asking, “When will European capitals do something about that invasion?”

Pro-war crimes. ... At the Pentagon, Hegseth [has] carried out operations in the Middle East, Indian Ocean, eastern Pacific Ocean, and Caribbean Sea that experts say could include war crimes....

Pro-Christian nationalism. ... He invited Pastor Doug Wilson, “a self-described Christian nationalist who wants to repeal a woman's right to vote, has defended slavery and believes homosexuality should be a crime,” to give a sermon at the Pentagon earlier this year.

In his Iowa appearance on Monday, Hegseth very calculatedly used a transphobic slur: “At the Department of War, we do training, not trannies.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a transphobic slur while speaking at the Iowa State Fair Monday, where he appeared in support of Republican Rep. Zach Nunn, who is running for a third term in Congress.

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— CNN (@cnn.com) August 19, 2026 at 7:22 PM

Would Hegseth actually win the nomination? After Trump won three times, I don't want to argue that any Republican is too extreme to win. But GOP voters thought Trump was a winner, even after he lost the 2020 election (which, of course, they think he won). Given the Iran debacle, Hegseth will have a hard time making the case for himself as a winner.

But Republicans have a history of nearly nominating failed politicians who toss out a lot of red meat. In 2012, they embraced two such candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, before finally settling on Mitt Romney. Hegseth could be the Gingrich or Santorum of 2028.

If he did win the nomination, I think Hegseth would be easier to beat than Vance or Rubio, because he seems more distasteful, with his hair gel, his tattoos, and his Pentagon's open racism and sexism. If he makes a serious run for president, his history of domestic abuse might finally get the spotlight it deserves, as might the weirdness of his church and its repellent pastor, Doug Wilson:

In one famous passage from his book on marriage, Wilson suggests that sexual violence is women's fault for not being submissive enough. "[T]he sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party," he writes. "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." The alleged failure of women to submit, he continues, leads men to "dream of being rapists," deprived of the "erotic necessity" found in women's submission....

During the election season, he argued that women's suffrage was a mistake and part of "a long, sustained war on the family."

Post-Trump, I'm not ruling out the possibility that Hegseth could win the nomination. I keep returning to something said in 2017 by Thomas Massie, who's a libertarian, and who saw voters supporting Donald Trump after previously supporting Massie and fellow libertarian Ron 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 2028, especially when measured against J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, Hegseth might come off as the craziest son of a bitch in the Republican primary race.

THE LIMITS OF NATALIE

I've been thinking about the Natalie Harp story and the possibility that it's not doing as much damage to Donald Trump as we're all hoping it is.

The main problem with the story is that it suggests two possible realities, which point to two very different views of Trump. One is that Trump is having an affair with a young blonde who's less than half his age. The other is that he's a weak, doddering old man who demands constant reassurances that he's brilliant, at a time when America has real problems and we want the president to be focused on those problems, not on his own delicate ego and waning powers.

One problem with the latter narrative is that, for some reason, Americans have never found it odd that the president is addicted to praise. Many times during his two terms, the president has arranged live broadcasts of meetings in which cabinet secretaries compete to offer Trump the most obsequious compliments. In a more rational country, such orgies of praise would shock the public and drastically lower the president's approval ratings. But while Trump's approval numbers are very low, we know what causes them to decline: high prices, an unwinnable war, a brutal and incompetent crackdown on immigrants and their defenders. Not the praise-orgies. When they happen, they're a one-day story at most. Trump haters notice them, but the rest of the country mostly ignores them.

I think that's because we live in a culture of fandom. We think it's normal to feel tremendous attachment to celebrities (or even fictional universes -- here in Manhattan this week, fans lined up days in advance to get tickets to the new Dune movie in 70mm IMAX). I'm not sure we think this is particularly weird:

Natalie Harp wouldn’t take no for an answer.

It was October 2023, and Donald Trump was due at a New York City courthouse to fight his latest set of legal troubles. But as the motorcade idled outside his Trump Tower residence, staffers confronted a more immediate problem: There wasn’t room for Harp, the hyper-loyal aide whose devotion to Trump had quickly entrenched her within his orbit.

A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.

The episode, which has not been previously reported, served as an encapsulation of the role Harp has carved out in recent years as a constant and intensely dedicated presence at Trump’s side.

If we think it's weird, it's because we'd never express that kind of devotion to Trump -- but many of us might to some other politician or celebrity (or comic universe) we admire more. The stories of Harp's obsessiveness suggest that Trump still has the power to inspire that sort of loyalty, whether or not two of them are romantically involved.

We still think it's embarrassing for a politician to cheat on a spouse -- or, to be precise, to be caught cheating (or, in this case, possibly cheating). That's the reason Jon Ossoff's campaign speech broke through.

But we need to do a lot more work to get the country to understand Ossoff's real point: that the president is indulging himself in golf, corruption, redecorating plans, and the adoring presence of a young aide when he should be doing his job.

And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job; he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

Right now, Democrats should have some message discipline. There should be many Democrats out there reinforcing -- and elaborating on -- Ossoff's message. Since Ossoff is being accused of sexism, maybe some Democratic women could give Ossoff some backup. (Republicans know enough to deploy black party members when one of their number is accused of racism, and women when the charge is sexism.)

It's going to take more than one speech to put across Ossoff's real message: that Trump is extraordinarily bad at his job, and that he isn't even trying to do it well because he sees the job -- and the flattery that goes with it -- primarily as self-care. So lend Jon Ossoff a hand.

HAS JON OSSOFF FOUND THE SWEET SPOT WHERE MALADMINISTRATION MEETS GOSSIP?

Running for reelection in Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff drew blood with this:

Ossoff says that Trump doesn’t want to do his job but wants to “travel with Natalie”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) August 16, 2026 at 6:23 PM

“While the sailors on the [USS Abraham Lincoln] fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” the senator told a crowd at a campaign rally. “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie [Harp] on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

A hit dog will holler:

“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the ever-cantankerous White House communications director, posted on X. “Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.”

“Jon Ossoff is a cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama. Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said on X, launching a homophobic insult at Ossoff.

This is great. Just think: a Democrat is going viral for attacking Republicans, not fellow Democrats. That never happens!

As I said earlier today on Bluesky:

I've often tried to imagine strong anti-Trump, anti-GOP messaging. Whenever I suggest a strong message, someone inevitably responds, "Yeah, but if a Democrat said that, the media wouldn't cover it." The virality of Jon Ossoff's Natalie Harp attack proves that Dems can break through if they try.

— Steve M. (@stevemnomoremister.bsky.social) August 18, 2026 at 6:32 AM

But a couple of things concern me.

First, Ossoff isn't just gossiping -- he's stirring some gossip into a critique of Trump's mismanagement of ... well, everything he's in charge of. Ossoff is talking about sailors who aren't getting the resources they need in a war that every informed person knew should never be started. He's talking about Trump's fixation on monuments and interior decoration (Maggie Haberman has said, "If you looked at a chart of his mindshare ... 70 percent of it would be on his renovations") and the president's professed uninterest in Americans' real problems. He's talking about Trump's corruption and gullibility, as embodied in his acceptance of a plane from Qatar that lacks proper security. And he's talking about Trump's preference for surrounding himself with flatterers, which is where Natalie Harp comes in.

But this risks being reduced to smutty gossip about the possibility that there's something sexual going on between Harp and Trump. Don't get me wrong: that's good. To normal people (by which I mean non-Republicans), this looks like an amour fou, a doddering old man feeling besotted with a young, overly worshipful admirer, whether or not they're actually doing the deed. ("You are all that matters to me," Harp has written to Trump, according to Haberman and Jonathan Swan in their book Regime Change. We're also told that Trump has said, "All of you will go off and make money. She'll never leave me.")

I hope Ossoff's attack on Trump's failure to act like even a minimally competent president sticks, not just the gossip. I hope America is coming for the gossip and staying for the argument that Trump is extraordinarily bad at his job and isn't even trying to do it right. I'll take the sexual ridicule, but I want more.

I also don't want this moment to be exclusively about Ossoff -- his skills, his looks (Ossoff features prominently in an Axios story headlined "Democrats Enter Their Thirst Trap Era"), his potential 2028 presidential camapign. We already have Politico quoting an unnamed Democratic strategist who says that Ossoff looks like presidential timber, but if he's perceived as presidential timber, he might lose his Senate race.

“The moment the national political organization gets a whiff that Jon Ossoff is thinking about running for president is the moment that [the] Senate campaign falls from under him,” said a longtime Democratic strategist.

However: “That doesn’t take away from the fact that ... national leaders, national supporters are paying close attention to a guy who should be ahead by, you know, by one point at the most in a state like Georgia.”

This appears under the headline "Ossoff Just Went Viral Again. That Was Probably the Point: Behind the Viral Moments Is a Candidate Who Is Closely Involved with All Aspects of His Reelection Campaign." NEWSFLASH! Jon Ossoff carefully reads and edits his speeches before delivering them! Must credit Politico!

What we need now is for every Democrat to attack Trump and the Republican Party with the fierceness and wit of Jon Ossoff, or as much of it as they can muster. Ossoff is over the target, but he needs backup. Don't strand him out there.