In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols argues that prominent figures in the Trump White House, particularly the secretary of defense, are doing the opposite of virtue signaling.
The term virtue signaling refers to an annoying moral peacocking that has less to do with politics than with self-gratification. It’s the dinner guest who feels compelled to comment on the climate impact of every course....
But Donald Trump and his administration have embraced the Mirror Universe version of virtue signaling. They’ve pioneered the practice of “vice signaling,” or saying insulting or odious things both as attention-seeking behavior and as a way of showcasing their supposedly transgressive political views. They aim to demonstrate strength by being willing to appall other people....
For instance:
... Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ... has long stewed about the fact that women occupy positions of leadership in the U.S. military, and he has hammered on the idea of “merit” as a way of implying that minority officers have been promoted because of their race rather than their talent. He put those beliefs into action almost immediately upon arriving at the Pentagon by pushing for the firing of one Black and several female senior officers who were then replaced with white men.
A few weeks ago, he did it again: According to The New York Times, Hegseth intercepted the Army’s promotion list, which consists mostly of white men, and struck off four officers—two Black men and two women—preventing them from advancing from colonel to brigadier general.
But in Hegseth's curdled Fox News world, is that really vice signaling? Republican base voters believe that only one form of racism is immoral: discrimination against white people. They regard any effort to ensure that people other than whites are rewarded in life as unacceptable. They feel the same way about efforts to promote women in historically all-male areas of endeavor. So to the GOP base, Hegseth is exhibiting the highest morality.
Meanwhile, every time he steps to the podium, Hegseth ... raps out some inane sloganeering rather than offering real information: “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.” He says that America will show “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies”—chesty, movie-villain talk....
Hegseth combines this piety with Bible-thumping:
Last week—during Lent, no less—he prayed in much the same way as the jihadists he hates might have: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” Hegseth said, asking God to give American forces “wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
The base believes that right-wing Christians (and possibly right-wing Jews) are the only good people on the planet. Everyone else is an enemy -- Muslims in particular -- so it's virtuous to exterminate them. (Remember, these are the folks who keep proclaiming that empathy is sinful and un-Christian.)
But Hegseth's boss is no Christian. He believes that there's no morality -- there's only winning or losing. If you fight a war against an oil-producing state, you should just take the oil. If some recreational drugs are being transported on boats, you should bomb the boats, or boats that look like drug boats. If immigrants are in your country without authorization, it's fine to treat them as military enemies and lock them and their children in concentration camps with no due process, or ship them to a torture prison in El Salvador. Trump knows this is evil, but Trump likes evil. He likes being evil. He thinks virtue is for losers.
Trump thinks everybody operates on this principle, and survival depends on being more evil than the other guy. So Hegseth is virtue signaling to voters who have a sick notion of virtue, and vice signaling to Trump, who has a repulsive belief in the value of vice.
Because we have preposterously long presidential campaigns in America, I think it's understable that politicians who want to run for president in 2028 are already campaigning. But please note how a likely Republican candidate is beginning his campaign, and how several Democrats are doing the same thing. Note in particular that the Republican -- who's part of an administration that's failing in every conceivable way, and is massively unpopular as a result -- isn't engaging in self-reflection or self-doubt at all. The candidates who are sniping at their own party are the ones who didn't plunge us into a failed war of choice, aren't presiding over skyrocketing energy prices, aren't defending brutal secret-police tactics in America's streets, and aren't turning airport security into the lowest circle of Hell.
Second lady Usha Vance on Friday ... sat down with NBC News for a 30-minute interview in her new studio ahead of the launch of her podcast, “Storytime With the Second Lady,” which premieres Monday.
And what's the nature of this podcast?
“It’s a podcast that really is just for children. The notion is we will have someone come in — a special reader, we’re calling them — read a fun book, have a very short little conversation about things related to the book, maybe about their career, if they have some sort of interesting background,” Vance said. “And then invite children to pick up books on their own. It’s sort of just an advertisement for reading.”
Usha Vance is a Yale-educated lawyer, but they're positioning her as a tradwife, with three children -- and one on the way! As with most online tradwives, she'll create the illusion that she's focused exclusively on motherly duties, even though podcasting is actually a job. The plan is to make her a warm presence in the lives of voters, especially female voters. Even the labor of creating a podcast is portrayed as housewife-y:
The second lady said her children helped with the design and decor of her podcast studio, where she’ll record episodes of the show.
This is how you run for president as a Republican: Even if most of the country thinks you and your party are failing, you proceed as if millions of people really like you and like your party (which, sadly, is true), and you concentrate on trying to get more people to like you.
That's not how Democrats operate. Ambitious Democrats believe that the key to success is beating up on your own party, even at a moment when we're being ruled by the worst president in American history, a member of the opposition party. So here's Cory Booker:
Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey, renewed his calls for new leadership of the Democratic party, saying the party has “failed this moment”.
“As a whole, our party has failed this moment,” Booker said on Sunday. “I’ve called for a generational renewal, because this left-right divide is killing our country and our adversaries know it.” He also said that “purity tests” within the party have led to more division in the US.
During an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Booker also said the Democratic party has “too small of a coalition”, especially as the party seeks to confront “new challenges”, including Trump administration policies and the expansion of artificial intelligence and technology.
Booker was critical of President Trump in that interview -- but at this moment, why should you beat up your own party, too? It's as if Booker has misunderstood the old James Carville line: When your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil. Booker seemingly wants to add: And jump in with one yourself. (To be fair, Carville these days is no better.)
Then we have Elissa Slotkin on Bill Maher's show a couple of days ago:
Elissa Slotkin: You're not going to get me to defend democratic messaging. We can have a whole autopsy about that.
Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, the American people want something different out of their government. Can we have a little bit more alpha energy? pic.twitter.com/h8li6EAbmq
You're not going to get me to defend Democratic messaging. That's not going to be ever something that I'm going to defend. That's part of the problem and why we lost the last election. We can have a whole autopsy about that.
I complain about Democratic messaging all the time, but I'm a blogger with a small readership. I'm not a U.S. senator on a nationally televised TV show. This is not the place to agree with Republicans about how much Democrats suck. It's not the place to be a pick-me -- Yes, my party is awful, but I'm not like the other Democrats.
The rest of this plays into throwback stereotypes of masculinity and femininity -- it's essentially saying that other Democrats are big fags and we need some Democrats who aren't:
I think, for me, what is important, going forward, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, is like: the American people, they're telling us something, they want something different out of their government. They want, they want some alpha energy from their leaders. And they certainly — whether you agree with them or not — are getting that from some of the Republicans. And my plea to my own party is, like, can we have a little bit more alpha energy? Punch and believe in what we believe in and show people that we give a shit, and be simple about addressing the needs that they care about the most. And that has been a struggle, and I'm here to be a part of that change.
It's not likely to work. When a woman says that prominent Democrats (who are mostly male) are effeminate, she's reinforcing an ugly idea on the right that Democratic men are effectively women and Democratic women are really men.
And Democrats don't need to do this. Sure, 1992 Bill Clinton and 2008 Barack Obama had bro appeal, but did anyone think they could kick a tough guy's ass? They weren't muscular and aggressive. They persuaded voters that they "give a shit ... about addressing the needs that they care about the most," but that's the opposite of "alpha energy," which is largely about not caring what anyone else wants or needs.
And then we have another pick-me, Rahm Emanuel:
Here's how the clip begins:
IAN BREMMER: If you look ahead to 2028 for a second, if you're the Democrats, what's the most likely way they blow it (Rahm and audience laughing)
RAHM EMANUEL: Being Democrats. (audience laughing and applauding)
Which is shorthand for Democrats are fixated on trans people, even though that isn't true, and even though trans rights weren't a salient issue in last year's gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, which Democrats won in blowouts.
EMANUEL: We spent two years communicating with people that we were worried about bathroom access and locker room access, and we never focused on classroom excellence.
In a Politico profile, Emanuel culturally stereotypes Democrats as if he's working with Greg Gutfeld's writers:
“I’m not into Democrats sitting on the 30th floor of a Manhattan highrise in their Lululemon outfit with their Yeti cup, talking about, ‘We should go to places that we don’t go’ and then never go,” Emanuel told me before embarking on this trip. “So I don’t talk about it, and I’m just gonna go.”
Dude, you are talking about it. (We're later treated to a scene of Emanuel on a factory floor. Apparently he thinks he's the only Democrat in the 21st century who's ever visited one.)
Stop doing this. Stop echoing Republican messaging about Democrats. Don't be Andy Beshear saying,
The Democratic Party at different times has talked at and not to people. It’s even talked down to people, which is wrong. Our words have to have meaning.
If you're pressed to denounce your party, ask whether your interviewer will demand that Vance or Marco Rubio denounce theirs.
It's Republicans who are losing winnable elections now. Reporters should ask them why their party is failing.
A Bluesky thread posted in response to yesterday's No Kings rally is getting some attention. It begins:
I keep hearing this word normies. From what I can tell, a normie is a white American that is so self-absorbed and callous, that no amount of suffering or horror experienced by other people can cause them to inconvenience themselves in the slightest. They only act when they themselves feel discomfort
And Black people can't be normies, apparently.
Police violence that causes 20% of the Black population of a city to protest, cannot be described as "normies" protesting. Even if it's the first protest that most of those Black people have ever attended.
We're not normal I guess.🤷🏿♂️
I'm supposed to celebrate that even the normies are protesting now. I've heard this many times before.
But what am I celebrating? That normies now care about other people? Because that hasn't happened yet.
Or that the inconvenience has now reached the normies? Because that has happened before.
And to be crystal clear, because I know at least a few people will misunderstand this: I'm not criticizing the No Kings protests. I think they're great! I don't tell people how not to fight fascism. Have fun with it!
I'm asking folks to think about what they're really saying when they say normies.
At the most basic level, we apply the word "normies" to white people because America is still a majority-white country -- 58% of the country is white.
And I think whites have the privilege of being apolitical if we choose, in a way that Americans of color don't. The system generally doesn't eye us with suspicion -- thus, it politicizes people of color in a way that it doesn't politicize us, especially if we're economically comfortable and heterosexual.
I understand why it would be appropriate to use the word "normie" to describe Black people who came out to protest in 2020 after leading apolitcal lives. But even so, the most normie normies will be white, purely on the basis of demographics.
Now I want to defend angry normie whites in the Trump era. I don't think it's correct to argue that we're incapable of responding to the pain of others.
The protesters are denouncing brutal treatment of immigrants that we aren't subject to. Those of us who are old are denouncing a war we won't be asked to fight in. We're denouncing a cover-up of sex crimes that didn't happen to us.
A mostly young cohort of protesters has been denouncing genocide in Gaza for years, even though it's happening thousands of miles away. Many of these protesters are white. Some are Jewish. Isn't this empathy?
Do whites fully understand what's happening? No. I've been to the "Say Their Names" memorial in Minneapolis's George Floyd Square and realized I only recognized a small portion of the names.
We memorialize Renee Good and Alex Pretti -- two normie whites who died because they weren't self-absorbed or callous -- but we don't know the names of others who've died in conforntations with ICE, or those who've died in federal immigration custody since Donald Trump was reinaugurated (the total is 46, according to a story just published by The New York Times).
We're trying. It's not pure self-interest. Maybe some demonstrators yesterday were motivated by high gas prices, but there were an estimated 350,000 in the streets of Manhattan, where most people don't even drive.
And there's nothing wrong with marching out of self-interest. There's nothing wrong with Black people taking to the streets to protest police brutality against Blacks. There's nothing wrong with young people denouncing a pointless war that they fear they might be conscripted to fight.
Ultimately, though, I agree with Okereke about this:
This hell ends, when 50% of the white people in the US, push in the same direction as 90% of the Black people in the US.
This hell would never have started, if 50% of the white people in the US, had pushed in the same direction as 90% of the Black people in the US.
Pew says 83% of Black voters chose Harris -- not quite 90%, but still an overwhelmingly high percentage (92% voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and 91% voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016). The white vote in 2024 was appalling: 55% Trump, 43% Harris. (That matched the 2020 white vote for Trump and Biden; in 2016, Hillary Clinton got only 39% of the white vote, while Trump got 54%.)
Democrats haven't won the white vote in a presidential election since 1964. It's the result of racism, plus many other hatreds layered on top of that (hippies and war protesters starting in the Nixon era, sexual minorities and feminists from then until now, plus "cultural elitists" and non-Christians). By now I think voting GOP is just a habit for many heartland whites. It seems like the default way to vote.
Okereke might argue that these whites tell pollsters what they think the pollsters want to hear, and I can't disprove that. But I think at least a certain percentage of white Republicans could be shaken out of their complacency. One argument would be pure self-interest: You say you're dissatisfied with the way things are going in America. Have you tried not voting for the same party that's in been in power where you live for decades? And maybe some of these whites can see that a party rallying around a president who's indifferent to their needs can see the party's callousness toward others. Or maybe I'm just too naive, and white complacency is an insurmountable obstacle. I hope yesterday was a sign that that's not true.
On Thursday, former congressman and almost attorney general Matt Gaetz denounced the war in Iran in a speech at CPAC. Raw Story reports:
... although he didn't directly criticize Trump, Gaetz took issue with those backing the military strikes.
"I come from the wing of the Republican Party that is only loyal to one nation, and that is the United States of America," Gaetz said.
One sentence in Gaetz's speech really stands out. In this sentence, Gaetz attacks Israel without mentioning the country's name.
"And so while I may not agree with the likes of Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro or Mike Huckabee that we have some sort of near slavish loyalty to a country in a far away land, I would walk across hot coals arm in arm with those individuals to stop the Democrats turning America into a more transsexual version of Venezuela.”
Gaetz is attacking two Jewish Iran hawks and a Christian Zionist Iran hawk. Shots fired, as they used to say.
But notice something else here. Gaetz says he'll make common cause with these hawks to fight the real enemy -- Democrats. I suspect that this makes a lot of sense to older Republicans, even the ones who might not think the war is a good idea. That's because they started drinking the Fox/talk radio Kool-Aid a couple of decades ago and they're certain that no matter what they might think about Donald Trump's wars (or his tariffs or gas prices or any other disappointment they've felt in the past year), it's obvious to them that Democrats are worse. Democrats are evil! Democrats want them to tolerate the presence of un-American freaks and weirdos (trans people, Muslims, immigrants who aren't from European countries). Democrats want to take their guns and turn this country into a communist Sharia hellhole, for the sheer joy of making real Americans suffer.
That's what their favorite broadcasters have told them every hour of every day for many, many years. They believe it. They'll remain loyal Republicans no matter what Trump does, and no matter how deep a quagmire he's getting us into in Iran.
("A more transsexual version of Venezuela" is cleverly concise, in a malignant way. It's a bit like "acid, amnesty, and abortion," the catchphrase that was used against George McGovern in the 1972 reelection campaign of Richard Nixon -- a phrase that means "supportive of everything that repulses you.")
But the media diet of the young males who rallied to Trump in 2024 doesn't work the same way. Many bro podcasters and short-clip influencers are sexist, bigoted, and anti-"woke," but most of them didn't get the memo that Democrats are Enemy #1. Charlie Kirk knew that, and the Daily Wire podcasters know that, but other modern influencers don't. Some are actually willing to agree with Democratic or Democratic-affiliated politicians on liberal or progressive policy ideas.
Matt Gaetz is 43. He reads as a young man, but he's had a couple of decades to marinade in the Old Right media's anti-Democratic absolutism. Young 2024 Trump voters haven't. Gaetz won't get through to them. Hell, they might also like Zohran Mamdani. They want a better economy, a better job market, a better housing market, and an end to the fear that they might be drafted to die in World War III. They're still not sure who can deliver on that agenda, if anyone. They're not like the exurban and rural Boomers and Gen Xers who have homes and have (or have retired from) decent jobs, and who just want government to punish the people they hate. Most of them will turn up at the polls this November and vote GOP, because the GOP hates the people they hate.
Most of the young won't. Their indoctrination isn't sufficiently thorough.
The Senate voted early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement and deportation operations, raising the prospect of an end to a weekslong partial shutdown that has strained federal workers and caused long waits at airports.
The measure does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, reflecting a proposal that Democrats had offered for weeks as they refused to fund federal immigration enforcement operations without adding new restrictions on agents.
I'm quoting from the New York Times story. The Times stresses what Democrats failed to achieve:
The measure that the Senate approved contains modest provisions that lawmakers had already agreed to in January, including money for body cameras for immigration enforcement officers.
But the legislation falls short of the restrictions that Democrats demanded after federal immigration officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis in January. It does not include provisions barring ICE agents from wearing masks or requiring that they obtain judicial warrants to enter private homes.
And the deal does not reflect narrow concessions that the White House agreed to last week, including requirements that officers display visible identification and limits on immigration enforcement at “sensitive areas” like hospitals and schools.
Or you could say:
Unpopular opinion alert: Chuck Schumer deserves credit for keeping his caucus in line until Republicans folded.
You know who agrees that Republicans were the losers here? A significant percentage of the people in right-wing comments sections. These Fox News commenters aren't happy:
The Republicans never do carry through with what they start, lifelong Republican here and I’m getting fed up with these pathetic excuses for republican Senators, the Democrats hold the Republicans feet to the fire and always Back the Republicans down
****
It appears Trump is a party of one , his fellow Republicans do not possess the testicular fortitude to lead or fight for American citizens , they always seem to quit rather than fight.
****
Lifetime Republican and Im old, first time I’ve ever said I’m embarrassed by Republican leadership. Absolutely spineless and gutless.
****
Well, once again Republicans cave. Democrats let all these criminals walk into our country, and now they are condemning the very people who can remove them? And republicans cave into their outrageous idiotic demands? We need republicans that have a backbone. That can get out there and tell the truth.
****
Cowards. That's how the republicans in office will be remembered. Cowards, who caved to democrat whining, gave them what they wanted and got nothing of value in return.
****
GOP caves again to the left…which is how the country was crippled in the first place. The president is the only republican with a spine
Can you stop being useless for once and act like the majority in power party. Congress is one grifter after another. The things they care about passing are bills that pad their bank accounts.
****
Thune, McConnell, Tillis. Names that just make me sick.
****
RACO: RINOs always chicken out.
****
Primary out, and if not, then let them be defeated by the Dems. Lots of pain, but then vote in correct blood. I'm sorry, but this is the only way unless apathetic voters wake up
****
Thune hurts Trump more than Schumer.
****
Trump hurts Trump more than Schumer by continually supporting RINOs. John Thune should never have been the Majority Leader with Trump still singing Thune's praises. Get the damn Save Act Passed.
Republicans have a tiny majority in the House and are still preserving the filibuster in the Senate, and yet President Trump and the right-wing media are raising the base's expectations of what the GOP can accomplish. Now GOP voters expect DHS and ICE funding with no concessions (which can happen in a reconciliation bill, because a reconciliation bill can pass the Senate by a simple majority)and they expect passage of the maximal version of the SAVE Act, with all the extraneous anti-trans provisions Trump wants to attach to it (the Senate parliamentarian probably won't allow them to put every SAVE Act provision in a reconciliation bill, which must be budget-oriented).
Trump has ensured that anything less than 100% of this looks, to the base, like failure on the part of congressional Republicans -- months before the midterms.
Genius plan to demoralize your voters, Donnie. Have a nice November.
Yesterday I told you about an NBC report that President Trump's primary source of information about the war in Iran is a daily good-news-only highlight reel that's prepared for him by CENTCOM.
Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for President Donald Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.
The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”
... the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week, two of the current officials and the former official said.
Emily Horne, a former National Security Council and State Department official told Greg Sargent of The New Republic that she has a theory about this leak:
I’m going to tell you my little conspiracy theory about this story. I think this story is a White House plant....
You’ve got multiple sources, both current and former, who are all singing from the same sheet of music—which says to me, again, this is coordinated. This is a plan. So what does that tell us? That tells us that even though this is a story that on a casual read looks kind of embarrassing for the president—and is, I think, being treated as such on social media, like the president of the United States needs a greatest-hits compilation of CENTCOM strikes in order to understand how the war is going—I understand that reaction.
But to be clear, there’s a deeper message that I think they want planted in people’s minds, which is that this White House is now creating excuses for why the war is not going well and why the American people do not approve of this war. And one of the excuses that they are creating is, well, the president of the United States is not being fed good information by his military.
That is what they are trying to plant with this story, if—as I suspect—this is a planted story. They’re trying to create a paper trail and a narrative that says this is going badly not because Donald Trump made terrible decisions, but because his military leadership is not being honest with him about what is happening.
I think it's an attempt to shift blame, but I don't think it's necessarily President Trump and his inner circle trying to shift blame to the Pentagon. The leakers are likely to understand that while this might make the Pentagon look bad, it absolutely makes Trump look bad. Anyone who's paid attention to Trump's presidencies knows that he likes to be fed good news and he likes briefings that don't require him to read a lot of words. Here's an Atlantic story from January 2018:
Before [his first] inauguration, Trump told Axios, “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.” In February, The New York Timesreported that National Security Council members had been instructed to keep policy papers to a single page and include lots of graphics and maps....
In March, Reuters reported that briefers had strategically placed the president’s name in as many paragraphs of briefing documents as possible so as to attract his fickle attention.
I think the leakers are people who expect this story to make Trump and the Pentagon -- or at least the current Pentagon leadership -- look bad. Their purpose is to say, Don't blame us. Who might want to send that message? I'm not sure. Maybe Vice President Vance, who formerly positioned himself as an opponent of miltary adventurism? Maybe Marco Rubio, who's frustrated that the Iran war has postponed the overthrow of the Cuban government he longs for? Maybe Pentagon careerists who don't like Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense?
*****
I don't think Trump himself is setting Hegseth up as the fall guy. Zeteo's Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez write:
Trump has seemed eager to shift some credit (or blame, depending on who you ask) for his disastrous war in Iran to Hegseth. Earlier this week, the president said, “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
Trump blames Hegseth for the war: "Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. You said, 'Let's do it.'" pic.twitter.com/QBGeFuhM1M
But Trump's remark, in a Memphis speech on Monday, doesn't seem like blame to me. In fact, he portrays himself as the person who wanted to do something about Iran:
You know, our economy was fantastic. We had a Dow at 50,000. They say it couldn't happen in four years, it wouldn't happen during my term, but if I got anywhere close, it would be a great success. Well, in my first year, we hit 50,000. And with the S&P, they said -- even more difficult. They said it would be impossible to hit 7,000 on the S&P, and we hit that in our first term.
And then, unfortunately, I came -- I called Pete, I called General Caine, I called a lot of our great people. We have great people. And I said, let's talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country known as Iran that for 47 years has been just a purveyor of terror, and they're very close to having a nuclear weapon.
We can keep going and get that 50,000 up to 55,000 and 60,000. There's no end. Or we can take a stop and make a little journey into the Middle East and eliminate a big problem. And, uh, Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up and you said, let's do it, because you can't let them have a nuclear weapon.
To me that's Trump saying, I, in my infinite wisdom, astutely recognized the threat from Iran, and Pete agreed that we needed to act.
Then I look at that Zeteo story, and I see this:
Donald Trump’s so-called “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has earned himself a new nickname, current and former US officials tell us. Among various staffers and officials working within the august confines of the Pentagon and Department of Defense, the former ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host and “death and destruction”-obsessed Trump acolyte is known as “Dumb McNamara.”
This is, of course, a reference to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, an architect of American military escalation in Vietnam who, despite his disastrous record, maintained a reputation as a brilliant, shrewd thinker. It is exceedingly hard to find anyone in the corridors of Washington power – or anywhere on the planet – who would label Hegseth a brilliant mind.
However, the nickname “Dumb McNamara” has spread within the US government due to Hegseth’s cheerleading of the war and bombing blitzes – overzealous bloodlust and enthusiasm for military fiasco that reminds American officials of, well, a very stupid version of Robert McNamara.
I suspect that there might be overlap between the "current and former US officials" who are leaking the words of "various staffers and officials" in the Pentagon and Defense Department to Zeteo and the "three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official" who are leaking to NBC. I think Defense careerists and/or disgruntled civilians in the White House are doing the leaking, not Trump loyalists.
Jamelle Bouie is trying to understand why President Trump doesn't prepare for easily imagined outcomes.
Neither Trump nor his aides, according to recent reporting, planned for Iran to target shipping and close the Strait of Hormuz. They also do not seem to have planned for serious and sustained retaliation against America’s Gulf state allies. They did not plan for an energy crisis and the potential disruption to the global economy, and they did not plan for America’s European allies to, by and large, reject their call for support....
What’s striking is how familiar this pattern feels. The administration did not expect the public to be repelled by DOGE. It did not expect outrage over the treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It did not expect Democrats to respond to threats of partisan gerrymandering with their own push to wring as many Democratic seats as possible out of so-called blue states. The administration certainly did not expect the mass mobilizations against the deployment of National Guard troops and the use of ICE and Customs and Border Protection as a roving paramilitary force.
Bouie thinks this is an extreme form of narcissism.
Trump is famously indifferent to the concerns of those around him. He is a consummate narcissist, and he is, without question, the most solipsistic person ever to occupy the Oval Office. Over his decades on the public stage, we have seen little to no evidence that he believes in the existence of other minds....
And so, whenever other people do act of their own accord, both the president and his administration find themselves flat-footed.
Is that it? Yes, more or less -- but consider this NBC story, which is getting a lot of attention:
Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for President Donald Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.
The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”
... the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week, two of the current officials and the former official said.
We know that Trump has a seemingly limitless need for narcissistic supply -- he needs people around him to proclaim that he's great and brilliant. These videos of "stuff blowing up" in Trump's glorious war obviously serve the same purpose as the elaborate statements of praise Trump receives from Cabinet members and others on a regular basis.
But while I believe these nothing-but-good-news sizzle reels distort Trump's view of the war, I believe what the NBC story also tells us:
The highlight reel of U.S. Central Command bombing Iranian equipment and military sites isn’t the only briefing Trump gets about the war. He’s also updated through conversations with top military and intelligence advisers, foreign leaders and news reports, the officials said.
He must know that some things aren't going splendidly. He clearly understands that the war has upset global markets, otherwise he wouldn't be talking so much about negotiating a possible peace deal, even if Iran says that those negotiations aren't taking place. On immigration, he can obviously see that his crackdown isn't playing well, otherwise he wouldn't have fired Kristi Noem and relieved Greg Bovino of his duties.
Trump -- a lifelong believer in Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking -- grasps that other people exist, but he believes that they should ingest the news Trump-style, with a strong emphasis on his successes. In reference to Trump's Iran news digests, NBC tells us:
... the videos are ... driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing....
Trump isn't completely oblivious to the existence of other people. He needs to spend time in his bubble of narcissism, but one of his other primal needs is the need to hate everyone who disagrees with him.
Of course, that resolves to narcissism, too. Trump believes that if the media covered the war the way his video briefings do, everyone would love what he's doing. Therefore, his struggles in the polls are the media's fault. Similarly, he's angry at Congress for not passing a version of the SAVE Act with anti-trans provisions attached; he's convinced that passing the bill in this form will guarantee Republican victories in every future election, which means that if the bill doesn't pass, or doesn't pass exactly the way he wants it, then he's not responsible for Republican election losses in the midterms.
Yes, Trump understands that other people exist, and he knows that some of them don't think the way he does. But he regards that as a mistake that needs to be corrected for his benefit.
During a conversation with conservative lawyer Mike Davis on his “War Room” program, [Steve] Bannon asked, “We can use what’s happening with these ICE [officers] helping out at the airports, we can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections, sir?”
Davis responded, “Yeah, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places, because if you’re an illegal alien you can’t vote, right? It’s against the law, it’s a federal crime for you to vote in federal elections.”
“And so, if you’re an American citizen, you should be happy that ICE is there, because you’re not going to have illegal aliens canceling out your vote,” he added.
“Exactly,” Bannon replied. “Pick ‘em out of line starting today, and maybe the lines will get shorter.”
When President Trump wanted to do something about the long lines at U.S. airports on Monday, he turned to one of his favorite tools: Immigration and Customs Enforcement....
Mr. Trump has increasingly used ICE to try to achieve personal and political objectives, deploying a force with a quasi-military bearing around the country with a message that he intends to not just carry out his anti-immigration agenda but to also enforce his views on constituencies and states that have opposed him.
But is it working? It is in the right's fantasy world. Here's a response to the airport deployment from a prominent right-wing cartoonist:
While security waiting lines get longer and longer.
Incredible scene: Travelers wait on hours-long security line at George Bush International Airport in Houston while Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blasts through the speakers.
(video shared directly with me)
Sending ICE to the polls is obviously a very different matter. ICE agents can intimidate voters, including citizens who might be mistaken for non-citizen immigrants, or people who have protested the administration and might fear that they're in a database and thus could be subject to arrest.
But it's possible that a combination of legal pushback by Trump critics and strategic incompetence by the president himself will cause this effort to seem as sad and pointless as the airport deployment. First, please note that the number of agents deployed at airports yesterday was "between 100 and 150," according to the Times. That's not enough to cover all the key precincts in all the key races in November -- though, obviously, the fear of these agents might have a force-multiplying effect even where they're not deployed. There's also the fact that many people will vote early in person (unless the Supreme Court decides not merely to end the acceptance of late-arriving mail ballots but also ban early voting altogether), so the intimidation will have to go on for weeks.
It is illegal to deploy federal troops or armed federal law enforcement to any polling place. In fact, it is a federal crime for anyone in the U.S. military to interfere in elections in any way. More specifically, it is a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to deploy federal “troops or armed men” to any location where voting is taking place or elections are being held, unless “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” ...
We could have clueless ICE agents forced to stand well outside polling places, doing nothing the way they're now doing nothing at the airports, if at least some judges issue emergency rulings preventing ICE from operating at the polls.
Legislation to restrict immigration enforcement or the presence of federal forces near polling places and other election sites has been offered or announced in California, Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington....
The New Mexico legislature in February passed a measure that largely mirrors restrictions in federal law against armed federal personnel at polling places....
The bill says officials generally cannot order or bring troops or other armed federal agents to polling places or parking areas for polling places beginning 28 days before Election Day, when early in-person voting begins. It also would prohibit officials from changing who is qualified to vote contrary to New Mexico law or from imposing election rules that conflict with state law. Violators would be guilty of a felony.
I don't want to downplay the dangers here, but I think it's possible that President Trump will mishandle this. He wins praise from his base no matter how poorly he executes his plans, so he's always at risk of failure. (See also: the war in Iran.) I'm worried about federal goons at the polls, but a poorly executed deployment is a real possibility.
After four weeks of useless threats, bombings, and death, President Trump is placing a five-day pause on his war on Iran after failing to attain the “unconditional surrender” that he claimed he would earlier this month.
“I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social.
Trump sees himself as a world-bestriding dictator, but he fears the financial markets, and this was a precision-timed effort to appease them.
The announcement came just two hours before U.S. stock markets opened, and Trump noted the pause in strikes will last the duration of the trading week. The decision caused previously skyrocketing oil prices to dip significantly.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 650 points as I type this, so it's working.
Trump threatened Iran and Iran made Trump blink, as The Bulwark's Andrew Egger notes:
... Iran appears not to have taken Trump’s threats to target their domestic power generation very seriously. Taken on their merits, these threats were astonishing: a 48-hour deadline for Iran to surrender its primary point of geopolitical leverage, or suffer widespread strikes against civilian infrastructure. But while such strikes would have been catastrophic for Iran, they would have been terrible for America, too, sending the price of oil spiraling into the stratosphere for God knows how long....
How thin did Trump’s bluff turn out to be? The president didn’t even wait until his 48-hour deadline was expiring to call it off. He blinked with twelve hours to spare—ensuring that the entire threat period took place while markets were closed over the weekend....
All the madman posturing in the world can’t change this simple fact: Iran knows how badly Trump needs to get the oil-price situation under control. Again and again, Trump has signaled he will let other foreign-policy objectives fall by the wayside to address this major domestic concern.
To me, Trump's capitulation is a sign of sanity, or at least sanity Trump-style. I realize that his decision to create the crisis that this capitulation is intended to solve seems like evidence of delusional madness. It is -- but I don't think it's dementia madness.
Here's my view: Trump has a more or less healthy brain, but he can't stop trying to do things he can't pull off. He's essentially Ralph Kramden from the old sitcom The Honeymooners, except he's Ralph Kramden with obscene wealth, fame, and, now, the nuclear launch codes.
We always saw Ralph Kramden with his mind on fire, absolutely certain that his latest get-rich-quick scheme was foolproof. As president in his second term, Trump actually is getting rich corruptly -- but what makes the synapses in his brain fire excessively is the idea that he can transform America, the America, and the world, through cockamamie schemes that are either doomed to failure or likely to improve nothing. Tariffs! Regime change in Venezuela! Expelling every undocumented immigrant in America, starting with the most sympathetic ones! Fighting the war with Iran that every previous president understandably decided was too much trouble! All of these are guaranteed to make Trump not just the greatest president ever but the most consequential person in world history!
Ralph Kramden fell for American Dream sales pitches promising easy money. Trump falls for simple political ideas, often peddled on Fox News.
Even the Iran war, as I noted yesterday, was a crazy idea sold to Trump by Rupert Murdoch and Benjamin Netantyahu, who are both much less likely to suffer blowback from it than the United States.
Trump is a crazed believer in his own brilliance. If he hadn't been born wealthy, he would have been a serial failure who couldn't quit his day job. Instead, Ralph Kramden got to be the most powerful person in the world.
In a New York Times op-ed, Phil Klay, an Iraq War veteran and author of the National Book Award-winning short story collection Redeployment, notes that the Trump administration has never offered a clear justification for the war in Iran. However:
... as I watched a video posted by the White House in which a group of angry, rifle-wielding bowling pins labeled “Iranian Regime Officials” are struck by a Stars and Stripes bowling ball that turns into an airplane, followed by actual combat footage of U.S. airstrikes, I realized how one rationale for this war has remained clear and consistent: the administration’s delight in displays of violence and domination.
Many top administration officials do seem to regard the brutality as an end in itself:
The bowling video is one of many sizzle reels posted on White House social media accounts celebrating the war by mixing images of death and destruction with footage from video games or sports highlights. The president declared that military officials told him “it’s more fun to sink” ships than to capture them, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exulted, “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” The Trump aide Stephen Miller proclaimed that the Iran war showcased a military “that isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.”
At another news conference, Mr. Hegseth made the macho posturing even clearer: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
But this isn't just for their own enjoyment. They're doing it -- and proudly asserting that they're pitiless -- because they think the public will get off on the cruelty.
A portion of the public clearly is enjoying this content: the video above has 126,000 likes on X as I write this. It's all in keeping with the main message of the Republican Party for the past several decades: We are good and our enemies are pure evil. Watch us make those enemies howl in agony.
For the Republican voter base, the war doesn't need a purpose. Owning the enemy is purpose enough. The GOP will never make its voters safer, healthier, more economically secure, or more able to obtain employment, but it will talk about enemies incessantly, and let the base revel in how it's tormenting those enemies. And even when the enemies are overseas, all roads lead back to the ultimate enemy:
Enemy 1) Foreign autocracy
Enemy 2) Domestic opposition party
On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump claimed that no foreign regime was a greater enemy than Democrats -- for instance, in a Fox News town hall less than a month before the election:
“I always say, we have two enemies,” Trump said, adding: “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”
Over several decades, the right-wing media has primed the GOP voter base to hate everyone who's not aligned with the Republican Party, whether it's truly bad actors like the Iranian regime or a high school teacher driving a used hybrid with a COEXIST bumper sticker. So this Bloomberg report comes as no surprise:
Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies....
Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The News Corp. founder communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.
We knew about Netanyahu and commentators such as Mark Levin. We didn't know about Murdoch -- but of course he'd be rooting for what a war he assumed would goose Fox's ratings, give Trump a boost in the polls, and rally voters around Republican candidates in the midterms, all while distracting voters from their own concerns, particularly the economy. It's not achieving most of those aims, but that's always been the Fox/GOP formula: reminding the rubes that the right will give them satisfying enemies to hate, and will show those enemies squealing whenever possible.
(Please note that the top administration cheerleaders for the war, Trump and Hegseth, are former Fox commentators, along with Miller, who got into politics as a regular talk radio caller while he was still in high school.)
Klay writes:
Our greatest wartime leaders thought we should wage war only when it was absolutely necessary, that we should articulate the clear moral and political objectives that we use to guide our strategy and that we should treat the shedding of blood with the seriousness it deserves.
Power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, cruelty is not the same as strength, and a politics built on such ideas promises ruin, delusion about the limits of our power and a betrayal of the promise of our founding.
Yeah, but it gives 40 percent of the electorate a lot of distracting dopamine hits, and that's worked out great for the GOP and the Murdoch press so far.
I think Jamelle Bouie is right to argue that Trumpism is very much about gender.
I've done a few videos at this point on a particular theme, and that theme is that everything is gender. What this means is that so much of what is driving our politics today is an acute form of gender anxiety, expressed by those who believe in a kind of hierarchical gender universe in which men are at the top, in which a particular kind an expression of masculinity is deemed to be dominant, in which femininity is disparaged, in which women are disparaged, in which anything that threatens this particular vision of domineering hierarchical masculinity is something to be undermined, if not destroyed outright.
Bouie sees this in the context of President Trump's mad plan to spend a billion dollars to bribe renewal energy companies so they won't build wind farms, at a time when the supply of fossil fuels is threatened by Trump's Iran war. Why the obsession with fossil fuels? Bouie says (at approximately 2:26 in the video):
... clean energy, renewable energy, energy that you produce not through extraction, right? Not through the violent extraction, through literally abusing the land, through literally penetrating the land, right? That's what an oil drill does: it penetrates the land....
For the people in this administration, I believe, I think that they view clean energy and renewable energy as a fundamental threat to their vision of a hierarchical world, to their vision of a hypermasculine, hierarchical world in which the only real law is the law of the strong dominating the weak, and they see renewables, green energy, as representing weakness, as representing femininity, which they equate with weakness.
I agree that masculinity is important to them -- but (and I think Bouie would agree) it's not just male vs. female. It's also macho male vs. non-macho male. I'm seeing this in right-wing memes, like these two:
Liberalism is embodied in a foul-smelling, pot-bellied brony who's clearly inferior to the ripped, iron-pumping Christian embodiment of the Trump zeitgeist. The message is not just that men are better than women, but that right-wing men are better than left-wing men, who are flabby pseudo-men.
But much of this posturing is right-wing men trying to persuade themselves that they're the guy on the right and not the guy on the left.
Here's a thread from Derek Guy. The first post features a clip of the Daily Wire's Michael Knowles talking to a manosphere influencer named Justin Waller (the clip appears in Louis Theroux's documentary Inside the Manosphere). The second post shows the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh:
It's interesting how The Daily Wire attacks the idea that gender is a performance when their sets are all about gender performance. Look at the aesthetics here — the cigars and crystal decanter with Japanese whiskey, the black dress shirt, the tight suit with two-toned double monks and tie bar ...
... the Arne Jacobsen egg chair teamed with leather couch and a studio backdrop feat. a Lambo inexplicably inside the room.
And where Knowles's set is filled with masculine urban cliches, Walsh's set is the rustic counterpart: the fish, stone fireplace, and boat-shaped shelf with tiny old books.
Just feels like every material representation of masculinity for 12 year old boys, all crammed into a tiny digital space that will fit your screen. So farcical that I don't know how anyone working on or watching this production doesn't feel like their intelligence is being insulted.
Guy says that what we're seeing "feels like every material representation of masculinity for 12 year old boys," but I don't think it's that. I think these are symbols associated with masculinity that allegedly elevate men above women (and above weak men) and allegedly make women flock to men, but they mostly appeal to other men. They're ways men tell one another that they're alpha males.
Waller makes a living selling this image to fans. He's buff and cocksure, so the act is convincing. Knowles and Walsh, on the other hand, don't come off as macho men at all. Nor does Trump, at the age of 79, especially carrying around a body that looks like the brony's body in the memes above.
I suspect that Trump's embrace of fossil fuels is, like so much else in his life, a form of self-soothing -- he embraces energy drilled from ground by burly men and he feels more manly, at a time when, I'm sure, his days as a headline-grabbing ladies' man are in the distant past. I also see self-soothing when Knowles puffs on that cigar and Walsh makes sure the camera angle includes that fish -- yeah, we're real men, and so are you guys if you're watching this.
This is what the dominant political party in America produces as "culture." And this is how policy gets made. It's tests of manhood that men impose on themselves to impress their fellow men. And I guess Trump thinks the war is the ultimate macho flex.
Since the day after President Trump issued an executive order on birthright citizenship, I've argued that the Supreme Court will side with Trump, tossing out more than a century of precedent, which is the Federalist Society supermajority's favorite sport. I think I see signs that I'm right about this.
— rationally BASED podcast (@rationallypod) March 11, 2026
For the hoi polloi, we have the New York Post dusting off an old favorite booga-booga story:
Pregnant Chinese women have turned a tropical paradise into a maternity ward — pumping out babies who automatically become US citizens daily.
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a US territory northeast of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, has been flooded with so-called “birth tourists” since 2009 when then-president Barack Obama introduced a visa-waiver program for Chinese nationals.
China-watchers estimate about 1,000 companies offer birth tourism to the Northern Mariana Islands, other US overseas territories and even the US mainland. They claim a gob-smacking 1.5 million American babies are being raised in China by Chinese parents who’ve participated in birth tourism.
If this has been happening for seventeen years, why is it a story now?
It's part of what I expect to be a huge propaganda campaign to make opposition to birthright citizenship seem like the normie position. The right is very good at reducing every story to a set of purely evil villains deliberately trying to harm upstanding patriots. Your enemies are rich Chinese birth tourists is an argument they hope will work, as is Yeah, birthright citizenship might have been okay once, but not after that evil Joe Biden opened the borders, which is what another right-wing legal scholar, Adrian Vermeule, argues in this Substack post:
Nor does the putatively consistent practice of granting citizenship to the children of illegal aliens provide a convincing rejoinder. What was done at a small scale in the past may have very different consequences for republican sovereignty when done at a massive scale, as has occurred in recent decades, reaching a wild crescendo in the previous administration. The change of scale itself changes the nature and import of the practice, or more accurately, different practices in different eras. Fundamental principles remain the same over time, but their application may change with circumstances.
Arguments the Supremes could use to gut birthright citizenship are being floated in right-wing academic circles, but whichever ones are used, I'm certain the fix is in and birthright citizenship is on its way out.
I suggested a couple of weeks ago that the Supremes might open the door to denaturalizations in time for the midterms. Maybe that won't happen -- but at the very least, I think the Republican partisans on the Court are assuming that Democrats on the campaign trail will declare themselves in favor of a legislative restoration of birthright citizenship, which Republicans assume will hurt Democrats with swing voters. I'm not sure how that would play. But I expect the Court to do the worst possible thing again.
How do you know the White House is worried about defections from the Trump voter base? You know because stories like the two I'm about to quote are showing up in the press.
Reports of Republican fractures over President Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran have been greatly exaggerated, according to a new poll shared exclusively with The Post Thursday.
The J.L. Partners survey showed that 83% of likely Republican voters “strongly” or “somewhat” support Operation Epic Fury, while just 9% say they “strongly” or “somewhat” oppose military action against Iran.
Nearly three-quarters (74%) of respondents say the US should continue its campaign until Iran’s military capabilities are destroyed, with 16% saying Trump should stop the war immediately.
Compared to prominent podcasters Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, both of whom have criticized the president over the Iran war, the poll found 83% of likely Republican voters trust Trump’s judgement, while just 6% place more confidence in the former Fox News hosts.
J.L. Partners is a British firm founded by two Tories. It polls Americans for the Daily Mail, where its surveys have, until recently, been more favorable to President Trump than most polls. Nate Silver, who gives J.L. Partners a B/C rating, adds four points to Trump's "disapprove" numbers to adjust for J.L.'s bias.
Nevertheless, I suspect that this poll largely reflects reality. Other pollsters, such as Quinnipiac, find that Republican voters are overwhelmingly on Trump's side -- though you'd think the numbers would be closer to 100% support in the first couple of weeks of a war started by a president of their own party.
I'd be curious to see the wording of the poll's questions in order to determine whether they skewed the results, but we can't see the survey itself because it was released exclusively to the Post, which isn't revealing many specifics.
The White House is clearly trying to manufacture consent for Trump's war on the right, out of fear that some of the base is defecting, particularly young men. And this Axios story seems like another attempt to suggest that Trump's dude-friendly administration is still very popular:
D.C.'s hottest ticket: Trump's UFC fight night
President Trump tells Axios it's the "hottest ticket that I've ever seen."
He's talking about UFC Freedom 250, the fight Trump is staging on the White House's South Lawn on June 14.
Why it matters: Donors, lobbyists, members of Congress and well-connected fans are clamoring for tickets.
Well, of course donors, lobbyists, and members of Congress are clamoring for tickets. They still need to curry favor with Trump. But Trump wants America, or at least right-wing America, or at least right-wing male America, to believe he's still "the hottest thing."
Of course, we have no idea how true any of this is -- the story, more than most Axios stories, is pure spin, and reads like spin directly from the boss himself.
Top lobbyists and White House-connected operatives are getting inundated with requests, sources said. One of them told us they're sick of being asked about the fight.
Republicans began flooding the White House with inquiries about VIP tickets almost immediately after the event was announced last summer.
One senator asked to attend with their family.
(Only one? Whoops -- this seems like a botched talking point.)
A GOP fundraiser close to the White House received dozens of direct messages on social media asking how they could get in.
Trump himself has been fielding ticket requests, a person familiar with the event prep said.
Is the "person familiar with the event prep" named John Barron?
Trump wants us to assure us that his 2024 voters, young men in particular, aren't rushing to the exits -- or maybe his aides feel the need to assure him. But he can sell the war (and the self-soothing sausagefest on his birthday) as hard as he wants. The latecomers in his coalition aren't buying.
In a column about the SAVE Act -- Donald Trump's top domestic priority -- Jamelle Bouie writes:
For reasons of both ego and ideology, Trump does not believe that he can legitimately lose an election. He is, to his mind, the living embodiment of the nation. If he doesn’t win, then the system must be broken. In that sense, the SAVE Act is far less about American elections as they exist than it is about the president’s vision of American society. The basic premise of Trumpism is that the people of the United States are not the collected citizens of the United States, naturalized and natural born, but a particular caste and class of Americans, defined by race, religion and nationality and united by their devotion to Trump.
The SAVE Act is an attempt to make that distinction a political reality by removing as many mere Americans from the voting pool as possible and elevating the true people of the United States — who just so happen to support Trump and the Republican Party — as the only legitimate players in American political life. The goal, then, is to nationalize something akin to what many Americans experienced in the Jim Crow South: a one-party state, backed by the threat of violence, where the law ensures that most people cannot hope for meaningful political representation.
This isn't exactly right. The people who put Jim Crow voting laws in place knew that the Blacks they were disenfranchising were real people born in America who would be allowed to vote if the federal government were able and willing to force the issue. It's my belief that Donald Trump -- influenced by a couple of decades' worth of Republican propaganda -- believes that there simply aren't enough legitimate Democratic voters in America to make the Democratic Party a competitive party. When he says of Democrats, as he did in a speech earlier this month, "They're doing everything possible because they know if we get this, they probably won't win an election for 50 years and maybe longer," I think he legitimately believes that the large number of voters purged from the rolls by the SAVE Act will (a) be overwhelmingly Democratic and (b) be on the rolls fraudulently.
Trump believes this -- believes that all these voters are non-citizen immigrants or dead people or nonexistent people or people otherwise ineligible to vote, possibly because they live on dementia wards or in mental institutions and votes are cast for Democrats in their names -- because he's a Fox News grandpa who's been told over and over again that Democrats cheat in elections on a industrial scale. Millions of other Fox News grandpas and grandmas also believe this.
Here's a video from 2010.
It was produced by an organization called True the Vote, which I've written about many times. After the 2020 election, True the Vote was behind the Dinesh D'Souza "documentary" 2000 Mules, which is so rife with disinformation that even D'Souza himself has had to apologize for its dishonesty. Here's the first claim in the 2010 video, from the late right-wing propagandist David Horowitz:
The voting system is under attack now. Movements that are focused on voter fraud and the integrity of elections are crucial at this point. This is really -- I mean, this is a war! A Democratic Party consultant once told me that Republicans have to win by at least three percent in order to win any election.
The next speaker says:
There are people who are deceased who have shown up as voting. I've actually gone out and taken pictures of the tombstones.
The third speaker -- Catherine Engelbrecht, co-founder of True the Vote -- says:
One lady asked the presiding judge, she looked at him and she goes, "I forget who I'm supposed to vote for," and so he went over there and he actually turned the dial. She pressed Enter. He turned the dial. She pressed Enter.
Trump thinks this is routine. Your Fox-watching relatives think so too. They believe all this happens and they believe that millions of immigrants cross the border and are immediately signed up to vote (always Democratic) and they believe that Democrats slip fake ballots in among the real ones during vote counting and they believe Democrats tamper with voting machines so Republican votes flip to Democratic and...
Jim Crow vote suppressors knew that there were real Americans who would vote against them if they were allowed to. Millions of Republicans seem to believe that there are no legitimate Democratic votes, or very, very few.
They believe this even though they can never produce evidence of this fraud. They believe it the same way they believe that every anti-Trump protestor is a paid agent of the Soros family.
So Trump and his supporters don't exactly believe, as Bouie writes, that "the people of the United States are ... a particular caste and class of Americans, defined by race, religion and nationality and united by their devotion to Trump," excluding Trump critics -- they believe there simply aren't very many sincere Trump critics, or very many Democrats at all, citizens who oppose Trump and his party sincerely and legitimately.
All this, of course, requires them to ignore large chunks of objective reality. But the propaganda they consume has taught them that what everyone outside their bubble portrays as reality must be a lie because people outside their bubble do nothing but lie. Everything they don't want to believe is "fake news." And everything they want to believe is the gospel truth.
I think Trump sincerely believes all this. I'm sure his most fervent fans do. They think the SAVE Act won't disenfranchise a single legitimate voter. It will only disenfranchise Democrats, who are illegitimate voters by definition.
