It is “amusing”, insofar as watching the death of what future historians will call “The First American Republic” can be “amusing”, to watch yet another crop of innocents, who somehow maintained their innocence through the events of January 6, 2021 and thereafter, to discover that, you know, Donald Trump is a very, very bad man!
Particularly “amusing”, I think, is the case of Glenn Greenwald, a populist lefty who more or less switched from Bernie Sanders to Big Donnie, to the extent that, during the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 DC dustup, when “old Twitter” banned Trump from its site, Glenn raged that this had been done to “a sitting President of the United States”! Where’s the respect, huh? Where is it?1
Glenn could, I think, be fairly described as an anti-Zionist Jew, who despised—as, well, I did—Joe Biden’s passionate embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Gaza Delenda Est,”2 who now has to contend with the fact that Trump is ten times “worse” than Uncle Joe, giving Uncle Bibi even more of those lovely 2,000 bombs and promising to blow the shit out of Iran if they don’t shape up, and also using “antisemitism” as the excuse for more or less taking over America’s higher educational system, and bullying America’s leading law firms, media outlets, and billionaires into trembling submission, while expelling legal residents of the United States to hellhole prisons in El Salvador—and the “hellhole” part is a feature, not a bug—without due process (also a feature, not a bug), to the extent that, well, poor Glenn is in a bit of a tizzy. Who knew that a raging, amoral sociopath would do such things? Who, I mean? Who?
Glenn seems to have pretty much given up the writing thing, and instead holds forth almost daily on the video platform “Rumble”, flabbergasted, over and over again, by Trump’s behavior. Why, it’s almost like Trump were a cruel person, isn’t it?
We see similar, though more restrained, flabbergastedness on the part of “thoughtful” Republican doubledome Yuval Levin, who can always be expected to deliver a choice piece of hypocritical chin-stroking on behalf of the GOP. Writing in Bari Weiss’s Free Press, Yuval warns El Donaldo that “You Can’t Run Government Through Retribution”, which is, after all, pretty good advice. After several thousand words of artfully crafted thumbsuckery, Yuval earnestly concludes of Donald II,
An administration rooted in a response to the excesses of its predecessor, as the Trump administration has been on immigration and some cultural issues, at least begins from the public’s own frustrations. But an administration oriented by its own grudges, as Trump’s increasingly appears to be in a broad and growing range of policy domains, is more likely to become misaligned with public priorities, and in ways that grow increasingly aggravating to voters—whose concerns are overshadowed by the president’s grievances.
The lesson Donald Trump learned from his first term seems not to be the one that voters sought to teach him. It’s hard to see that ending well.
Yeah, I also don’t see Donald II ending well , particularly since Donald I didn’t end that well either, with Big Donnie trying to destroy the American system of government through an illegal seizure of power, something that seems to have completely slipped Yuval’s mind. Well, no one, not even Yuval Levin, can think of everything!
Liz Wolfe, who hangs her hat at Reason, started off her career sounding just a bit like a Trump groupie, even volunteering that she voted for the big guy, but it turns out that Liz hates tariffs and luvs due process—even for immigrants!—and is kinda strong on the whole freedom of speech thing as well, so the bloom seems to be fading from the rose as far as Donnie goes. Speaking of the new, ridiculous 25% tariffs on imported cars (and car parts), Liz notes that
One last thing. Those paying close attention might notice that the most American-made car, with its price least affected by these policies, just happens to be a Tesla Model 3. Fascinating. Wild that the head of that company just so happens to be a very special government employee.
So the guy’s corrupt as well as cruel and stupid? I did not see that coming!
Eli Honig, whose strange career I’ve examined before, moved from literally writing a book—and a very good one at that, Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department—faulting Barr for not indicting Trump while still in office during his first term to making one excuse after another for Trump’s invariably inexcusable (and eminently indictable) behavior. But now Eli is now starting to worry about Trump, a lot! Speaking of the Trump gang’s transporting of supposed bad guys (probably) to those fabulous hellhole prisons in El Salvador in outright defiance of even the appearance of due process, Eli nervously warns us that
The Trump administration is right at the brink of intentional defiance here; the forthcoming details will tell us whether they’ve crossed over into willful lawlessness or merely inexcusable recklessness. And this entire scenario is self-imposed. The administration is free to pursue its immigration agenda aggressively and expeditiously, even if that involves pushing the outer boundaries of the law. Instead, they’ve chosen at best to play fast and loose and at worse [sic] to throw our legal and political system into havoc.
You know something, Eli? I’ve seen this movie—aka “willful lawlessness”—before. And so have you. But you just pretended you hadn’t. Why in God’s name did any of the self-willed amnesiacs on this list expect that Trump II would be anything less than Trump I squared is entirely beyond me.
1. I’ve been writing about Glenn for quite a while, describing myself back in 2013 as a “huge fan”, but since then either he’s been drifting sideways or I have. Anyway, we seem to be realigning, at least on Trump, though not on socialism. Capitalism works, socialism doesn’t. There’s a big difference.
2. Aka, “Gaza must be destroyed”, a play on the words of a cranky old Roman, Cato the Elder, demanding, and ultimately getting, what was surely an unnecessary Third Carthaginian War as “payback” to the long-dead dead Hannibal. Back in the day, when more people took Latin, I wouldn’t have had to explain this.
