Cromwell

You can’t discredit your opponents; they can only discredit themselves. That was my hope for authoritarian populism during Trump 1.0, but it didn’t happen in spite of the man on golf cart’s best efforts during the pandemic and after the election. Trump’s reputation survived for three reasons: the adults in the room saved him from some of his worst impulses; the voters decided he couldn’t be blamed for his chaotic response to the virus; and his economic program, a souped-up version of Abenomics, worked well in its time. When Biden tried it under different conditions, inflation was the result, and the rest is history.

Trump 2.0 gives us a much better shot at permanently discrediting MAGA. Trump’s worst impulses are becoming policy. No one else can be blamed for tariffs and the war. AI is a threat to everyone, including the base. Only a handful of investors are better off than they were in 2024.

We’ll see what the public really thinks in November.

Years ago, I created a graph with belief in Christian ethics as one axis and belief in Christian metaphysics as the other. I concluded that Christian Democrats were in the yes/yes quadrant, right-wing pagans like Trump were in the no/no quadrant, and that liberals typically believed in Christian ethics, but not Christian metaphysics. I did not pay much attention to the remaining quadrant, because I thought combining a belief in Christian metaphysics with an adherence to pagan ethics was implausible.

Pete Hegseth convinced me I was wrong. Anyone who threatens to rain death and destruction on people who don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus fits perfectly in the fourth quadrant. He is a cartoon Christian.

Are you a Trump enabler or a restrainer? Are you willing to take any steps necessary to keep Trump from blowing up the world and imposing autocracy at home, or will you sit on the sidelines and just grumble quietly in private?

I’m not sure there are any Republicans who meet that test. Susan Collins doesn’t. Murkowski probably comes closest.

J.D. is being loyal to Trump on the war in public, but someone keeps leaking about the reservations he has expressed in private. He’s clearly trying to have it both ways in order to keep the base united behind him in 2028. Is that likely to work?

No. Someone is going to run against him either as a more principled anti-war proponent of America First or as a more abject follower of the Trump line on Iran. Of the two, the former is more likely, particularly if the war turns into an even more painful failure.

Add the war to A.I. as an issue that will divide the base in 2028.

Yesterday’s NYT story confirmed what everyone suspected about the origins of the war. Bibi was given unusual access and sold Trump a bill of goods; Trump was eager to go along; the people around Trump told him that most of the Israeli sales talk was rubbish, but they ultimately deferred to the great man’s golden gut; and the rest is history.

Two observations are pertinent here. First, this information was leaked by one or more (probably more) prominent members of our security apparatus, probably in an effort to avoid responsibility for the ongoing fiasco. Second, there is plenty of ammo here for critics of Israel who think the war was a mistake. We will be hearing plenty from them in the days to come.

In the end, it was TACO Tuesday. Trump and the Iranian regime agreed to a two-week ceasefire. The Iranians will permit unrestricted use of the Strait of Hormuz for that period, and Trump will stop bombing. The Israeli campaign in Lebanon will continue. What should we make of this?

The brief ceasefire just kicks the can down the road. The war, as of now, has accomplished less than nothing. The Iranians still control the strait, the enriched uranium is still there, the regime is still in place, and the Gulf states are still vulnerable.

Trump will spend the next two weeks searching for more leverage to bend the Iranians to his will. If, as I expect, he can’t find any, we’ll just go back to fire and fury.

He was the VP during an unpopular war for which his boss was justly blamed. Privately, he had serious doubts about the war, but he remained quiet in public, partly out of loyalty, and partly for his political survival.

At the last minute, when he was the nominee, he started to distance himself from the war. It was too late. He lost the election and never played a large role in politics again.

It’s HHH. Is it also J.D.? TBD.

Life in the time of Trump.

The war has not gone great.

Trump insists we’re winning

But Iran controls the strait.

Will the great man escalate

Or will he walk away?

Either way, our people lose.

That’s all I have to say.

The excesses of Trump 1.0 undoubtedly drove the center to embrace ideas that were subsequently labeled as “woke.” The 2024 election was partly a referendum on wokeness, however, and the woke lost. As a result, there has been no shift to the left this time, and the princes of wokeness have fallen silent. This will help the Democrats with swing voters in the midterms.

Does that mean wokeness will also be off the ballot in 2028? No. The activist groups will come roaring back to life during the primaries. They will have clout that goes far beyond their numbers. Whether it will be enough to win the nomination remains to be seen.

Pete Hegseth’s view of the world is fairly simple. The forces of light—Team Jesus—are under threat from the forces of darkness—everyone else. In order to avoid its own annihilation, Team Jesus is entitled to rain death and destruction on the rest of the world. To follow international law in an existential battle with the forces of darkness is a sign of weakness, not humanity.

How do the Israelis and our Arab friends fit in this equation? The Israelis are God’s agents in bringing about the end of days, although they will have to convert or be destroyed when it comes. The Arabs presumably are temporary fellow travelers who will be wiped out in the end as well.

I hardly need to tell you that Jesus didn’t support bombing anyone. This is the negation of Christian ethics. Don’t bother telling that to Hegseth, however; he would accuse both you and Jesus of exercising toxic empathy.

If Trump had been our president instead of Lincoln during the Civil War, how would he have changed history? Here are some possibilities:

1. His inaugural addresses would have featured malice for all rather than none;

2. He would have tried to kill Jefferson Davis;

3. He would have threatened the Confederacy with fire and fury, while concurrently negotiating a deal to guarantee the continuing existence of slavery; and

4. He would have threatened to take the cotton and the slaves, since the Confederacy had no oil.

Imagine the following Oval Office address:

”Whoops! I really screwed that one up, didn’t I? I let Bibi and Lindsey and Heggy convince me I was God. After Venezuela, the Iranians wouldn’t dare stand up to me. I would rain death and destruction on them, and they would surrender, just like everyone else. I didn’t have an exit strategy; I had a victory parade. It was all a big mistake.

Now we are stuck in a war with no good alternatives. If we escalate, the price of gas will skyrocket all over the world. Inflation will roar, the economy will cave, and countless Iranian civilians will die. On the other hand, if we just leave, the Iranians will be the masters of the Strait of Hormuz. They will be able to turn the screws on us anytime they want. That just kicks the can down the road.

Either way, you, the American people, will pay dearly for my mistake. I expect you to punish me for it in November. In the meantime, prepare to suffer for the foreseeable future, and just hope it will all be worth it in the end.”

Like Bibi, John Bolton supported bombing Iran before it was cool. Now that the only too predictable shortcomings of that approach have been exposed, he advocates pressuring Russia and China, imposing a blockade on Iranian oil tankers, aiding the Iranian resistance, and, of course, more bombing. Would that work?

The more bombing part I will leave to your imagination. Making a deal with Russia or China would require making concessions to them that Bolton would find appalling. There is no organized resistance in Iran to aid at this point other than the religious and ethnic minorities, which would create a new set of problems. Finally, taking Iranian oil off the market would drive prices up to an entirely new level, thereby causing tremendous economic pain all over the world, including here. Bolton seems to be oblivious to that part of the equation.

Avoiding lengthy wars in the Middle East was always a key part of Trump’s brand, but when the great man changed his mind, the base supported him, even if no one else did. That fact alone should tell you that MAGA is more of a cult of personality than an ideology.

This presents a serious challenge for Vance, who has an ideology, not Trump’s golden gut. Will the base follow him just because he really, really hates the left? TBD.

Trump wanted an AG who was both fanatically partisan and exceptionally effective. Bondi couldn’t pull off that impossible trick, so she settled for wrecking the DOJ.

Her successor will have the same fundamental problem. Will he pull back, choose his battles more carefully, and try to rebuild the office, at the risk of offending his boss, or will he be even less independent than Bondi? TBD.