Cromwell

Congressional Republicans, with substantial assistance from the Democrats, managed to get a housing bill through the system. They were planning to hold a ceremony to publicize their accomplishment. But Trump announced he wouldn’t sign the bill until the GOP somehow muscles his precious SAVE legislation through the system, which simply isn’t going to happen. The ceremony had to be cancelled.

This is another instance in which Trump’s actions remind me of the scene in “Blazing Saddles” where the black sheriff fends off the white lynch mob by threatening to shoot himself. Does the man have any sense of reality? You have to wonder.

The 1876 election was one of the most disgraceful episodes in American political history. Violent white mobs used terror tactics to keep black Republicans from voting in several states in the former Confederacy; the Republicans controlled the process of counting votes in some of these states; the electoral count was disputed; and the issue was ultimately resolved by a corrupt deal in which the Republicans essentially agreed to stop using the military to enforce the law against white supremacists in the South. Reconstruction was mostly a dead letter at that point, anyway, but the deal threw dirt on its grave.

If memory serves me correctly, and I’m pretty sure it does, J.D. has argued that the squalid 1876 process should serve as a model for resolving the kinds of bogus disputes that ultimately led to January 6. That’s a really comforting thought, particularly when you consider that J.D. will be presiding over the meeting of Congress during which the electoral votes will be counted.

Sure, J.D. is plugging his book, but that doesn’t mean he’s desperate enough to let me interview him. If he did, however, it would run something like this:

C: Thanks for coming. It’s been a few years since we did this.

V: It’s always good to answer questions from a global elitist. That’s the lesson I learned from Charlie Kirk. It keeps you on your toes.

C: I’m not going to ask you about Iran, since that’s an ongoing situation. Instead, I’m going to focus on the intersection between morality and politics. It’s a major theme of your book.

V: Works for me.

C: Prior to the 2016 election, you were a critic of Donald Trump. When you changed your mind about him, you said it was largely because he hated the right people. How do you reconcile that statement with your Christian beliefs?

V: Well, first of all, Trump doesn’t really hate anyone.

C: Say what? He even admitted it at Kirk’s funeral. Hating is what he does. It never stops.

V: The president has a way of communicating with people that is designed to get their attention. When he feels strongly about something or someone, he makes that clear. That doesn’t mean he really hates them, regardless of his literal language. He’s a great guy when you get to know him.

C: You can understand why people like me have trouble believing that.

V: You don’t know him as well as I do.

C: What about the part where you approve of him hating the right people? What does that say about you?

V: I don’t hate people, either. I do have a lot of trouble with some left-wing ideas. I express myself forcefully when I am confronted with them. Sometimes I go a little too far. I regret that.

C: Like when you said the Haitian residents of Springfield were eating pets? You knew that was a lie, but you repeated it anyway because it was consistent with your narrative about immigrants.

V: I didn’t know for sure it was a lie. Anyway, the narrative was important, and in a larger sense, the statement was true. The Haitians were taking housing and jobs away from real Americans. It’s just another way of damaging the culture and the country.

C: Whether you and Trump are prodigious haters or not, there are certainly plenty of noisy Republicans who are. You won’t deny that, will you?

V: Maybe. Maybe not. I can’t see into the heart of everyone who voted for Trump and me.

C: When you run for president in 2028, are you going to repudiate the views of people like Bronze Age Pervert and the Tate brothers? They’re pure pagans. Your brand of conservative Christianity is the complete antithesis of their beliefs.

V: The Republican Party is a big tent. We welcome everyone who wants to be part of it. If that means we have a debate, that’s fine.

C: In other words, you view the pagans as a valuable ally in your fight against the left? You would rather associate with them than with people who believe in Christian ethics and vote for Democrats?

V: I’m not God. I’m not the ultimate judge of people. If they want to vote for me, I welcome them into the tent.

C: But you don’t have the same level of tolerance for the left. Are you going to keep the pagans in line by telling them the left is even worse than you are, from their perspective?

V: Of course. It’s important to focus on who the enemy really is. Conservative Christians and pagans believe the same things about the feminizing of the country and the need to accommodate more male swagger. We have to unite to put an end to that state of affairs.

C: Now I’d like to talk about your government and the Godly Society.

V: That’s not a term I recognize.

C: It’s a term I invented. It refers to the belief that America would be a much better place if we had stronger families with just one wage earner–the husband. The wife would stay home and have lots of children.

V: OK, I recognize that.

C: I think you would also agree that the American economy, as it currently exists, won’t permit that to happen. Women are an essential part of the workforce, and most families couldn’t get by if they didn’t work. As a result, we can’t have the Godly Society without major changes to the economy.

V: That’s the point of our tariffs and deportations. We are trying to create a massive shortage of labor, particularly in industrial jobs that have been traditionally done by men. Wages will go up, and women will be able to go back home and take care of their kids. The rest of the labor shortage will be addressed by technological change.

C: You will admit that nothing like that has happened in the last two years, and Trump appears to be declaring a trade truce with China, which is the source of most of our trade issues.

V: It’s too early to tell. We will have trillions of dollars of new investment in manufacturing over the new few years that will push us towards the Godly Society. Not to mention AI.

C: How does AI fit into this vision?

V: AI is the goose that will lay the golden egg. We’ll be so rich, women won’t have to work anymore.

C: Exactly who will be that rich? Will it be a handful of techno-aristocrats and capitalists, or the entire country?

V: The entire country. Everyone will benefit from the improvements in productivity.

C: What about the workers who find themselves unemployed as a result of the massive changes to the economy? Are you proposing a huge increase in the size of the welfare state to deal with them? There are a lot of business owners and Republican politicians who have always opposed that kind of legislation. For his part, Trump has consistently opposed any kind of meaningful AI legislation.

V: We’ll deal with that issue if and when the time comes. For now, the important thing is to win the productivity battle with the Chinese.

C: Thank you for your time.

J.D. and Marco Rubio have a lot in common. Both of them are ambitious and want to be president; both are opportunistic and have changed their ideologies dramatically over the years; both were once fierce Trump critics but went over to the dark side several years ago; and both purport to see the world through religious, not materialistic, eyes. Will they end up running against each other in the one-man primary?

Trump will want to run a competition similar to his reality TV show, but I don’t think Marco has the heart for it. J.D. has more of a hold on the base than he does and is the heir apparent; we are also told that they are friends. Anyway, what could Marco say to distinguish himself from J.D.? They’re both part of the same rotten administration, and they will both be required to defend every bit of its wretched record.

If J.D. gets meaningful opposition, and I suspect he will, it will come from outside the administration.

I once again ask you to assume that Trump plans to follow the Constitution and permit a free and fair presidential election that doesn’t include him as a candidate. How will he handle this state of affairs?

He can’t tolerate someone else being the focus of attention, and he loves competition and cliffhangers, so the answer is fairly obvious. First, he will make “jokes” about running for a third term as long as possible in order to keep up the suspense and paralyze all of the potential campaigns. At the last reasonable moment, he will concede that he isn’t running but insist that all of the candidates suck up to him in order to win the one-man primary. Only at the very end of the process will he reveal his endorsement. He will then dominate the convention and, in all likelihood, the last few months of the campaign.

That will be his plan, anyway. It won’t work if an insurgent wins the nomination, which is a legitimate possibility. That would drive him absolutely nuts.

Assume that you are a GOP presidential wannabe and that Trump will permit a fair election in 2028. J.D. is the heir apparent. How do you get past him?

The first step is to win over the Reaganite wing of the party–the Nikki Haley voters. They represent about 40 percent of the GOP electorate. You can do this by taking traditional GOP positions on supporting NATO, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Promise to restrain China instead of making it a partner. Criticize some of the administration’s more outrageous tariffs. Support Trump on securing the border but promise to limit deportations to serious criminals. All of that should lock up the Haley vote.

Next, you need to peel off about a quarter of the MAGA base. You can do this in small chunks. The racist vote is yours for the taking. You can win over opponents of Israel by attacking the Iran war and the Vance deal. J.D. will probably equivocate on tax increases on the rich to shore up Social Security; be a populist here and support them. Appeal to barstool reactionaries by taking the Trump line, not the hard pro-life position, on abortion. Finally, go after J.D. on AI and data centers. His ties to tech barons will not help him with that issue.

Two other factors beyond your control could also help you. If Trump is viewed as a failure by the electorate in 2028, Vance will wear his unpopularity. In addition, you may be able to win primaries just with the Haley vote if more candidates pile in to split the base. Don’t count on either of those things, however; hope is not a strategy.

In a sense, you could say that Trump’s policy towards Ukraine has been a success; he has passed the responsibility for arming and financing the Ukrainian government to the EU without causing disruptions that changed the trajectory of the war. But was that really his objective?

The problem with “America First” is that it ultimately forces the rest of the world to become independent of you. What Trump really wanted was to impose his will on both Ukraine and the EU in the manner of an organized crime boss, not simply to reduce American costs. The Ukrainian government is already showing far less inclination to suck up to him, and the EU will follow. Then what?

The loss of American influence, of course.

Nobody doubts J.D.’s credentials as a committed conservative Catholic. But the GOP’s reactionary wing also includes such brash, noisy pagans as Bronze Age Pervert and the Tate brothers. Will J.D. repudiate these unlikely allies in 2028?

No. Trump didn’t, and J.D. won’t, either. He goes quiet when their names are mentioned because he thinks their votes are essential to win in 2028. Look for him to keep them on board by projecting lots of false humility about his values, by talking a lot about testosterone, and by using apocalyptic language about the feminized left.

It seems clear that the Iranians are doing their best to drive a wedge between America and our erstwhile Israeli allies during the negotiations. Should we be alarmed by that?

If you’re Bibi, absolutely–losing Trump’s support could cost you the upcoming election. If you’re Nikki Haley or Lindsey Graham, yes–you act as if Israel is America’s 51st state. But for the rest of us, no–the traditional justifications for an Israeli exception to America First disappeared decades ago.

I haven’t read J.D.’s new book yet–I have absolutely no interest in giving him any of my money–but I’ve read enough interviews and reviews to know what it is about. J.D. is making the argument that America is too interested in material gain and individual satisfaction and not enough in community and traditional morality. To put it in my terms, J.D. is portraying himself as a CD. Will this fly?

There are two serious obstacles. First, the GOP basically drove the CDs out of its ranks after the failures of George W. Bush; it is now the party of toxic empathy, not compassionate conservatism. Second, J.D. is way too opportunistic and ambitious to write off the large segment of his party that revels in cruelty to its opponents; as a result, he uses MAGA, not Christian, language when he speaks to the base. It would, therefore, be a serious mistake to take him at his word when he engages with the center-left; that is just one of his political personas.

Trump wanted to improve the look of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He gave a company with previous connections to him a no-bid contract to make the water appear to be a brighter blue. Instead, the water is full of algae; the material added to the bottom is coming off; and the pool will probably have to be drained. Trump blames vandals for this state of affairs.

It’s another perfect metaphor for Trump 2.0. He wrecks everything he touches–even things he genuinely wants to improve. He’s the opposite of King Midas.

J.D., a conservative Catholic convert, is naturally a sincere and passionate opponent of abortion. His boss, on the other hand, sees the issue as a potential hand grenade, and does his best to avoid saying or doing anything about it. J.D. swallowed his scruples to become part of the ticket. What will he do if he becomes the leading man?

This will be a tough one for him. If he continues the Trumpian line, he will be accused of being an opportunist and a hypocrite, and he will open up a line of attack from the religious right element of the base. If he doesn’t, he risks inflaming the majority opinion against him and losing the general election. How will he square the circle?

I think he will say that our current experience, to say nothing of Prohibition, tells us that legislation alone will not eliminate a practice with majority support; the real task is to win over hearts and minds. As a result, he will speak against abortion at every opportunity, but he won’t attempt to take legislative or administrative action against it until it becomes clear that the public supports him on the issue.

In addition to the vast amount of money Trump has cost American consumers, his war has added tens of billions of dollars to the federal deficit. His plan is to put those costs on the national credit card.

What would happen if the GOP had to raise taxes to pay for the war? Would Republican voters be as tolerant of Trump and his military adventures if they had to write large checks immediately to pay for them?

I have my doubts.

J.D. took a swipe at the Israeli far right during his press conference on Thursday, arguing that it had no friends in the world except Trump, so it should trust him and shut up. Will that comment hurt him in 2028?

No. J.D. undoubtedly won some points with rabid Trump admirers–a large portion of the base–and with the America First purist wing of MAGA. He can afford to alienate Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, and the relatively small number of supporters of the Israeli exception to America First; most of them voted for Haley in 2024, anyway.

The contrast could not be starker; Putin is still grinding away in Ukraine after more than four years, while Trump cut and ran after four months. What does that tell us about the two men?

If you despise Trump, his Iran fiasco proves yet again that he is a self-absorbed bully who retreats and betrays his allies any time he meets serious resistance. If you’re a Trump admirer, you say that, unlike Putin, he is a flexible pragmatist who knows how to cut his losses and spin them as victories.

In this case, I would say that both statements are true.