Shamelessness was their superpower
For a man with a decades-long obsession with the world laughing at us (him) and a visceral fear of looking weak, Donald Trump sure is determined to give the world plenty to laugh about. Especially for our sworn enemies.
Vice President J.D. Vance cast a tie-breaking vote Friday night in the U.S. Senate to confirm Pete Hegseth, the scandal-spangled, alleged hard-drinking, former Fox News weekend talk show co-host, as Trump’s next secretary of defense. What won’t Hegseth do at Trump’s whim? Shooting Americans in the legs could be the least of it.
Stuart Stevens, former chief Republican strategist and Lincoln Project adviser, posted to social media Friday night that “Trump could have appointed serious Conservatives to his Cabinet. Instead, he picked nuts and freaks. Why? To prove he could make Republican Senators do whatever he told them to.”
“Humiliation through submission,” Stevens concluded.
Republican senators are not the only ones Donald Trump means to humiliate through submission. He just wants to “do them” first to show the world who’s boss and who’s the gimp.
Shamelessness was once the conservative superpower. Now it’s spinelessness. Trump is the Shameless One.
Every Democrat voted against Hegseth. In the end, only three Republicans voted against Trump’s nominee for defense secretary. No one else had the guts to be the final vote to defeat Trump’s pick (CNN):
Vice President JD Vance cast the 51-50 tie-breaking vote after former GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine joined Democrats to oppose Hegseth’s nomination. It was just the second time in history that a vice president has broken a tie for a Cabinet nominee – the other being then-Vice President Mike Pence for Betsy DeVos’ 2017 confirmation to lead the Education Department.
Politico describes McConnell as some kind of principled maverick for taking a stand against Hegseth.
McConnell’s chance to take a stand was during the Senate impeachment vote after Trump was charged with incitement of insurrection. McConnell’s shrinking from his responsibility in February 2021 led directly to Trump’s reelection and the complete debasement of Lincoln’s former Republican Party:
McConnell, in a lengthy statement, warned that whoever leads the Pentagon faces a “daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests.”
“Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been,” he said.
McConnell has failed repeatedly. The world is living with the consequences of his spinelessness before Trump, even if the childhood polio survivor votes against Trump HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or Russophile Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence nomination, or Kash Patel for FBI director.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis was rumored to be a Republican swing vote in the Hegseth confirmation. Tillis in the end swung Trump.
I make a lot of movie references in these pages. The images, characters and narratives are cultural shorthand. Too often, moderate Democrats and progressives would rather satisfy their egos and show off how smart they are by laying out detailed philosophical arguments against political adversaries. This is a mistake. Invoking sounds, images and stories already in people’s heads is more straightforward, as well as quicker than trying to plant and water them until they sprout. That’s not to say that there are not ideas that need cultivating, like renewing a sense of common purpose and civic duty. Those will take time and movies that might never be made.
For now, it is plain that Trump is trying to turn his own supporters into his gimps. I don’t need to paint that picture. Quentin Tarantino has already done that.
