Trump at the Kirk memorial:
Reminder:
At least 600 Americans were fired for failing to show sufficient respect after Charlie Kirk’s murder. Others were shunned or run out of town. Foreigners who wrote something irreverent on social media were denied entry into the country. People were threatened with legal action.
This is the president of the United States, the MAGA role model. What will they say?
Nothing.
Update —
He doubles down, of course:
The president’s pet psychopath is, as they say, a piece of work. Greg Sargent offers 4,500 words or so on Stephen Miller’s obsession not only with stopping immigration by non-whites but with ethnically reengineering the United States to fit his mental image of Western civilization.
Stephen Miller would fail the John Cena challenge.
Miller’s Jewish family fled Antopol, once part of czarist Russia and now Belarus, for the United States between 1903 and 1920. “Wolf Laib [Glosser], who was fleeing a life marked by anti-Jewish pogroms and forced conscription, quickly set about trying to raise more money to bring over relatives.” Miller’s people. Sargent links to an unpublished work by Miller’s grandmother, Ruth Glosser, shared with The New Republic by Miller’s relations. “A Precious Legacy” chronicles the family’s arrivals in the U.S. and their subsequent striving and thriving. Perhaps Miller ought to read it.
Sargent writes:
Yet at the time, many Americans didn’t think people like Miller’s ancestors were fit to become a part of the United States. They were targeted by a virulent strain of nativism toward those from Southern and Eastern Europe that was largely about race—it was rooted in the “scientific racism” of the day. But it also involved a somewhat different claim: that the new arrivals suffered from a “social degeneracy” or “social inadequacy”—two typical phrases at the time—which rendered them a threat to the “civilization” the United States was in the process of becoming. In this telling, as prominent sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross declared in a 1914 broadside, these new immigrants were inferior to Americans who descended from the “pioneer breed” who’d given birth to the American nation. The new arrivals, Ross said, had “submerged” that ancestral connection to the “pioneer breed,” setting the nation on a path to the “extinction that surely awaits it.”
Decades later, Japanese Americans, non-citizens and native born alike, would face the same and race-based discrimination. It landed over 100,000 of them in American concentration camps during World War II, as Rachel Maddow is now covering in her “Burn Order” podcasts. Miller is a type. Maddow finds another like him in the architect of that policy.
Now the driving force behind Donald Trump’s efforts to ethnically cleanse America of undesirable non-Europeans, Miller wants to see immigration all but stopped and pursues deportations with a fanaticism worthy of history’s darkest villains:
Miller’s obsession with sheer numbers—the amounts of various categories of immigrants who are either in the United States or trying to get here—borders on pathological. Take his handling of undocumented immigrants. Miller has repeatedly raged at Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for arrest numbers he deems too low. Since the summer, arrests have hovered at around 1,000 daily. But he’s demanding 3,000 arrests per day, a pace of about one million people per year. To that end, The New York Times reports, the administration has already shifted thousands of federal law enforcement personnel into deportations, hampering critical efforts to combat serious crimes like child and drug trafficking. What’s more, ICE itself is arresting a lot of undocumented immigrants who are not dangerous criminals, diverting resources away from arresting the latter.
Here’s the thing: Miller’s mission of boosting deportation numbers of necessity requires arresting people who are not criminals or gang members—people who have jobs and have become integrated into U.S. communities—because there’s no other way to get the removals up. But it makes us less safe. Miller plainly places more importance on reducing the totals of people here—or trying to get here—than on removing people who pose any actual danger. He appears to be actively prioritizing shifting the ethnic mix of the country over public safety.
Borders on pathological? When a crazed T.E. Lawrence calls for no prisoners in an attack on retreating Turks, he’s working out anger from a past physical/emotional injury at their hands. And Miller’s call for no immigrants? One wants a child psychologist to ask him, “Show me on the doll where the immigrant hurt you.”
I encourage you to read the entire post. Sargent covers Miller’s intellectual mentors and “pathological” drive to roll back immigration policy to the 1920s.
Sargent concludes:
On this point, we’re giving the last word to Miller’s cousin on his father’s side, Alisa Kasmer. Over the summer, Kasmer posted a scalding Facebook takedown of Miller that made big news. She refused all subsequent interview requests. But she agreed to talk to me for this piece.
“We’re Jewish—we grew up knowing how hated we were just for existing,” Kasmer told me. “Now he’s trying to take away the exact thing that his own family benefited from: that ability to create a life for themselves, to prosper, to build community, to have successful businesses—to live a rewarding life.” This—not “saving” our “dying” country, as Miller absurdly claims Trump is doing—will be Miller’s ugly legacy.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
Every year about this time it seems that all the built-up bad news makes me eager for the last year to be done and gone. Underlying that is a vain, unexpressed hope that the next year will be better. It usually isn’t.
As strings of news updates rolled in Sunday morning from shootings in Providence and Sydney (the latter a terrorist attack targeting a Hanukkah celebration, I suggested that there were likely many others killed over the weekend whose deaths were not newsworthy enough for press mention. Then last night came news that police found award-winning actor/director/activist Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer dead in their Los Angeles home, victims of an apparent double homicide. The year 2025 can’t end soon enough.
More updates. More police statements. Investigations are ongoing, etc.
Movies are Dennis Hartley‘s lane, so I’ll stay out of it. The internet will be flooded anyway with remembrances of Reiner’s film legacy and cultural impact. We can all quote lines from his films. More importantly, Reiner and his wife were, by all accounts, warm, decent human beings in a business too often characterized by people who are not.
The New York Times offers statements from colleagues and longtime friends:
Kathy Bates, who starred in Mr. Reiner’s “Misery,” based on the Stephen King thriller, said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that she was “absolutely devastated” after the director and his wife, Michele, were found dead at their home in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Ms. Bates described him as “brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist.”
“He also fought courageously for his political beliefs,” she said, adding: “He changed the course of my life.”
Jamie Lee Curtis issued a statement obtained by Deadline on behalf of herself and her husband, Christopher Guest. Mr. Guest starred in “Spinal Tap,” a heavy metal mockumetary that was one of several films directed by Mr. Reiner that became iconic movies of the 1980s and 1990s.
“Christopher and I are numb and sad and shocked about the violent, tragic deaths of our dear friends Rob and Michele Singer Reiner,” Ms. Curtis said. “Our only focus and care right now is for their children and immediate families and we will offer all support possible to help them,” she added.
“There will be plenty of time later to discuss the creative lives we shared and the great political and social impact they both had on the entertainment industry, early childhood development, the fight for gay marriage and their global care for a world in crisis,” Ms. Curtis’s statement continued.
I’m told Reiner attended the DNC winter meeting in Los Angeles last week. Of course, he did.
The Times adds:
In addition to being a Hollywood hitmaker, Mr. Reiner, a Democrat, was an outspoken supporter of political causes. In 1998, he spearheaded a ballot initiative in California to increase taxes on tobacco to pay for early childhood programs.
In 2005, he joined forces with labor unions to challenge some of the policies of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. In 2006, voters rejected an initiative he led that, if successful, would have raised income taxes on top earners to pay for half-day preschool for all 4 year olds in California. Later, he backed a legal campaign to persuade the Supreme Court to establish same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
The stature of Mr. Reiner and his wife among the biggest names in the Democratic Party was evident in the tributes released after their death.
“Together, he and his wife lived lives defined by purpose,” former President Barack Obama said on social media. “They will be remembered for the values they championed and the countless people they inspired.”
May it be said of us.
A friend held a potluck and film viewing last night to celebrate the work of the late Robert Redford, an actor known for his climate activism. He died on September 16.
Seventeen days to 2026.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
But he does compare him to Putin:
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine.
“Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that.
“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to Putin. “This is a Russian aggressive war against Ukraine — and against Europe.”
He’s not wrong.
The Pax Americana is over. Europe is arming up. Japan is talking about it too. In fact, everyone is. You can’t blame them. But whenever the world does that it doesn’t end well.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
No his mind isn’t mush, Why do you ask?
Sharp as a tack.
If he actually builds this thing we should tear that motherfucker down the minute we get the chance…
“Things” happen. Pity.
Here we go again. He will never stop talking about it. And sadly tens of millions of people believe it too.
And by the way…
I guess Day One was just a rough guesstimate…
The crowd seemed to love it. They laughed and cheered and had a good time. I suspect that he could get up there, drop his pants and start singing “My Sharona” and they just start singing along. He literally can do no wrong with these people.
Speaking of network takeovers, this analysis from Mediaite about the attempt to take over CNN is worth reading.
Imagine if Hunter Biden were helping assemble billions in Saudi and Qatari financing so a progressive media owner could take over Fox News while quietly assuring the White House that he planned to replace hosts and reshape the network’s direction. The national reaction would be immediate. Congressional hearings, emergency ethics panels, a weeklong media frenzy.
Now consider what is actually happening. The developing Paramount–Skydance effort to acquire Warner Bros Discovery involves outreach to sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Reuters reported that Jared Kushner helped connect David Ellison’s team with those funds as they explored financing options for a potential hostile bid. These investments are not confirmed or finalized, and Axios has reported that the foreign investors “have agreed to forgo any governance rights – including board representation – associated with their non-voting equity investments.”
Even still, the implications are serious. When foreign state wealth approaches an acquisition that includes a major American news institution, the public deserves visibility. When the president’s son-in-law is involved in those introductions, the stakes are far higher.
The point isn’t that these situations are identical. It’s that our outrage is bizarrely asynchronous and selective when the structural threat is constant. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison told President Donald Trump he planned sweeping changes at CNN if his takeover succeeded. This is not rumor. It is sourced reporting and has not been disputed by the principals. If accurate, it reflects something the country is unprepared to confront. A potential buyer of a news organization offered political value to a sitting president in the middle of a high-stakes media consolidation effort. And yet? Crickets from most major news outlets.
This is not a narrow corruption story. It is much worse — evidence of a structural weakness in the American democratic system that has only recently been exposed, and shockingly ignored. The United States has few meaningful guardrails preventing political families, foreign sovereign wealth, and corporate acquirers from converging inside a transaction that reshapes national news. That is media capture in the modern sense. It rarely looks like censorship. It looks like a phone call before a regulatory decision. A meeting that never happens because someone signals it shouldn’t. A tonal shift in coverage that feels organic but reflects the results of pressure nobody documented and nobody needed to. Influence that is subtle, diffuse, and consequential.
Many will argue that the American media has always had politically motivated owners — the Hearsts, the Sulzbergers, the Murdochs. But ideological owners are not the core issue. The qualitative change comes when political families with direct stakes in government decisions, foreign governments with geopolitical interests, and corporate bidders seeking regulatory favor operate inside the same deal structure. That is not media partisanship. It is the integration of political power and global capital into a democracy’s information architecture.
This is emerging as one of the central problems we face with this newly empowered authoritarian oligarchy. I am not sure what anyone can do about it. I would guess there are lots of ideas circulating and I’ll try to keep up with it as well as I can. But this is bad, very bad.
And it’s not like social media is going to come to our rescue. Facebook, X and tik tok are now in right wing hands and I’m not at all confident that the Google platforms aren’t going to fully join that crowd.
Still, the internet isn’t going anywhere and there will continue to be ways to disseminate real information. However, with the government now saying they are going to be monitoring it for dissent against “the American way of life” such as traditional values and Christianity I’m not sure how that’s going to work out either.
Maybe this will all blow over. These oligarchs all believe they should run the world and I don’t get the feeling that their ideology is particularly well-thought out beyond their own sense of superiority and distrust of democracy. If you read someone be like Curtis Yarvin, one of their gurus, it’s just a mishmash of weird ideas that sound interesting to nerd types. So maybe they’re capable of evolving? That’s a pretty slim hope but who knows?
In the short term anyway, this is a big threat. I hope that Warners has the spine to fight off this hostile bid from Ellison and Kushner.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
Erika Kirk telling parents don’t let their children go down rabbit holes or they’ll become as@ss*ns.
— WhitesQWall (@QWorldOrderQ) December 13, 2025
Crazy. pic.twitter.com/jFRX8bjsLP
Trump enabler Bari Weiss, the new head of CBS News, has apparently decided that she’s the new Oprah and she held a “Town hall” with Erika Kirk last night that was one of the most unwatchable programs of many a year. I guess she sees herself as the person who will bring far right politics to mainstream news? If so, she needs to find a more interesting way to do it.
Kirk is making a career for herself as a professional widow and she has a very odd affect. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her but something’s off. She’s like a bad sop opera actress. I’m not sure she’s really got what it takes to be the cross-over personality that Weiss apparently thinks she is.
The hype on social media is overwhelming, with Weiss at the center of it all. I guess she thinks she too is a television star?
I dunno:
During a Saturday-night town hall led by Bari Weiss, the recently named editor in chief of CBS News, most of Madison Avenue sought an off-ramp.
The program featured an in-depth interview with Erika Kirk, the CEO of the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk, the group’s former leader. He was assassinated during one of the organization’s events at Utah Valley University, throwing a harsh spotlight on the political and cultural divides present in the U.S.
The event marked a new offering from CBS News. The organization does not typically host town halls or debates on trending issues or with newsmakers. And the choice of Weiss as moderator also raised eyebrows, because in most modern TV-news organizations, senior editorial executives remain off camera, rather than appearing in front of it.
More may be on the way. During the program, Weiss told viewers that “CBS is going to have many more conversations like this in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned. More town halls. More debates. More talking about the things that matter.” That would suggest CBS is planning to devote more hours to the programs.
The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks.
Direct-response advertisers typically pay lower prices in exchange for allowing TV networks to put their commercials on air when convenience allows. A flurry of the ads appearing in one program usually offers a signal that the network could not line up more mainstream support for the content it chose to air.
I suspect money isn’t really the agenda here. The new owner David Ellison and Weiss have different plans for their news division. And it isn’t about delivering news.
The show itself was astonishingly bad. Both women are insufferable but they do seem to love themselves and each other so that’s nice. Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite are doing somersaults in their graves.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!
23 years and counting and this old blog is still standing. Can you believe it? I’m shocked and grateful that readers still come by every day to read our scribbles. I thank my lucky stars for this privilege every single day.
And once again the holiday season is upon us where I ask those of you who have a little extra to help us keep going for another year. We keep this blog free, rather than moving to a paid Substack (and I don’t run ads here so that the reading experience is more pleasant) because we want people to be able to access it if they don’t have the spare funds. But if you can afford it I would appreciate your support, as always.
I know this is only the first year of Donald Trump’s four year term but I think it’s the longest year of my life. In fact, I think I’ve aged ten years and I really can’t afford to do that at this stage in my life. But here we are, deep into the horror we all knew was coming. Last year on this day, I wrote:
This is a tough one, I know. Anyone can be forgiven for tuning out politics and spending their time doing something that doesn’t make them want to put their foot through the TV. Many people have cancelled their subscriptions to this site telling me that they just can’t stand to read about politics anymore and I totally understand it. For the first week after the election I pretty much only watched Netflix and Animal Planet. This is a grim time and we have to do whatever we can to keep our sanity.
But it you are reading this it means that you are still engaging, at least with us, and I want you to know how grateful I am that you are. For me, it’s not possible to stop paying attention for long. It’s just who I am. I can’t look away.I appreciate your sticking with us all this time and especially now. I think that once we’ve licked our wounds and recovered from the staggering disappointment of the last election requiring us to deal with that Orange Monster and his cult for another four years, we’ll all be ready to re-engage with the same commitment we’ve had in the past. What choice do we have?
We were all shell shocked. How could it have happened …. again? And, to be honest, I still feel the residual of it. I think I may have political PTSD for the rest of my life.
We knew it was going to be bad. None of us fooled ourselves about that. But it’s been so much worse than even I imagined.
I knew they wanted to deport millions of people but I never dreamed they would unleash masked thugs on the streets to brutalize anyone who looks like they might not of northern European stock and abduct them. I didn’t think they’d make deals with foreign despots to put deportees in gulags or send people to countries they’d never heard of. I didn’t think they’d have the nerve to go after citizens or shut down tourism or pretty much end legal immigration except for millionaires. But that’s what they’re doing.
I knew he was going to screw the economy. But these tariffs have been even more incoherent and stupid than I anticipated. Trump sees them as a tool to get his way when he has a tantrum and he’s managed to make the United States an unreliable, unstable, economic pariah. That’s quite a come down from our status for the past 80 years.
His vengeance campaign is going strong and he’s managed to purge the government of thousands and thousands of workers, replacing them with unqualified toadies and sycophants. The threats against dissent get louder every day.
Foreign policy and national security are much, much worse. He’s bought into his own hype, deciding that he has unlimited power to literally run the world based upon his own instincts. He listens to no one, has no respect for anyone but the strongmen despots he sees as peers and he’s wrecked the global order without the slightest idea of what to do with it beyond his latest whim. Now he’s starting wars, which one might find surprising for a man so intent upon being seen as the “peace” president but which was completely predictable when you consider his violent, hostile character and personality.
He has lost all restraint, believing that he can say and do anything and no one will stop him.
In a way, you can’t blame him. Everyone around him treats him like a god, slathering on praise that would make Kim Jong Un blush. He tried to overthrow the government and the Supreme Court granted him immunity. He was impeached twice, once after he had left office and yet four years later the people voted him back in. Anyone with his psychological and intellectual deficiencies would just assume they are omnipotent. And frankly, I think that many of the people who are kissing up to him now, have a sneaking suspicion that there’s something supernatural about him too — how else can he get away with what he gets away with?
The truth is that the man is the beneficiary of a political culture that went off the rails some time ago and ran straight into a wall. Only an ignorant egomaniac could climb out of that rubble and see it as a perfect chance to make “deals.”
So, here we are one year later. The good news is that the Democrats have finally cast off their hair shirts and joined the battle which I had begun to wonder would ever happen. But it isn’t because they saw the light. It’s because the American people have picked up the mantle of leadership for themselves.
From Tesla Take downs and Disney boycotts to Hands Off! and No Kings to the awe inspiring off-year elections, average Americans bounced back and decided they were not going to stand by and let this monster destroy the country without a fight. In cities all over the country, average citizens are coming out to support their immigrant neighbors, forming neighborhood patrols and setting up warning systems to sound the alarm when the masked thugs are coming for them.
The people are leading the resistance and the so-called leaders are following. And it’s not just about “affordability” although that’s a huge issue, especially since Trump ran promising to bring down prices on day one and has made everything worse. It’s the fact that everyone who isn’t a MAGA cultist sees that this administration has completely abandoned American ideals, flagrantly defying the Constitution and the rule of law and daring anyone who doesn’t like it to try to defy them.
This is what gives me hope. We are far down the rabbit hole but there’s still a chance to climb back out — and the tens of millions of people who are saying no to this tyranny are going to stand on each others shoulders and make it happen.
We’re going to keep going here at Hullabaloo as long as it takes and I hope that if you have something extra this year, and you value our work, you’ll put a little something in the Christmas Stocking to help keep the lights on. I know there are many great Substacks and other publications that are providing excellent political analysis. The competition for eyeballs is stiff. But the old blogging format still has its place. We do that too but blogging is also a way of synthesizing various trends and stories in the news cycle with both long and short takes every day. It can’t be comprehensive in this wild news environment but over all these years we’ve developed a pretty good instinct for where the zeitgeist is. For people who are busy living their lives, I hope we provide a little bit of insight, humor and shared astonishment at what we are watching take place in our country right now.
You can contribute or subscribe here, or if you’re old school, you can use the address on the left.
I am so very grateful for your kind support all these years and your commitment to our shared goal of trying to make this country a better place. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Happy Hollandaise everyone!!
cheers,
digby
One prominent feature of the Donald Trump presidencies and of the Republican Party for which he stands is the degree to which avarice, tawdriness, and a gnawing hunger for power define them.
We often call it projection when they accuse opponents of unethical behaviors that they themselves revel in. But what looks like whataboutism really is public display of a twisted world view that rejects morality and virtue as the pursuit of fools. Or posers.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reported that during a 2017 Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery, Trump shook his head at the sacrifice of fallen Americans buried there:
He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
It wasn’t a one-off comment. Goldberg again reported that Trump in 2018 refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, blaming the cancellation on rain that did not prevent other dignitaries from attending:
In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Trump cannot conceive of anyone both in or out of public service living by a code of ethics that might forestall grabbing as much wealth for themselves as possible by any means necessary, legal or illegal. Anyone behaving as though driven by a higher calling is virtue signaling. They are secretly frauds like him, and thus detestable. At least he’s honest about being dishonest.
Dear Leader is imparting that warped world view to those around him.
Prem Thakker comments this morning at Zeteo on the proliferation of “vice signaling” in this second Trump administration:
There is no more perfect embodiment of vice signaling, and its embarrassingly hollow cowardice, than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – an alleged serial drunkard and sexual abuser working for Donald Trump, a man found liable for sexual abuse and former friend of the world’s most infamous pedophile – posting memes about attacking boats in the middle of the ocean, and then pinning it all on a subordinate when the going gets tough.
Much hay has been made about “virtue signaling” over the past decade (often, ironically, by some of the most unvirtuous people in public life). A disorienting panic, given how much of US politics in recent years has brought unseen levels of vice. And what was sometimes hidden before is not just out in the open, but winked and nodded at daily.
In one sense, it’s refreshing for the villainry festering in the swamp to be expressed more honestly. On the other hand, they think there’s an appetite for this.
Watching Hegseth, AG Pam Bondi, DHS Secretary Krist Noem, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lie, evade, and deflect with sneering contempt should turn Americans’ stomachs. Trump’s White House believes that rather than evoke revulsion, there are enough Americans of the MAGA persuasion to help them power through criticism of criminality and self-dealing. Trump in fact proudly displays his avarice in festivals of conspicuous consumption at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Pam Beach, Florida.
In the post-apocalyptic “Lucifer’s Hammer,” a remnant Army unit, the “New Brotherhood Army,” resorts to cannibalism. Initially, it is to survive. Later, committing that unspeakable act, one from which there is no turning back, becomes a bonding ritual for new conscripts. Watching cabinet members ritually debase themselves for Trump in front of cameras serves a similar purpose. That puts an ironic twist on Thakker’s observation that Trump and company believe “there’s an appetite for” vice signaling.
Happy Hollandaise, everyone!
