Norwegian journalist Їne Back Їversen has some thoughts about the BFF who’s helping the Russians work the president. (I can’t vouch for all of this but FWIW, X’s AI Grok substantiates the sources.)
1: Let’s talk about Steve Witkoff, because I think the narrative of him being a “useful idiot” is a dangerous trap to walk in.
It’s darker than that.
Witkoff has spent three decades swimming in russian money, russian mob circles, and russian real-estate pipeline.
A thread 🧵
2: He isn’t just “a MAGA dude” advising Trump on Russia–Ukraine. Witkoff is of russian descent, built his fortune through NYC networks flooded with post-Soviet criminal money, and is now pushing the kremlin wishlist so called “peace plan” It’s not a coincidence. It’s continuity.
3: In the 1990s, Manhattan’s luxury real estate became the #1 laundromat for russian criminal networks fleeing the collapse of the USSR.
The FBI has testified to Congress about this era. It was no secret.
And who rose to power right then? Steve Witkoff & Donald Trump.
4: Trump Tower in the 80s–90s was filled with: •russian mobsters •arms dealers •money launderers •“businessmen” tied to Semion Mogilevich •shell companies buying in cash
Trump didn’t just tolerate it — he blindly” welcomed it.
5; Trumps buddy Witkoff played on the commercial version of the same ecosystem.
While Trump handled condos bought with suitcases of cash, Witkoff handled big office buildings financed through opaque partnerships & distressed sellers.
Two men, one pipeline of russian capital.
6: fast-forward 2024–25 Witkoff is Trump’s point man on Russia–Ukraine policy.
A man with: • zero diplomatic background • zero Ukraine expertise & • A large russian network • A history of loud Pro-kremlin stans
And here we are again, with the U.S flashing russias wishlist.
7: Déjà vu: 2016, Paul Manafort(Former Trump Campaign Chairman) met Konstantin Kilimnik (a russian intel asset) to discuss a “peace plan” for Ukraine that: • legitimized russia’s invasion • installed a Moscow-approved leader • lifted sanctions • forced Kyiv to negotiate under duress
Sound familiar?
8: And how absurd isn’t it, to hear Trump again and again say “The war would have never started if I were president”
When he knows darn well russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. And you better believe that the Manafort “Peace Plan” conversations, Trump have heard of many MANY times.
9: And here we are again, this time with a 28-point “peace plan” presented handed over by Witkoff.
Same unhinged demands. Same twisted narratives.
This is not innovation. This is recycling Kremlin policy. Delivered by business partners disguised as diplomacy.
10: Let’s go back to Trump round 1 again.
It’s easy to forget how disturbing Trump’s private meetings with Putin were: •No US officials present •No transcripts • No accountability •Interpreters’ notes seized •Policy outcomes mysteriously aligned with Russian goals
11: And it’s the same now; • Trump’s closed Alaska meeting with Putin. • Witkoff’s quiet trips to Moscow • Off-record negotiations about Ukraine •No transparency? Just “take my word for it”
Why is US policy on Ukraine being decided behind closed doors, without Ukraine?!
12: Yet the US demand from Ukraine is a the complete opposite, constant transparency, public statements, oversight, disclosures, visibility, “THANK ME!”
But from Russia? Not a single demand, just “give them two weeks”
This isn’t diplomacy. It’s appeasement.
13: Witkoff’s public statements are indistinguishable from russian propaganda regarding russian language, “Territory is negotiable.” Etc
Even in 2018, Witkoff criticized Western economic sanctions against Russia, imposed after Russias illegal annexation of Crimea.
14: And notice how Witkoff consistently omits: • russian war crimes • mass deportations • missile strikes on civilians • nuclear blackmail • the documented genocide intent
Selective ignorance. Aimed to whitewash & erase russias crimes & force the victim to compromise.
15: And many say; Witkoff & Trump are business men, or they want a deal.
Their deals with Russia was done long ago, many times, now they Witkoff & Trump is doing their part of it:
Appease Moscow. Pressure Ukraine. Undermine sanctions. Force a deal. Declare it “peace.”
16: Witkoff made his career in a world where russian money laundering was normalized depicted as “investors,” “partners,” or “buyers.” The same world that Manafort monetized, Trump depended on & russian intelligence used as cover.
They didn’t exit that world, they brought it in.
17: Witkoff operates with zero scrutiny, because he’s framed as a “businessman” instead of a geopolitical actor.
But he is shaping: • US posture toward russia • U.S stance on war crimes • The direction of NATO policy • Ukraines future security
This isn’t coincidence. It’s repetition. A pattern. Collaborations.
19: Witkoff is openly declaring the U.S advocates for russia. It’s not concealed. It’s directly hostile to Ukraine & EU security.
That’s the man who sit with russia tasked to “negotiate” Ukraine, without Ukraine at the table.
The pressure, demands & ultimatum fall on Ukraine.
20: Witkoff is a russian echo chamber.
“Ukraine should give up land.” “Ukraine can’t win.” “Peace requires Ukrainian concessions.”
These are not “opinions.” These are Kremlin foreign-policy objectives. And Witkoff have publicly stated this long before his current position.
21: The pattern is clear:
1990s: russian capital enters NYC real estate, money that both Trump & Witkoff thrives on. 2016; russia uses these lines for political access 2024 : Witkoff re-emerges as Trump’s Russia whisperer 2025: A new Kremlin-shaped “peace plan” is born
22: The “russia hoax”-is far from a hoax. It’s misunderstood. Are they russian agents? Probably not. Are they vessels for russian policies with a history in the network. 1000%!
They are men whose worldview, networks & financing were shaped inside a system of russian influence.
23: The question isn’t “Is he compromised?” The question is:
Why is US policy on Russia being shaped by someone whose entire worldview was formed in the one American industry russian intelligence spent decades infiltrating?
Ask; why is there so much willingness to ignore it?
As I noted yesterday Witkoff was recorded giving the Russians tips on how to manipulate Trump. And it worked:
Reporter: Do you think do you think that Ukraine was being asked to give too much land back to Russia? I know at one point you said it shouldn't have to give any.
Trump: The way it's going, if you look, it's just moving in one direction. So eventually that's land that over the… pic.twitter.com/iOWBHNzO28
Reporter: Do you think do you think that Ukraine was being asked to give too much land back to Russia? I know at one point you said it shouldn’t have to give any.
Trump: The way it’s going, if you look, it’s just moving in one direction. So eventually that’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway…
It took the Iraq invasion to get me off the couch in mid-career. Then came Abu Ghraib and extraordinary renditions. I began my op-ed on the latter like this:
Gulfstream’s executive jets are popular with U.S. intelligence agencies, and luxurious. More luxurious than destinations their manacled and diapered passengers have disappeared to thanks to “extraordinary rendition,” also known as “outsourcing torture.”
For terror suspects en route to exotic prisons in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan, the tranquilizing suppositories are complimentary.
The masterminds of those atrocities never stood in the dock in the U.S. or the Netherlands. I despair that the people resonsible for this won’t either. The New Yorker‘s Sarah Stillman explains:
One Saturday morning in early September, I got a WhatsApp video call from eleven strangers locked inside a secretive detention camp in a forest in Ghana. Their faces looked glazed with sweat and stricken with fear. In the background, I could hear birdsong and the drone of insects. An armed guard watched over the group as they huddled around a shared cellphone.
“There are big snakes here, and scorpions!” a male voice with an American accent called out.
“My stomach is really hurting, and we have to beg for food,” another man said.
A third added, “We fear we’ll be tortured and killed.”
A car salesman and a real estate agent introduced Stillman to their plight. One prisoner had worked for UPS, another worked in his mother’s catering business. A third “composed R. & B. music.” Some hed fled to the U.S. for asylum. That was before January 20 of this year.
All of them had been taken from the United States against their will. Nearly all had been granted forms of legal relief that bar the government from deporting them to their home countries. At the heart of the protections they’d received was one of the most basic and sacrosanct concepts in both U.S. and international law: non-refoulement. This principle means that no nation should intentionally deport or expel people to a place where they are likely to face torture, persecution, death, or other grave harms.
The Catch 22 of the Trump 2.0 administration is that it has no principles.
I mentioned the group Trump disappeared to Eswatini back in September. Digby reported in October on a man freed from prison after a life behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit. Upon his release, ICE snatched him for deportation before he could go home. She asked, “What the hell have we become? My God“
I haven’t finished reading Stillman’s piece. It brings back bad memories and I need a break. I spent time on Twitter yesterday and this morning until my very spirit felt drained. The shameless lies and casual cruelty were too much. What have we become … again?
Tokyo Rose Garden won’t bat an eye. Nevertheless (Daily Beast):
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been personally linked to the brutal ICE raids sweeping America.
Her 11-year-old nephew’s mother, Bruna Ferreira, is now in custody at an ICE facility at Louisiana, facing deportation to Brazil.
Michael Leavitt, the press secretary’s New Hampshire-based brother, had a relationship with Ferreira, resulting in the birth of son Michael Leavitt Jnr.
[…]
A source familiar to the matter told the Daily Beast that “This individual is the mother of Karoline’s nephew and they have not spoken in many years. The child has lived full time in New Hampshire with his father since he was born. He has never resided with his mother.”
The statement about the child never residing with his mother “since he was born” is contradicted by a 2014 North Andover Eagle-Tribune story on Michael Leavitt’s winning $1 million on Draft Kings. The three shared a condo in Atkinson, Mass New Hampshire. Daily Beast reported that but failed to note that it contradicted their “source” (White House? DHS?) quoted earlier.
WBUR could not immediately confirm whether the boy only lived with his father after the couple separated. The split happened about 10 years ago, according to a family member.
Karoline Leavitt declined to comment on the arrest. The administration official said, “Karoline had no involvement whatsoever in this matter.”
Well, that’s not surprising.
DHS spokesliarTriciaMcLaughlin claims Ferreira has a previous arrest for battery. However, WBUR could find no battery charges in Massachusetts’ online court records.
That’s not surprising either.
“Bruna has no criminal record whatsoever, I don’t know where that is coming from. Show us the proof,” said Todd Pomerleau, an attorney for Ferreira (ABC News):
Pomerleau also said Ferreira entered the country lawfully, previously held DACA status and is currently in the process of obtaining a green card. He said his client was arrested in her car in Massachusetts after being stopped with no warrant, adding that he now has to litigate her case in Louisiana thousands of miles away from her home. Pomerleau said he did not believe that his client’s connection to Karoline Leavitt could affect the case, adding that he believes it’s just “happenstance.”
Another brown person stopped and arrested at random that DHS must now redfine as a dangerous criminal to support its “worst of the worst” narrative.
Update 2: Corrected state above. Atkinson is in New. (h/t HH for catching that.)
Update:
This is the scandal. Trump isn’t targeting dangerous people. He’s targeting peaceful immigrants. Almost exclusively. https://t.co/0okbTlnVQq
I would imagine that most of you have heard about the Olivia Nuzzi account of her relationship with RFK Jr and her former fiance Ryan Lizza’s tell all about the same question. I’m not sure why we should care about all these creepy people but it’s a titillating sorry and everybody likes on of those on some level.
I read the excerpt of her book in Vanity Fair and frankly, it’s incomprehensible. She clearly had a very talented editor at New York magazine because this is just .. no. I also read the first (free) installment of Lizza’s tell all and it was an explicit tabloid account of it from his perspective. Yuck. (I didn’t read the second installment because I didn’t want to pay for it but from what I can gather, RFK Jr. is one sick, misogynist monster and Lizza is a nasty little creep as well.)
This question posed by Inae Oh of Mother Jones is the big question to me and it’s one I’ve asked myself my whole life. Him? Why?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name may not appear in Olivia Nuzzi’s forthcoming memoir, American Canto. But the 71-year-old secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is at the burning core of Nuzzi’s return to the public eye this month, after her firing last year over a “digital affair” with the then-presidential candidate while she covered the 2024 campaign for New York magazine. The unfolding drama, following the publication of a lavishly photographed New York Times profile and Vanity Fair excerpt, is expected to grow more fraught when a reported collection of “sexually charged” text messages appears next month.
American Canto, as it appears in Vanity Fair, is profoundly unreadable, packed with prose that relies on a reader’s tolerance to witness humiliating forms of self-sabotage. Nuzzi describes outrunning a California wildfire while, for some reason, obsessing over Kennedy as she tries to escape. (She also appears to invite readers into conflating the fire she is fleeing with the devastating Palisades wildfire that destroyed the region two months later.) As much asAmerican Canto reads like a diaristic slot machine of half-thoughts and self-absorbed efforts at profundity, it is also startlingly effective in its depiction of a woman deteriorating in the throes of potent desire. Here is how Nuzzi describes “the Politician.”
I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a madman; he was not quite mad the way they thought, but I loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. “Baby, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s not a worm.”
Again, him?
I ask myself that question about Trump as well but at least he had the promise of real money. What in the world do all these women see in Bobby Jr? He supposedly had so many affairs that his then-wife ended up killing herself.
I knew it. Trump and his henchmen were so in love with themselves after their phony victory parade in the middle east, they genuinely thought they could just knock out peace in Ukraine and call it a day:
It started with an October order from President Trump to his national security team: Come up with a plan to end the Ukraine war just as they had halted the fighting in Gaza.
On a flight back from the Middle East, in the afterglow of brokering a deal between Israel and Hamas, envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner began writing the first draft of what would eventually become a 28-point peace framework to end the four-year war, according to U.S. officials and a person familiar with the situation.
Witkoff and Kushner’s monthlong effort to draft the proposal relied on input from a Kremlin insider who held secret meetings with the aides in Miami, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said. A senior Ukrainian official also organized at least two calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, officials said.
Because the two situations were so much alike.
These people are all narcissists who actually believe Dear Leader is a magic man. He is not. And neither are they.
By the way:
Since the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire went into effect on October 10, 2025, at least 345 Palestinians have been killed and 889 injured by Israeli attacks, according to the Gaza Government Media Office as of November 22, 2025.
US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, fresh from the triumph of the Gaza peace deal, held a phone call last month with a senior Kremlin official to suggest they work together on a similar plan for Ukraine — and that Vladimir Putin should raise it with Donald Trump.
In an Oct. 14 phone call that lasted a little over five minutes, Witkoff advised Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, on how the Russian leader should broach the issue with Trump. His guidance included suggestions on setting up a Trump-Putin call before Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s White House visit later that week and using the Gaza agreement as a way in.
“We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you,” Witkoff told Ushakov, according to a recording of the conversation reviewed and transcribed by Bloomberg.
To read the full transcript of the call, click here.
It’s like they’re dealing with a stupid child:
At first, I saw it without sound and thought Witkoff had heard the U.S. 🇺🇸 anthem and placed his hand on his heart.
Democrats have long expressed concern about the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold congressionally appropriated funding, arguing that the White House is attempting to circumvent Congress’ power of the purse. But so far, their demands to add guardrails to funding bills to stop the administration from engaging in so-called “pocket rescissions” have gone unanswered.
One senior House Republican, though, did try to add such a provision to an appropriations bill — only for the White House to intervene and stop him, NOTUS has learned.
The Office of Management and Budget’s director, Russell Vought, is the mastermind behind the administration’s pocket rescissions strategy which involves a request from the president to withhold money already appropriated by Congress. But the request comes so late in the fiscal year that Congress doesn’t have enough time to act within the allotted timeframe. and the administration considers the money rescinded once the fiscal year ends.
[…]
But in July, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the 12 so-called “cardinals,” quietly added a provision to the fiscal 2026 bill for the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Subcommittee — which funds the agencies most impacted by Trump’s two rescissions requests — that would have addressed pocket rescissions. The clause, Sec. 7065, would have given Congress an extra 45 days to consider rescissions requests submitted late in the fiscal year.
After the bill text was released, Vought reached out to Díaz-Balart, explaining that the White House was concerned about the provision, one senior White House official told NOTUS. The official said that after Vought relayed the issue, Díaz-Balart removed the provision.
The White House did more than just reach out to Díaz-Balart. Republican appropriators started receiving pressure from the White House to not support the bill if the provision remained, according to a source familiar with the matter. A second source familiar with the matter told NOTUS that some GOP appropriators contacted the White House shortly after the bill came out to let officials know that they were “working to get it out.”
Members quickly spoke to Díaz-Balart about the provision, urging him to remove it. Rep. Andy Harris, a top appropriator and chair of the House Freedom Caucus, which has continuously supported the White House’s rescissions efforts, confirmed to NOTUS that he spoke with the Florida congressman, saying “there was discussion about (the provision) and it never came to fruition.”
I have no doubt that Trump doesn’t know what rescission is. He’s busy with redecorating anyway. So Vought is running the budgetary process in the White House and has no use for the Congress. As he promised. In Project 2025.
Let’s see if the Sup[remes sign off on this.If so, it will be among the worst betrayals of the constitution we’ve ever seen. Until recently we were told that the Justices are “originalists” unwilling to acknowledge the living constitution. If they do this the constitution will effectively be dead and the founders will be screaming from their graves.
The first ten months of the second Donald Trump administration feels like ten years, and nothing brings that home more than the recent exclusive from Reuters that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — also known as Elon Musk’s pet project — has ended its reign of terror eight months earlier than mandated.
The era of Elon feels like a bygone time, back when Trump’s return to the White House still felt surreal, as if we were all trying to run through water, stunned that the country actually voted for him again after all he’d done. To make matters worse, he seemed to be even worse than he was during his first term, his bromance with the world’s richest man offering the most vivid evidence that we were already halfway down the rabbit hole and it was only going to get weirder.
Musk was everywhere, glued to Trump’s side like a giant leech, practically running the transition from Mar-a-Lago, where he took a bungalow so he could be there to advise Trump around the clock. But his personal baby was DOGE, and the president was so dazzled by his vast fortune that he quickly gave Musk the mandate and the power to raze federal programs by any means he felt necessary. Having recently bought Twitter and immediately cut personnel to the bone, Musk felt he had more than enough experience and knowledge to do the same with the federal government.
DOGE ended up being a collection of young nerds Musk imported from his other companies, led by a couple of trusted aides, and the first thing they did was dig into data the government collects on companies and individuals. (Why that access was so vital has never been fully explained. But some suspect it was to be used for Grok, Musk’s artificial intelligence project.) DOGE started slashing programs that Musk personally deemed to be wasteful, like medical research. Contracts were cancelled willy-nilly; businesses were shuttered. Foreign aid was of particular interest to Musk, who is originally from South Africa, so he immediately targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and programs that were keeping people alive around the world. They were abruptly halted. A study published in the Lancet projects that the cuts could result in 14 million deaths by 2030, of which four million will be children. DOGE has quite a legacy.
Musk famously appeared at a conservative gathering wielding a chainsaw and proclaiming, “this is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” The federal workforce was devastated. As of Nov. 18, data collected by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service indicates that over 211,000 civil servants have left the workforce, most of that a result of the DOGE purge.
From a financial perspective, DOGE’s value for the American taxpayer has been negligible. A POLITICO analysis from August showed that DOGE had saved less than 5% of its claimed savings. No wonder they are closing up shop and sneaking out of town.
The story of the department’s dissolution is a testament to how dysfunctional it was — and how Musk’s supposed business genius is clearly overrated. POLITICO’s Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman wrote about the succession drama that took place when Trump and Musk had their dramatic, public falling out last spring. With Musk gone, the young DOGE employees — including one who infamously went by Big Balls — were left adrift, unsure if they were going to be ousted as well.
Rival factions formed within the group, with battles for control culminating in the bizarre spectacle of DOGE’s top operational lead being fired and refusing to leave. People throughout the administration worked behind the scenes to uproot various DOGE employees until they finally brought in a veteran hand to run the General Services Administration, where DOGE had been burrowed, and he finally got control of the situation.
Now, with DOGE officially disbanded, there are a few remnants dispersed across the government, such as the National Design Studio, which has been assigned to make the government websites more attractive. A few people have been reassigned to jobs at the same agencies they had been tasked with cutting. But it’s over.
Musk had no idea what he was doing. Like so many wealthy men — including Donald Trump and most of his Cabinet — he was convinced that because he had been successful at running a company and making money, he was a genius who could do anything. And like so many who erroneously believe that government should be run like a business, Musk failed to understand that it is a completely different animal, requiring political skills, coalition building and finding consensus. His strategy of tearing everything up and fixing it later simply doesn’t work in government (and frankly, it’s unlikely it works very well in business either).
But Musk did manage to make the real slash-and-burn artist, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, look like a strategic genius by comparison. It could even be said that Musk paved the way for the much more systematic and ruthless government cutting under Vought without all the drama.
Months after their dramatic feud came to a climax, there now seems to be something of a rapprochement between Musk and Trump. They sat together for an awkward few moments at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in September, and last week Musk attended the state dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Musk even managed to get his chosen NASA administrator renominated for the post by Trump, who had withdrawn it because he’d given money to Democrats. On the other hand, Trump took a rude swipe at him at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, saying “You’re lucky I’m with you, Elon,” and wondering if he’d ever thanked him.
A year ago all you heard from Republicans, Democrats and the political media was that the Democrats had lost the Latino vote for the foreseeable future because almost half of them had defected to the GOP permanently. They hated “woke” they didn’t like the newer immigrants, they hated Democratic economics, didn’t trust “authoritarians” and communists etc. etc. Texas even went so far as to assume they could redistrict to accommodate their new converts and win five more seats in the House.
For some reason, they also believed that they could terrorize Hispanics throughout the country in the most brutal way possible and split up families and communities all while making economic conditions for everyone worse and they’d stick with them.
Well, they aren’t:
The MAGA Republican Party ‘s greatest weakness is that they believe their own hype. I guess that makes sense since they worship the greatest hype artist (liar) in world history. Democrats should resist buying into it too and adjusting their strategy accordingly. The GOP is living in a dream world.
The right’s intellectuals gazed long into an abyss. And guess what?
George Packer and Jonathan Chait offer their takes on how American conservatives became reactionaries. Both critique the intellectual decay on the right while, being intellectuals themselves, overlooking the abyss.
Packer has been reading “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right” by political theorist Laura K. Field. Several schools of thought pulled like magnetic poles at conservatism: Straussians at the Claremont Institute, post-liberal Catholic critiques of liberalism at Notre Dame and Harvard, and techno-monarchist rejection of democracy in Silicon Valley.
MAGA reactionaries, Packer explains, “believe that justice and the good life can be found only in traditional sources of faith and knowledge.” Liberalism and pluralism, they believe, “have corroded the moral and spiritual fiber of America by accommodating false ideologies and harmful groups. Their modern hero is Viktor Orbán.”
(Those harmful groups wouldn’t happen to be non-white and non-European, would they?)
The right’s dark visions need enemies to propel their movement and sharpen their focus. “The movement is, in many respects, untethered from the ordinary decency and common sense that characterize America at its idealistic best,” Field writes—“and from the pluralistic reality of the country as it exists today.”
For its part, liberalism has been asleep at the switch. Or rather, Boomers who ushered in their social revolution in the 1960s grew too settled and content to foster their own response to “a vacuum created by popular disenchantment with globalization, neoliberal economics, mass immigration, political corruption, technological power, and democracy itself.” MAGA filled it.
Chait considers the internal rifts tearing at the Heritage Foundation. Once the “intellectual crown jewel of the conservative movement,” it is today riven by “an ugly public spat over the organization’s approach to anti-Semitism.” It reveals “previously forbidden bigotries have penetrated the heart of the Trump-era Republican Party” and heralds “the brain death of the conservative movement.”
An organization that that once nurtured its young in conservative principles and catechisms has dropped its mask: “The debacle at Heritage illustrates the impossibility of abiding by the long-standing intellectual values of open debate and truth-seeking while retaining any influence in a party led by Donald Trump.” It also reveals the long-standing shallowness of said values.
Heritage fell silent as Trump demolished both the East Wing and the conservative china shop. As the strongest magnet in Washington, D.C., Trump has conservatives tacking this way today and that way tomorrow. It’s not political winds so much as the wild swings of their Trump-brand compasses. Principles they once declared as their North Star have been discarded like last year’s fashions.
Chait reviews how actors like Grover Norquist once set the conservative agenda in D.C. But then along came Fox News to pander to the Republican hoi polloi’s baser instincts:
By the Obama era, liberal critics began to notice a phenomenon that the writer Julian Sanchez called “epistemic closure,” which described the way many conservatives refused to accept the legitimacy of anything outside of conservative media.
Except Donald Trump consumed even the Fox world like he gobbles fast food:
More important, Trump grasped that the party’s rank and file had grown so detached from reality, so suspicious of mainstream purveyors of information, that large segments of it would believe anything he said, however preposterous, as long as it flattered their beliefs.
Trump’s unlikely victory in 2016 meant a) conservative audiences “had no appetite for criticism of Trump” and b) conservative elites found themselves sidelined as truth became “whatever Trump said.”
Chait concludes:
Identifying and correcting errors is an important role for a political movement’s intellectuals. Conservative critics forced George W. Bush to ultimately recognize the failure of his occupation strategy in Iraq and change course. The Democratic partisans who shouted down criticism of Biden in the run-up to the 2024 election were ultimately out-argued by those who demanded his ouster. It is impossible to fulfill this role when a lone man defines what counts as success or failure—often in self-contradictory ways and regardless of the evidence. If the Republicans hope to stay in power, it would be wise for them to recover the ability to think.
Packer and Chait write for The Atlantic. So of course their analyses come from a thinking man’s perspective. But I can’t help seeing their autopsies of conservative brain rot as exercises involving pigs and lipstick.
Trumpism has revealed conservatives’ intellectual output as window dressing for American conservatives’ baser impulses. It as if Leslie Nielsen’s starship crew unknowingly brought back with them from the burial place of the Krell civilization one of Dr. Morbius’s monsters from the id. Morbius with all his intelligence did not grasp the danger he’d unleashed because rationality had no part in it. Nor could conservative intellectuals. Trump is a creature of pure id.
Republicans gazed long into that abyss and the abyss glared back. The party succumbed to Trumpism because it stripped away its intellectual pretensions. Trumpism revealed the raw thirst for power underneath. Trying to analyze the GOP’s intellectual decay is like trying to reason with the body’s autonomic system.
Packer writes, “They’ve abandoned tradition for radicalism, careful scholarship for vulgar discourse, reason for the irrational, universal truths for narrow identities, and philosophy for partisanship.” Except worse. Trump could subsist on power alone and forgo the fast food.
“Trump’s most outrageous innovation,” Chait argues, “was dispensing with the pretense that he needed to provide reasons for his positions.” Like the planet-killing doomsday machine from the original Star Trek, he chews up whatever is in his path simply for the power. Power is his only imperative. He thought money was power until he tasted the presidency. Gold for him is huckster bling.
To see what powers his movement, read responses from Trumpish reactionaries to social media posts regarding Customs and Border Patrol arrests in Chicago and Charlotte. The deep hostility toward anyone not perceived as their tribe reveals among many professed followers of Christ an unnerving deficit of compassion and deep wells of cruelty. Jefferson cut Christ’s miracles from his Bible. MAGA cut out all the red letters and bolded Leviticus. Trump doesn’t even read.
Conservatism under Trump is not simply intellectually bankrupt. The id has no use for reason. But it does for power. The Krell learned that the hard way.
Myth: The Trump Administration does not view nurses as professionals because they are not classified as a “professional degree.”
Fact: The definition of a “professional degree” is an internal definition used by the Department to distinguish among programs that qualify for higher loan limits, not a value judgement about the importance of programs. It has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not.
(The Department used the English spelling of judgment for some reason.)
I’d first spotted this little tempest on Facebook:
Thank goodness the Department cleared that up. But not before The Onion had fun with it:
WASHINGTON—Describing the practice as a “fun little side project” rather than an occupation, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Monday that nursing would be reclassified as a hobby under new student loan regulations. “While those seeking degrees in veterinary medicine, law, and podiatry will still have access to the full financing available to future professionals, our department will henceforth limit loans for those Americans simply blowing off a little steam by attending nursing school in between shifts at Buffalo Wild Wings,” said McMahon, who questioned the federal government’s role in loaning out money so students could purchase masks, gloves, and stethoscopes for their “fun little nurse costumes.” “There’s a lot of cutting and sewing in nursing, so it’s really an activity that falls under arts and crafts. Some moms choose to knit, others choose to nurse. Plus, rushing between ER patients is a great way to stay active, just like riding your bike. And what’s also great is you get to brush shoulders with doctors, who can give you career advice should you choose to pursue a real job in the medical world some day.” McMahon concluded her statement by announcing the loan cap for theology degrees had been increased to $800,000.
