If you listen to some progressives–including many Christians–Donald Trump won because white people are bigoted. Trump supporters are a bunch of Christian nationalists, patriarchs, and racists, they say. As a result, we must spend the next four years doubling down […]
Trumpism
David Brooks: “You can’t oppose Marjorie Taylor Greene and then think what Al Green did was totally fine.”
David Brooks on Trump’s speech to the nation on Tuesday night and the current plight of the Democratic Party: There were a lot of dramatic moments for people to think: Wow, that’s a good guy. The moment with that cute […]
“Unbelievable”
Ken Dryden was a great hockey goalie. He was also a Canadian politician. But I will always think of him as the guy in the ABC booth with Al Michaels during US Hockey Team’s win over the Soviet Union in […]
Dinesh D’Souza apologizes for “2000 Mules”
In 2022, conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza produced and narrated “2000 Mules.” a conspiracist political film that claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Here is a description of the film: The 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud orchestrated by […]
MAGA is not about issues. It is about owning the libs
Over at The Atlantic, Elizabeth Bruenig has a theory about why Trump is so popular. A taste: Consensus on the causes of Trump’s sweeping electoral victory has formed around the idea that voters were responding to Democratic performance on material […]
Mike Johnson is feeling the rush of power
Power is a heck of a drug. Just ask Mike Johnson. Watch: The conservative evangelical Speaker of the House appeared today on CNN’s State of the Union. During the interview, Jake Tapper played this clip of Mark Wayne Mullin talking […]
What is missing from this marker of personal virtue and moral purity?
Thomas Frank answers the question in the title of this post: Back in 2022, Frank said that the Democrats were incapable of defeating the Trumpism. He was right. Frank asks, “what happens to a country when the people of its […]
Josh Hawley endorses John Cornyn for Senate majority leader. The MAGA crowd goes nuts.
It is apparently a three way race for Senate majority leader. The candidates are South Dakota’s John Thune, Texas’s John Cornyn, and Florida’s Rick Scott. Scott is the favorite of the MAGA movement. Thune is the closest to former leader […]
The “woke” Left and the Trump Right are possessed
Over the last couple of days I have been teaching the Salem Witch Trials in my colonial America class. So I naturally gravitated to University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson piece at Liberties titled “The Politics of Possession in America.” […]
The 19% are still here!
Back in 2018, I wrote Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. I dedicated the book “To the 19 percent.” This, of course, is a reference to the 19% of white evangelical Christian voters who did not vote for […]
New poll: Haley trails Trump by 26 in South Carolina
Nikki Haley was a two-term governor of South Carolina, but this does not give her a home-field advantage in the 2024 GOP primary scheduled to take place later this month. A new Monmouth University-Washington Post poll has Trump at 58% […]
David Frum on Trump’s America
Check out Judy Woodruff’s PBS Newshour interview with conservative Trump critic, Atlantic writer, and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum. Here is a taste: Woodruff: There’s an animosity, a personal nature to the differences that people feel now about […]
Anne Applebaum: “History will judge the complicit”
The Atlantic writer asks, “Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?” Here are her answers: Anne Applebaum compares those complicit with Trumpism to historical examples from Vichy France, East Germany, fascists, and […]
The Christian nationalist agenda in four minutes and 11 points
Last night CSPAN aired my conversation with Tim Alberta, author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. If you don’t have time to watch the entire interview, or read Alberta’s book (I hope you do both, but it’s the […]
Robert Kagan: “Will the people who selfishly refuse to put their own ambitions at risk finally act to save our democracy?”
Last week we brought your attention to Robert Kagan’s Washington Post piece on the potential of a Trump dictatorship should he be elected in 2024. Kagan was back at the post yesterday with a piece titled, “The Trump dictatorship: How […]
The dark language of Donald Trump’s campaign for president
How much lower can the former president go? Here is a taste of Ian Prasd Philbrick’s and Lyna Bentahar’s piece at The New York Times: He has made baldly antidemocratic statements, praising autocratic leaders like China’s Xi Jinping and continuing […]
Is Oklahoma senator James Lankford conspiratorial enough for The Federalist?
Preview in new tab Here is The Federalist editor Mollie Hemingway, the daughter of a Missouri-Synod Lutheran minister. Career Democrat and ABC host George Stephanopoulos completely emasculated Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma this weekend on his Sunday show. Right at […]
Liz Cheney, one of the most conservative politicians in the United States, is pulling for Democrats in 2024
Here is Kelly Garrity at Politico: Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney would rather cede power to Democrats than see members of her own party win in 2024, she said, calling a Republican majority a “threat,” and warning of an existential […]
Robert Jeffress has a Trump “shrine” in his office at First Baptist Church-Dallas.
I am finishing-up Tim Alberta’s book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism in preparation for a conversation I will be taping with him tomorrow on CSPAN’s Book TV. I am sure I […]
Iowa pastor prays at Trump rally and equates the “excitement” in the air to fullness of the Kingdom of God.
Pastor Patrick Wiedemeier of Anchor Point Baptist Church in Webster City, Iowa prayed at Saturday night’s Trump rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa. You can watch his prayer at the 1:40.51 mark of this YouTube video. Pastor Wiedemeier starts by reading […]