December 5: A Field Guide to MAGA Excuses for the Toddler President
Don’t know if this post from New York about Trump’s immaturity will get me onto the White House list of enemy media, but there’s a chance.
Veteran political journalist Jonathan Martin has a new rant at Politico Magazine with the self-explanatory headline: “The President Who Never Grew Up.” Nothing he said is the least bit revelatory; it’s all about things we know Donald Trump has done and said but lined up in a way that illustrates how very much the president resembles a child, and a not-very-well-behaved child at that. A sample:
Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.
The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.
Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.
But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.
Martin is just scratching the surface here. He doesn’t even mention the president’s inability to admit or accept responsibility for mistakes, which is reminiscent of an excuse-making child, or his tendency to fabricate his own set of “facts” like an incessant daydreamer bored by kindergarten. Now to be clear, the essentially juvenile nature of many of Trump’s preoccupations and impulses has struck just about everybody who’s forced to watch him closely and isn’t inclined by party or ideology to jump into the sandbox with him to share the fun. But since he’s the president, it’s more seemly for critics to focus on problems deeper than immaturity. There are the many worrisome “isms” he is prone to embrace or reflect (nativism, racism, sexism, authoritarianism, jingoism, cronyism, nepotism). And there’s also his habit of surrounding himself with cartoon villains like Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, and J.D. Vance who are the stuff of grown-up nightmares.
But still, I find myself wondering regularly how Trump’s own followers process his rather blatant lack of seriousness about the most serious job on the planet. If there’s such a thing as negative gravitas, the toddler president has it in abundance. So what are the excuses MAGA folk make for him? There are five major rationalizations that come to mind:
Whenever he says something especially outrageous or embarrassing, we are quickly told by his defenders that he’s just having an enormous joke at the expense of humorless liberals. This dates back to pro-Trump journalist Salena Zito’s famous 2016 dictum that his followers “take him seriously but not literally.” Where you draw the line between the stuff he means and the stuff he’s just kidding about can obviously be adjusted to cover any lapses in taste or honesty he might betray. The “he’s just trolling the libs” defense is a useful bit of jiujitsu as it happens. It turns the self-righteousness of his critics into foolishness while neutering any fears that whatever nasty or malicious thing Trump has said reflects his true nature and inclinations. You see this tactic a lot with Trumpworld social-media takes on mass deportation that exhibit what some have called “performative cruelty” in depicting ICE violence against immigrants, which predictably shock liberals who are then mocked for not understanding it’s all a shuck. Meanwhile, the most radical of Trump’s MAGA fans bask in the administration’s appropriation of their worst impulses.
A second rationalization you hear from Trump’s defenders, particularly when he says or does something that makes no sense, is to argue that he’s operating on multiple levels that include some higher strategies his critics simply don’t have the mental bandwidth to grasp. If, for example, he insults a foreign leader, he may secretly be setting off a diplomatic chain reaction that results in foreign-policy gains somewhere else. Similarly, if he defames federal judges, Democratic elected officials, or mainstream journalists, he may simply be trying to manipulate public opinion in a sophisticated way to overcome those who thwart or undermine his substantive agenda. Trump himself set the template for the “chess not checkers” theory by telling us his most incoherent speeches and statements reflect a novel rhetorical style he calls “the weave.” You do have to admire his chutzpah in telling people they simply aren’t smart enough to follow him as he fails to complete thoughts and sentences.
An even more common excuse for Trump’s worst traits is that he is focused on communicating with the people, not the media or other snooty elites. If he’s crude or impulsive or irrational, so, too, are the people. As one liberal writer ruefully admitted of Trump circa 2016:
He liked fast food and sports and, most importantly, he shared all their gripes and complaints and articulated them in the same terms some used themselves. For all his crowing about his money and showing off, he really didn’t put on airs. He was just like them.
And he behaved just like they would if they were given a billion dollars and unlimited power. Thus his childishness and even his cruelty could be construed as efforts to meld minds with the sovereign public or, at least, key parts of it. This became most explicit in 2024 when Trump’s crudeness and fury about diversity were transformed into a shrew pitch for the support of the “manosphere” and the masses of politically volatile younger men who spend much of their lives there. It could even serve as an excuse for his destruction of the White House as we’ve known it. Gold plating of everything in sight and the construction of a huge, garish ballroom might disgust aesthetes and history buffs with postgraduate degrees and no common sense. But with the White House set to become a venue for UFC fights, why not go big and loud? Nobody elected architecture experts to run the country, did they?
A parallel excuse for Trump’s uncouthness is that transgressions are central to his mission. He’s there to overturn the Establishment, not respect its silly rules of what’s appropriate for presidents. His distractors ruined the country, so who are they to complain when it requires someone unconventional to set things aright? Trump campaigned in 2016, 2020, and 2024 as a disrupter and thrilled his followers by refusing to be domesticated in office. When returned to power most recently, he hit Washington like a gale-force wind defying all precedents and expressing an exasperated public’s disgust with the status quo and the people who led it. So why would anyone expect this Robespierre to play by the rules of Versailles? That’s not who he is and not what he was elected to do.
The president himself has best articulated the standard by which he judges himself and expects to be judged by his followers, and by history, in a Truth Social post this past February: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” From the MAGA point of view, the 47th president is bending history, reversing a long trend toward national decline, and raising the economic aspirations and moral values of America to heights thought to be long lost. Perhaps the most powerful rationalization for Trump’s many excesses ever written was the famous 2016 essay by Michael Anton comparing those supporting Trump’s challenge to Hillary Clinton to the desperate and self-sacrificing passengers of the hijacked September 11 flight that brought the plane down by rushing the terrorists in the cockpit:
[I]f you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.
It’s Trump, warts and all, or the abyss, to many Trump fans, today as in 2016. So if he wants to have some boyish fun while he’s saving America, and perhaps civilization, who are we to deny him?
Would you please inform the national media of this, particularly ABC Radio News and its Bus girlfried, Ann Compton?
Chandler won because of name value, not because he’s a Democrat. And he is in for a far tougher fight this summer and fall.
I haven’t seen any discontent towards the GOP in my state, not in anywhere besides the metro areas. To most Americans, GOP = heroes on terror and purveyors who keep the homosexuals and liberals in line. Sad but true.
I’m in North Carolina (granted, the most solidly Democratic part of it, but still…) and I sense a shift. The small-L libertarians I know are peeling off in droves and I’ve heard several Republicans I know state that they were considering staying home on Election Day because they just don’t like Bush. He still has a good-sized number of partisans – particularly in the churches – but I think an Edwards candidacy would actually put North Carolina in play. Hard to tell whether Kerry would have the same effect, but if the military is becoming disillusioned with their state under GWB (I’m pretty far from the military bases, but the NG families I know are mighty unhappy), I wouldn’t be surprised to see them vote Kerry in larger-than-usual numbers.
For what it’s worth, by 2008 I fully expect both NC and Virginia to be legitimate Democratic targets.
Hi everyone, i live in the upper left too in a heavily democraic area but my brother lives in Wisconsin and he keeps me posted about attitudes and values out there amongst the new barbarians. he isn’t seeing a shift at all except a vague sense that the rebubs might favor the rich… his coworkers and neighbors, if they discuss politics at all, still express a sense of pride in what they see as a successful war against terrorism. i know the polls say people don’t care about the war but that might be because of the widespread misperseption that the war is over and we won. Democrats need a coherent principled foreign policy. right now we are allowing the Bush administration to put forth the idea of a war against terrorism. Our politicians aren’t attacking this concept or exposing Bush’s real agenda ( eventual domination of Syria, Libya, Iran etc.) No one would vote Republican if they new they were voting for Perle’s fifty years of war aginst Islamic oil-producing nations.
perhaps our alternative could be a foriegn policy of global co-operation to achieve environmental goals .This would include energy independence as well as humanitarian assistance to impoverished nations
I have been scaring and deptressing myself with kaplan’s book The Ends of the Earth, the journal of his travels through the chaotic and socially psychotic nations of west Africa, the middle east and indochina. We are in real danger from the religious fanaticism which is growing out of the poverty and cultural dislocations caused by overpopulation, deforestation, and over-rapid urbanization. Also a recently published pentagon study defined global warming as a national security issue. We need to provide leadership in building sustainable communities as the cornerstone of our foreign policy becasue this is the only effective way to decrease trerroism and prevent wars for resources.
Especially after the Chandler victory in a Repub district in the Repub south of KY.
Not so sure about Partnership for America. Might not resonate. Sounds to much like domestic partnerships which leads to civil unions to gay marriages. But on the right track.
It is a great idea of running against Reaganomics when Reagan even rasied taxes three times. Bush is putting forth these same failed voodoo trickle down theories that where debunked by Clinton when he rasied taxes on the top 2%. This will resonate with the people. It wasn’t that long ago that everyone had jobs and were getting better jobs than they had. Must also point out that the Repubs at the time were against it and it worked and they are against it again becuase it will work. The Repubs don’t want to see this policy enacted and work a second time. Because the public will see that supply side economics doesn’t work. We must start attacking this.
Agree completely with the transit idea. Our governements(state, local, and federal) should also have fleet services that use alternative fuel vehicles/renewable means of energy. Some municipalites have done this. They ordered a fleet of some type of hybrid car in CA somewhere I believe. One step would be to move all the transit systems towards hybird/alternative/renewable energy. Should be a major push towards these environmentally safe and terrosim safe technology.
chris-
nice set of ideas, especially on the support of transit.
I don’t have any of the math worked out, but some of these can be encompassed in the “Green Tax Shift” idea promoted by some environmentalists.
Simply put, we try to move the burden of taxation off things that are good for people to produce (i.e. income) and towards things we do not want them to produce. (i.e. pollutants)
It is time to raise the gas tax, and it is time to require superior fuel economy among ALL vehicles (not just cars, SUVs are currently exempt). Much of the increased revenue from new gas tax revenue would fund better public transport throughout the country.
Indeed, this is one of the major sticking points of the ongoing debate over the re-authorization of the TEA-21 transport bill before Congress.
See more here:
http://www.transact.org/transfer/trans04/1_26.asp
I agree completely about broadening the goal, and I see a potential added benefit of doing so. It has seemed, and I’m not certain if there’s any actual data to support or refute this, that there has been the beginnings of a re-enfranchisement of disillusioned voters getting worked up enough to come back into the system to vote, contribute, or even campaign. The major turnout in primaries and caucuses thus far would seem to support this. I think a lot of credit needs to go to Howard Dean’s campaign for bringing these folks out of the woodwork into the fold, and I think that’s something that we need to acknowledge and embrace going forward.
My point is that to continue this, fostering an optimism for the Congressional seats as well as the White House could add a greater sense of personal empowerment in races where individual votes carry even greater weight. It could also add the psychological incentive to previously disenfranchised voters (or non-voters) that their efforts can have an impact on more than just the one front.
It’s an uphill climb, what with the DeLay redistricting machine and all, but if the tide indeed is changing, perhaps it can wash a few more away…
Agree completely that offering a complete, easy-to-understand set of principles would do wonders to both nationalize the Congressional elections and allow D’s to demonstrate vision. Rather than debating names, what should those principles be?
My offerings:
1. Tax policy should reward work, not wealth;
2. Rebuild our tradional alliances (stolen from W ’00);
3. Use environmental laws to both protect the environment and stimulate business regulation;
4. Spend the Highway Trust Fund to build effective mass-transit systems;
Thoughts?
DR has a link, in the Political Strategy section, to a new Greenburg atricle titled “Contesting Values.” I think it is outstanding. It definitely ties into the discussions we have been having about themes and values.
I love the idea of running against Reagan and Reaganomics. I also agree with his idea that Democtats need to stand up for our values. We have let Repubs be the party of values. Dem have values too: democracy, equality, diversity, and protection of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
We will never win back Congress and have a mandate for change unless we tell the voters what we stand for. The Repubs have stood for tax cuts, limited government, and strong defense. Dems need to stand for restored democracy, equality of opportunity, support for families, and strong world leadership through international cooperation.
I agree with franklyO about the desirability of an overarching theme for Congressional Dems. In a couple of posts I suggested “American Values, American Dreams,” but I never got any feedback.
Regarding, the suggestion for a “New American Covenant,” Didn’t Clinton already use something like that? I personally find that sort of overtly Judeo-Christian reference discomforting given the post 9/11 environment. It sounds too much like Bush’s “crusade” comment. The last thing we need to do is suggest to the Muslim world that we think God is on our side. However, I am a raging secularist, and I am sure things look a bit different in Texas.
FranklyO stated, “there is a wave of disgust …” I certainly sense something like that here in my little, upper-left, corner of the universe: Portland, Oregon. However, Portland is not by any means a representative sample of the country. This is an overwhelmingly Democratic city. I am curious about the impressions of others around the country?
New American Covenant?
–morris
Morris Meyer
Democratic Congressional Candidate
Texas 6th District
http://www.meyer04.us
Frankly0, I completely agree. As a suggested theme, why not “Partnership with America”? It sets up a nice contrast with “Contract for America”, which always sounded like a business contract to me. Conversely, “partnership” implies more of a community sense, of working together to solve the nation’s problems. In other words, more in line with Democratic policies.
Just to follow up: in 1994, the Republicans came up with the infamous “Contract for America.” The Dems need a like theme and gimmick.
Given the numbers, and the way this election is likely to play out, I think there is a very good prospect that Bush can be ousted by a relatively sizable margin.
What I wonder is whether the Democrats might not try to do think even larger and do something even larger: take back the Congress.
In many ways, it seems that there is a tide of anger and disgust sweeping much of the nation over the policies and actions not only of Bush, but of the entire Republican party, which is at base so little different from Bush himself.
In many ways, 2004 could be the obverse of 1994, when a large part of the public decided to throw the bums out — though back then they were the Democratic bums. I see no reason that the Republicans in Congress are not susceptible to the same kind of revulsion, in no small part due to their own abuse of power, and their smug expectation that that power can never be taken away from them.
But if the Dems are going to make that happen, it is time to sound that theme, and get the voters themselves thinking about how they can decimate the Republicans, one Congressman at a time.