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?
I couldn’t disagree more! I think both sides realize Nader’s influence in this election, especially the Republicans. In the words of Mike White, Director of the Oregon Family Council on why he was collecting signatures to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in Oregon”We aren’t bashful about doing it. We are a conservative, pro-family organization, and Bush is our guy on virtually every issue.” In the words of, Steve Wark, the Bush supporter largely responsible for getting Mr. Nader on the ballot in Nevada, when asked whether the addition of Mr. Nader to the ballot would help the President’s hopes of victory in Nevada, “I would hope so. I didn’t do it for my own health.” The truth is in an election as close as this one the votes Nader takes away will matter. That’s why the Republicans invest so much to get him on the ballot in every battleground state–literally. To see the facts on this Republican help go to http://www.thenaderfactor.com/press/072304/
To Mark Schmitt,
That’s an easy one.
There are probably between 1% and 3% of voters nationwide who would actually show up on election day and cast a vote for a Ralph Nader if he ran as the Green Party’s candidate. There are probably a similar number of people who will *say* they intend to show up on election day and cast a vote for a Ralph Nader (or a ham sandwich or whatever), rather than just admit they’re not going to vote — so there’s also a certain Nader component in what we might call the “noise floor” of the poll.
The important thing is the real number of people out there who will actually vote for Ralph Nader, while small, is greater than zero. And if you ask enough people to get a meaningful sample of a population, you should be able to pick that up. The other thing to remember, of course, is that in a poll with a margin of error of +/- 3%, all the numbers between 1 and 6 (inclusive) are effectively *the same number*.
Nader could make more waves by adopting a more libertarian attitude to taxation, one that follows with his other kinds of populism.
I am afraid I disagree.
The real issue here is not whether Nader runs or not.
The real issue is, how many potential voters on the left does Kerry risk alienating by attempting to capture the swing soft belly.
Even if Nader is not there, many of these alienated voters may just decide to not vote, or vote Green, or who knows, Libertarian, if anti-war is a big issue for them.
This Nader-paranoia is taking the forest for the trees.
So, why specifically are some potential Kerry voters on the left considering not voting for him?
They consider that Kerry provides no real alternative plan on:
– the war in Iraq
– the war on terror
– Israel and Palestine
– the role of the US in International development.
And what they consider a too limited alternative on:
– universal healthcare
– worker rights
– tax regime
– gay rights, and many more.
Whether that is true or not is not the point. If, stopping for a moment to ostracize them, you spend the time needed to just listen to potential Nader voters, that will be their perception.
It is time to stop blaming them, or worse – blackmailing them, and to cater to them in the same manner that Kerry tries to cater to the swing voter. It’s time for a bit of marketing…
Otherwise, and regardless of whether Nader will be there or not for them, they simply won’t vote Kerry.
I think the ‘hide in the compounds’ strategy will work pretty well and has been predictable for many months. Bush will not be hurt very much if Iraq descends into total chaos. This descent will barely merit mention in the news. There are 2 reasons for this:
1 – Most Americans don’t care about Iraq very much, so new about Iraqi deaths won’t sell papers.
2 – Chaos is dangerous (especially to Western reporters), so most reporters will stay out of the way.
RE: “put our troops into safe compounds out of harm’s way”
I don’t think that will work. Without US troops on the streets keeping the peace, the situation there could rapidly descend into complete chaos. Bush is between a rock and a hard place there, and there’s no easy way out.
I haven’t seen a serious analysis of Nader’s appeal, even from a poll-oriented site like this one. Again and again, I see comparative polls where Nader appears to steal from BOTH Kerry and Bush… But the truth is that the appearance of Nader brings out voters who would not be voting otherwise… Perot voters, Greens etc. Nader does not steal from Kerry. Every minute spent on squashing him is wasted. Why not try to steal NADER’s voters?
Ruy, you command may well come true. Today’s First Read from msnbc.com said: “at what point do three-way trial heats in national polls become a moot point?”
Nader’s difficulties are good news. In the intermediate and longer run it will really help Kerry. I wouldn’t even be surprised to see Nader drop out of the race now that he also has money problems. Despite his pride in seeing himself as the indespensible man of the left, he’s not the kind of politician to run up a big debt and then walk away from it.
I am concerned, however, at this morning’s news regarding Iraq. Bush was smart in pulling off the “turnover” in advance of the 30th. My ears pricked up though when I saw on CNN that Bush is now saying that Iraqi security is up to the Iraqis.
That makes me wonder if Bush’s strategy de jour is to put our troops into safe compounds out of harm’s way. In that way he can claim to be “staying the course” without incuring the casualties that bring down his poll numbers. It wouldn’t do the Iraqis any good, but it would save the lives of American troops and improve his chances in November.
All of this should remind us that this election will be decided by events on the ground in theatres of conflict with militant Islam. For better or worse, those events are controlled by radical Islamists or George Bush. All John Kerry can do is seize on any opening or mis-step of Bush’s. Not a good position to be in and it should help to explain Kerry’s caution up to now.
If you can’t convince the pollsters to take Nader’s name off, is it possible to convince them to add a Libertarian/Constitution candidate (is there even one yet?) to the polls?
I was under the impression that even the Reform Party ballot access in Michigan, Florida, Colorado etc. was being questioned due to the fact that that the Reform Party did not hold a convention, as required (they held a conference call).
I think the technically accurate phrasing is “Nader might have access in seven states through the Reform Party, but has not yet been placed on any state ballot.”
Ruy,
Can you shed some light on what it is about the polls that causes Nader’s number to range from 3-6% when he is included in the trial heats? Is this just static in the polls — that is, would any third candidate with some name recognition be expected to get about that amount? Or do you think there is a latent Nader support that might be as high as 6% but that in the end will vote for Kerry? If it’s the former, doesn’t it raise some questions about the polls generally, if there is such a sizable factor that’s just meaningless?
/Mark