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?
lgherb it has certainly been infuriating to listen and watch what has been going on. George Lakoff helped with his concept of reframing and avoiding words the GOP had managed to redefine. His perception of what drives the conservatives was helpful also. I personally think Drew Westin did an even better job in Political Brain.
With the Internet becoming a more frequent source of news and information to many Americans, we will hopefully reach more who are looking for answers that make sense in the reality of the huge problems the GOP has brought down upon our house.
Given the smaller numbers identifying as GOP, we do not have so much of a house divided against itself. We do have a lot of respectful, considerate and helpful conversations we could begin and maintain.
I like these comments very much.
“…the logical conclusion drawn is that those who actively denigrate these words and concepts advocate the antonyms of them. Social, religious, economic, and intellectual freedom became abhorred on an almost social subconscious level.”
“…the GOP will have been silently working to build a neo-aristocracy characterized by very distinct ruling and working classes; limited social mobility, tight integration of church and state, and strict limits of personal freedom.”
Perhaps just as important is not letting the opportunity the GOP has given us – creating a significant distrust of their party in American voters – by making them distrust us as well.
The proposed campaign by the GOP to re-brand the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party” returns me to my ongoing bewilderment of how United States citizens allowed the word “liberal” to be demonized by this same collection of elitists. Starting with the so-called “Reagan Revoltion” and continuing through today, the conservative movement has flashed into the consciousness of the voting public the equation of the word “liberal” with the concept of “extremely undesirable” or downright “un-American”.
This mantra became generally accepted by roughly 1/2 of the voting public for nearly three decades without ever being fundamentally analyzed. How often over the last 25 years during the ongoing tug-of-war for the consciousness of voters did anyone actually define the word “liberal”?
Once one researches the definitions and etymology of the word “liberal” and the related words and concepts of “liberty” and “liberalism”, the logical conclusion drawn is that those who actively denigrate these words and concepts advocate the antonyms of them. Social, religious, economic, and intellectual freedom became abhorred on an almost social subconscious level.
This propaganda fueled the engine of conservative sound bites for years until this golden fuel rod became spent, necessitating this new branding effort. In scripting a new propaganda campaign, the strategy remains the same: define the competition based on the worst fears of the at-large psyche while never actively and distinctly defining that which they truly advocate.
How long will it take with this new campaign for the public to come to the revelation that in framing the Democratic Party as the equivalent of communists/socialists/nazis that the GOP will have been silently working to build a neo-aristocracy characterized by very distinct ruling and working classes; limited social mobility, tight integration of church and state, and strict limits of personal freedom.
Errors and omissions.
IRV is Instant Recount Voting.
Just occurred to me that in cases like the Franken-Coleman race, if the number of contested ballots could not give either candidate the percent needed to win, the IRV could be done and possibly save the need for the accuracy recount.
Sports analogy for IRV versus one candidate only voting.
It is more like winning the World Series than the Superbowl.
Time to start gathering statements from the Socialist Party, socialist leaders and scholars to explain why we are NOT socialist in the sense they are accusing. Interestingly, the political socialism in Europe, as opposed to communism, is described as democratic socialism. We know the GOP misspelling is not ignorance.
I find it very amusing that Bopp thinks the Obama administration can accomplish all of those items “in a few short years”. Granted it is easier and faster to destroy than to build. We have just had a hopefully unforgettable lesson in this from the Bush administration.
The grown ups in this country know it is a mess and cleaning it up is not going to be easy or quick. The GOP is determined to make a nuisance of themselves and obstinately refuse to make some intelligent changes in the party. The longer they do that the harder it will be to recover.
I am becoming convinced this is the right time for it to fade away. Either America and the world choose to decrease consumerism, and increase humanism, while taking out the power groups that have foisted financial control on us to grow the elite class; or we will continue down the slippery slope of failed civilizations and extinction. (See Jared Diamond “Collapse” and John Kerry “The New War”.)
There is a strong belief that we need a 2 party system in this country. I agree that we should not have, for all practical discussion, a single party system. What I would like to see is a system that encourages the growth and development of new parties, so that the power is spread more instead of becoming too concentrated in the leaders of a specific party; while changes in demographics, culture and social issues change voters priorities at a faster rate. Any group that has been functioning long enough is likely to become mired in it’s traditions and obstinate devotion to out dated philosophies.
Instant recall voting (IRV) would promote this as well as severely cutting down the Florida, Ohio and Minnesota debacles. In being allowed to vote for candidates in order of preference, the computer program can be written to start recounting if no candidate has a large enough percent of the vote (determined by the governing body that declares the winner) to win. In the races where there are 3 strong candidates, 2 of the candidates will represent the thinking of a majority of the voters. One is a strong party, the other an emerging party. The third party is a strong party that is losing touch with the voters. The new party has grown to represent the growing numbers of voters whose beliefs are consistent with the paths that society has started to pursue.
As elections are run and votes are reported, emerging party candidates will have a better chance to find out how much real support they have. Members of the Democratic party might very well prefer to vote for Greens – except for the horror of the Republican winning a three way. When many voters switch to a new party, other voters will start paying more attention to those candidates, increasing their strength until it reaches a critical mass. Putting the obsolete [GOP] party in the minority, letting the remaining majority party and the new one begin the philosophical competition for votes based on ideology, policy, etc.
Over time our Broken Branch of Congress will function much better as will the better Executive and then Judicial branches.
Better Government for All.