In understanding how Republicans will deal with the overriding issue of the 2026 midterms, “affordability,” it helps to know their ideological habits, as I discussed at New York:

One of the odder moments in Donald Trump’s big Oval Office “affordability” speech on December 17 was toward the end, when he asserted that mass deportation of immigrants would greatly improve the economy. “We are now seeing reverse migration as migrants go back home, leaving more housing and more jobs for Americans.” The idea seemed to be that a major instrument of the administration’s economic strategy was those masked ICE and Border Patrol agents getting rid of the foreigners draining our resources.

This is a theme that Trump may have borrowed from his vice-president, as Politico’s Ian Ward explains after looking at some of J.D. Vance’s recent speeches:

“At an event in Allentown, Pa. this week, Vance argued that the rise in housing and rental costs — an issue that’s increasingly rankling Republican voters — is being driven primarily by illegal immigration. ‘It’s simple economics. If you have fewer people, fewer illegal aliens trying to buy homes, that means American citizens are going to finally be able to afford a home again,’ the vice president said.

“He has taken the same approach to the increasingly thorny issue of healthcare, arguing during a White House press briefing in October that lengthy wait times at hospital emergency rooms are being caused by ‘illegal aliens’ who ‘get healthcare benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens.’ Ditto for the decline of blue-collar wages, which Vance has recently attributed to ‘the Democrat model’  of ‘import[ing] low-wage immigrants.’ He’s even suggested that the rise of antisemitism — an issue that has bitterly divided the right in recent months — is being caused by the influx of foreign-born people who bring high levels of ‘ethnic grievance’ with them.”

Offering a simple, uniform explanation for complicated problems the Trump administration is visibly struggling to address is a nice rhetorical device for Vance. But it has two other advantages. First, Team Trump has reason to believe immigration policy remains its strongest issue. According to Silver Bulletin’s polling averages for Trump’s job-approval ratings on handling specific issues, he’s not doing that well on much of anything, but immigration is a relative bright spot. His net approval on immigration policy is at minus-7.3 percent, compared to minus-17.1 percent on trade policy, minus-17.9 percent on the economy, and minus-27.6 percent on inflation. Since there’s zero question in anyone’s mind that the administration is working hard to shut down the border and deport undocumented immigrants, claiming this will help address economic problems makes more sense than talking about Trump policies that are actively unpopular, like his love for tariffs and his cluelessness about health care.

Second, as Ward emphasizes, treating deportation of immigrants as the key to multiple problems shifts attention from policy disputes that divide Republicans and Trump’s MAGA base to an issue on which they enthusiastically agree:

“[I]t’s starting to look like part of an emerging strategy for coalitional management. Confronted with an issue that divides MAGA, Vance responds by reminding Republicans of what unites them: namely, support for immigration restriction.”

Divisions on economic policy between “populists” and Trump’s billionaire backers on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley are a growing problem for Republicans. Meanwhile, conservative allegations of antisemitism against America First zealots have split Vance’s own personal base, as evidenced by tensions between his close friends Tucker Carlson and the Christian Zionists at Turning Point USA. All these warring tribes can agree that getting rid of immigrants is a righteous task. And this is especially important to Vance, who is covering Trump’s flanks as vice-presidents traditionally do, and who also needs a strong MAGA coalition backing him if he wants to step up to the presidency in 2028. J.D. Vance is never going to have a cult of personality like Trump’s. But he can become a unity figure in the party and movement he may someday lead, as Ward observes:

“Vance seems to be betting that opposition to immigration remains the one stance that can unite a movement that is otherwise divided over economics, foreign policy, tech and AI policy, healthcare, the Epstein disclosures and more. Linking these more divisive issues back to immigration offers one strategy for smoothing over the fault lines.”

So get used to regular celebrations of mass deportation as the key to ensuring American Greatness.

Thought I’d add some perspective to discussions about the stakes and odds of the 2026 midterms, and did so at New York.

With all the signs of a Democratic comeback arising from 2025’s off-year elections, there’s understandably some excitement among Democrats about a possible “wave” election next year that would dislodge the GOP trifecta that allowed Donald Trump to enact a legislative agenda this year without any minority-party input or support. The obvious benchmark for an anti-Trump wave is the 2018 midterms, which gave Democrats net gains of 41 U.S. House seats and a 17-seat majority in that chamber.

This week, Politico published a granular analysis of the 2026 House landscape that should curb any excess Democratic enthusiasm. It suggests the 2026 midterms are unlikely to produce anything like the 2018 wave. The landscape of winnable Republican seats is much narrower than in the first Trump midterms, for two basic reasons: (1) two rounds of gerrymandering have reduced the number of competitive districts, and (2) there’s a higher starting point of Democratic House seats. Or as Politico puts it:

“Partisan redistricting — even before this year — has allowed both parties to draw mostly safe seats, dropping the number of competitive districts that are likely to flip. And while the battlefield is smaller, Democrats also already own more of it than they did going into 2018. The very reason Democrats hardly need a blue wave to take back the House this time is that their congressional candidates largely outperformed Kamala Harris in last year’s elections.”

Putting these factors together with the underlying gradual increase in partisan polarization (which reduces split-ticket opportunities), there’s a lot less low-hanging fruit for Democrats than there was in 2018:

“In [2018], Democrats won roughly 90 percent of GOP-held House districts that had either been won by Clinton or that Trump had won by less than 5 points based on two-party vote share.

“And there were a lot of those seats. Republicans were defending 25 districts that Clinton had won two years prior. Next year, they only have three won by Harris. The number of districts Trump won by less than 5 points is similar over the two cycles.

“But outside that competitive zone, flipping seats got a lot harder in 2018: Democrats only picked up four of 18 seats that Trump had won by between 5 and 10 points.

“Next year, Democrats would have to win at least eight seats that Trump won by more than 5 points in 2024, in addition to sweeping every single highly competitive seat to come away with 235 seats as they did in 2018.”

To look at the landscape from a slightly different angle, there are 33 House districts that Democrats won by five points or less in 2024 but only 14 such Republican seats. It would take a big wave to reach beyond those opportunities.

Taking into account the current anti-Trump trend in public opinion and the historical tendency for the president’s party to lose seats, the authoritative Cook Political Report currently shows 18 Democratic-held seats and 17 Republican-held seats at stake in competitive races. Even assuming the landscape continues to shift in the direction of Democrats, that doesn’t provide much of a beachhead for a big wave. On top of that, gerrymandering is still underway, and while Republican gains won’t match Trump’s initial hopes of waveproofing the GOP’s House majority, they could perhaps pick up another few net seats if things go their way in Florida.

The good news for Democrats is they really don’t need to pick up 41 House seats to make 2026 a big victory. A gain of a mere three net seats (as compared to 24 in 2018) would flip control of the House, and that could have a huge impact on the power dynamics of Washington. Without trifecta control of Congress, Republicans could no longer enact filibusterproof budget-reconciliation bills like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. They’d lose control of the House committees that are busily digging into the alleged scandals of the Joe Biden administration; instead, these committees would be conducting politically salient investigations of misconduct and extremist policies in the second Trump administration. And given the extreme polarization in Congress, Democrats wouldn’t need much of a majority of their own to thwart Trump’s wishes. Indeed, a very small House majority might provide a good excuse for Democrats to turn down politically dubious presidential impeachment measures, like those Democrats passed in 2019 that were doomed in the Senate.

Dating back to the Great Depression, there have been only three midterm elections (1962, 1998, and 2002) in which the party opposing the president failed to win at least three net House seats, the Democratic target next year. In all three of those years, the president’s job-approval rating (per Gallup) was above 60 percent when voters voted. Trump’s latest job-approval rating from Gallup was 36 percent, and over two terms it has never even once topped 50 percent. So however small the target Democrats must hit in 2026 to bust up Trump’s trifecta, they’re very likely to hit it.

After realizing how much longer Trump’s second term in office would last, I took a long and sober look at New York at what might happen, and what might restrain Trump from doing his worst:

Donald Trump has a flexible attitude toward truth and facts, typically embracing whatever version of reality that suits his purposes. His latest rally speech in Pennsylvania was something of a “greatest hits” display of fact-checker challenges on a wide range of issues. But he said one thing that no one should doubt or deny: “You know what? We have three years and two months to go. Do you know what that is in Trump Time? An eternity.”

So what will America look like after three more years of this barrage? As always, the administration’s intentions are opaque. But there are several outside variables that will dramatically shape how much Trump is able to do by the end of his time in office (assuming he actually leaves as scheduled on January 20, 2029). Here are the factors that will decide the outcome of this three-year “eternity.”

The midterms could shift the balance of power

One huge variable is the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections. If history and current polling are any indication, Democrats are very likely to gain control of the U.S. House and bust up the partisan trifecta that has made so much of Trump 2.0’s accomplishments (for good or ill) possible. With a Democratic House, there will be no more Big Beautiful Bills whipped through Congress on party-line votes reconfiguring the federal budget and tax code and remaking the shape and impact of the federal government. A hostile House would also bedevil the administration with constant investigations of its loosey-goosey attitude toward obeying legal limits on its powers, and its regular habits of self-dealing, cronyism, and apparent corruption. The last two years of the Trump presidency would be characterized by even greater end runs of Congress, and in Congress, by endless partisan rhetorical warfare (as opposed to actual legislation).

It’s less likely that Democrats will flip control of the Senate in 2026, but were that to happen, Trump would struggle to get his appointees confirmed (though many could operate in an “acting” capacity). We’d likely see constant clashes between the executive and legislative branches.

Conversely, if Republicans hold onto both congressional chambers, then all bets are off. Trump 2.0 would roll through its final two years with the president’s more audacious legislative goals very much in sight and limited only by how much risk Republicans want to take in 2028. You could see repeated Big Beautiful Bill packages aiming at big initiatives like replacing income taxes with tariffs or consumption taxes; a complete return to fossil fuels as the preferred energy source; a total repeal and replacement of Obamacare and decimation of Medicaid; a fundamental restructuring of immigration laws; and radical limits on voting rights. Almost everything could be on the table as long as Republicans remain in control and in harness with Trump. And with his presidency nearing its end, you could also see Trump tripling down on demands that Republicans kill or erode the filibuster, which could make more audacious legislative gains possible.

The Supreme Court could curb or enable Trump

The U.S. Supreme Court will also have a big impact on how much Trump can do between now and the end of his second term. Big upcoming decisions on his power to impose tariffs will determine the extent to which he can make these deals the centerpiece of his foreign-policy strategy and execute a protectionist (or, if you like, mercantilist) economic strategy for the country. Other decisions on his power to deport immigrants and on the nature and permanence of citizenship will heavily shape the size and speed of his mass-deportation program. The Supreme Court will soon also either obstruct or permit use of National Guard and military units in routine law-enforcement chores and/or to impose administration policies on states or cities. And the Supreme Court’s decisions on myriad conflicts between the Trump administration and the states could determine whether, for example, the 47th president can sweep away any regulation of AI that his tech-bro friends oppose.

A separate line of Supreme Court decisions will determine Trump’s power over the executive branch — most obviously over independent agencies like the FTC and the Fed, but also over millions of federal employees who could lose both civil-service protections and collective-bargaining opportunities.

The economy and foreign war could be wild cards

Even a president as willful as Trump is constrained by objective reality. His economic policies make instability, hyperinflation, and even a 2008-style Great Recession entirely possible. If that happens, it could both erode his already shaky public support but also encourage him to assert even greater “emergency” powers than he’s already claimed.

Trump’s impulsive national-security instincts and innate militarism could also lead to one of those terrible wars he swears he is determined to avoid. It’s worth remembering that the last Republican president was entirely undone during his second term by economic dislocations and a failed war.

America could get the full MAGA makeover

Let’s say Trump has the power to do what he wants between now and the end of his second term. What might America look like if he fully succeeds, particularly if his policies are either emulated by state and local Republicans or imposed nationally by Washington?

• A country of millions fewer immigrants, with immigrant-sensitive industries like agriculture, health care, and other services struggling.
• A more regressive system of revenues for financing steadily shrinking public services.
• A fully shredded social-safety net feeding steadily increasing disparities in income and wealth between rich and poor, and old and young, Americans.
• Cities where armed military presence has become routine, particularly during anti-administration protests or prior to key elections.
• Elections conducted solely on Election Day in person, with strict ID requirements and armed election monitors, likely on the scene during vote counting as well.
• A new “deep state” of MAGA-vetted federal employees devoted to carrying out the 47th president’s policies even after he’s long gone.
• A world beset by accelerated climate-change symptoms, particularly violent weather and widespread natural disasters, and a country with no national infrastructure for preventing or mitigating the damage.
• An economy where AI is constantly promoted as a solution to the very problems it creates.
• A world beset by accelerated climate-change symptoms, particularly violent weather and widespread natural disasters, and a country with no national infrastructure for preventing or mitigating the damage.
• A scientific and health-care research apparatus driven by conspiracy theories and cultural fads.
• A public-education system hollowed out by private-school subsidies and ideological curriculum mandates.
• And most of all: a debased level of political discourse resembling MMA trash talk more than anything the country has experienced before.

Some of these likely effects from Trump 2.0 are reversible, but only after much time and effort, and against resistance from the MAGA movement he will leave as his most enduring legacy.

And if Trump bequeaths the presidency to a successor (either a political heir like J.D. Vance or a biological heir like Don Jr.), then what American could look like by 2032 or 2036 is beyond my powers of imagination.

It’s been a wild week in the Texas U.S. Senate race, but it’s a good idea to understand the Democratic options in terms of an old strategic debate, as I suggested at New York:

One of the truly ancient debates in U.S. political circles is whether candidates in highly competitive partisan elections can best win by persuading swing voters or mobilizing base voters. There’s no absolute identity between ideology and strategy, but speaking generally, right- or left-wing ideologues tend to adopt base mobilization strategies that don’t require any accommodation of the other party’s views. Republican or Democratic “moderates” generally hew to the “median voter theory” that winning over a swing voter is especially effective because it adds a vote to one’s own column while denying a vote to the opposing candidate. So they value crossover voting as much as turnout advantages.

Hardly anyone would deny that in the Trump era, Republicans have gone over almost completely to the base-mobilization strategy. To the extent MAGA candidates try to persuade swing voters, it’s mostly via vicious attacks on the opposition as extremists, encouraging a lesser-of-two-evils voting or even non-voting by moderates. But among Democrats, the base-versus-swing debate rages on, and we may be about to see a laboratory test of the two approaches in a red-hot Texas Senate contest.

Thanks to an unusually poor landscape and a current three-seat deficit, Democratic hopes of gaining control of the Senate in 2026 depend heavily on winning an upset or two in red states. And Texas looks promising thanks to an intensely cannibalistic three-way Republican primary involving two MAGA challengers to Republican incumbent John Cornyn.

Two early Democratic Senate candidates embodied (in somewhat different ways) the swing-voter strategy. There was 2024 Senate nominee and former House member Colin Allred, a bit of a classic moderate Democrat. And then there was state senator James Talarico, who gained fame for his battle against the Trump-engineered congressional gerrymander in Texas earlier this year. Talarico actually has a fairly progressive issue profile and is from the progressive hotbed of Austin. But he has gained national notoriety for being conspicuously religious (he’s actually attending a seminary aside from his political gigs) and for reaching out to Trump voters (e.g., via a successful foray onto Joe Rogan’s podcast). Last week, Allred abruptly dropped out of the Senate race, and now Talarico is facing a primary contest with the all-time-champion advocate of base mobilization, Representative Jasmine Crockett.

Crockett is far better known than any other second-term House member, mostly because she has a jeweler’s eye for viral moments and dominates them regularly. In May 2024, she became the acknowledged master of the clapback during a high-profile exchange of personal insults with the most famous third-term House member, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and has subsequently drawn the attention of Donald Trump, as Crockett reminded us in a launch video that simply recited Trump’s insults aimed at her.

Crockett’s vibes-based approach to politics has made her a fundraising magnet and a pop-culture celebrity, but the question is whether that will make her potentially competitive in a statewide race in Texas as compared to Talarico. And it’s not just a matter of issue positioning. Crockett is popular among progressives but has made combativeness rather than progressive policy commitments her signature in a brief career in legislative office. She very clearly believes all the heat she can bring to a tough general election will not just mobilize Texas’s Democratic base but expand it. She has apparently sought the counsel of Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, who pursued a base-mobilization strategy in two unsuccessful but exciting bids for governor of Georgia. And as you might expect from even a moment’s exposure, she is very sure of herself, as HuffPost reports:

“Early on in her kickoff speech, Crockett said she was running because ‘what we need is for me to have a bigger voice …’

“She reiterated her top priority would be turning out otherwise apathetic voters, a strategy even many other progressives have backed away from. ‘Our goal is to make sure that we can engage people that historically have not been talked to because there are so many people that get ignored, specifically in the state of Texas,’ she said. ‘Listen, the state of Texas is 61 percent people of color. We have a lot of good folk that we can talk to.’”

The idea that there is a “hidden majority” among non-voters that a loud-and-proud partisan can identify and turn out at the polls is a staple of base-mobilization advocates in both parties, though they rarely take into account that such tactics help the opposition mobilize its base as well. There is certainly enough ammunition in Crockett’s brief political history to energize Texas Republicans, particularly her reference to the wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels” (she subsequently claimed this was a reference to his aggressive transportation measures to get rid of migrants, not to his disability). Asked how she might reach out to Trump voters in a state that he carried by over 13 percent in 2024, Crockett offered an interesting theory in a CNN interview: “We are going to be able to get people that potentially have voted for Trump even though I, obviously, am one of his loudest opponents, because at the end of the day, they vote for who they believe is fighting for them.”

It’s hardly unusual for progressive Democrats (or for that matter, MAGA Republicans) to argue that disengaged voters prefer “fighters,” but Crockett appears to be suggesting that the content of one’s message — as opposed to its tone or vibe — doesn’t much matter at all.

You get the sense listening to Texas Democrats that Crockett is very likely to beat Talarico for the party’s Senate nomination and can mount a well-financed, much-watched general election campaign. But the idea she’s going to win that general election by turning up the volume to 11 isn’t widely accepted. She has been in exactly three general elections in her Dallas base, none of which were remotely competitive. And it’s not just about the Senate race, given Texas’s role in determining control of the House. And as the Texas Tribune reports, Republicans love the idea of facing Crockett and pinning her to House Democrats they’re hoping to unseat in the midterms.

Candidates arguing about Crockett won’t be able to focus as much on Trump’s broken promises and poor record. And Jasmine Crockett will never be the sort of politician who deflects attention. Like her or not, she’ll be the big issue in the Democratic primary.

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:

Trolling the liberals

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.

Playing chess, not checkers

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.

He’s a man of the people, and the people are as childish as he is

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?

Trump is an insurgent leader with an insurgent style

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.

He’s saving America, so he should be able to do any damn thing he wants

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?