Damon Linker On Trump’s Historic Win

Two moderates react to the election results and where we’re headed.

Damon is a political writer with a must-read substack, Notes from the Middleground. He’s been the editor of First Things and a senior correspondent at The Week, and he’s the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test. Back when we were both at Newsweek / Daily Beast, he edited my essays, so we’ve been friends for a while. We also both belong to the camp of conflicted moderates — and look like doppelgängers. The poor guy gets mistaken for me sometimes.

Damon was on the Dishcast right after the 2022 midterms, so he’s back to discuss the results of this election. For two clips of our convo — if we should be more afraid of Trump this time around, and the effect of woke culture on men — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Trump going from an “absolute joke” to a world historical figure; his uncanny instincts; how he activated an ignored demographic in 2016; telling Jeb Bush that his brother didn’t keep us safe; W’s wars; neocons like John Podhoretz; Trump’s gains with Hispanic and black voters; the backlash against elites; South Park Conservatives; the end of Reagan Republicans; how Trump’s first win felt like a fluke; his smart team this time; Covid lockdowns and BLM; MeToo excesses and DEI; the immigration surge under Biden as a gift to Trump; liberals who see borders as immoral; the hideous talk about Springfield and migrant crime; the left’s “racism” slur; the Hispanic backlash over “Latinx”; legal immigrants opposed to illegals; the 1924 and 1965 laws; how asylum law takes sovereignty from citizens; the threat of Stephen Miller; deportation camps, violent protests, and martial law; how Dems could flatter Trump to tame him; Obama’s progressivism restrained by realism; Niebuhr; how skepticism over Ukraine is deemed “pro Putin”; how Ukraine didn’t move the electorate; the “fascism” debate; Harris and Trump both running ads on both sides of Israel/Gaza; the gaslighting over Biden’s decline; inflation and fuzzy memories of Trump’s economy; Harris courting Haley voters with Liz Cheney; her not-terrible but tepid run; “opportunity economy” and other blather; how her abortion strategy didn’t work; her cowardice with the press and new media; Trump’s success with podcasts; how he became a funny grandpa figure; barstool conservatives; his trans ads in the final stretch; and Vance as the future heir.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Anderson Cooper on grief, Reihan Salam on the evolution of the GOP, David Greenberg on his new bio of John Lewis, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and Mary Matalin on anything but politics. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Here’s a fan of last week’s pod with Musa al-Gharbi:

Great dive into wokeness and the causes thereof. One of your best episodes this year.

But the excellent discussion is lacking in the second half, namely a more thorough dissection of how we got to “elite overproduction.” Peter Turchin, who coined that phrase, explains it all in his book End Times. It’s a paradigm-altering book, and I’d love to hear Turchin’s opinion of the 2024 election and what lies ahead.

Another fan:

This was a brilliant episode and I’m very much looking forward to reading Mr. al-Gharbi’s book. I got into a Ph.D. program rather late in my life, and it was an education in economy, that’s for sure. I guess I walked in innocently thinking I was joining “my tribe” in the pursuit of Knowledge and Teaching, but this proved to be so far from the case that I’m still a bit in shock about it ten years later. So I was very grateful to see Mr. al-Gharbi put into words what I instantly recognized but had yet to articulate.

I remember one of my colleagues was a woman from India who had gotten her first grad degree in England. In our first group-orientation meeting — which was about orienting our perceptions along the social justice lines — she began to speak about how “white” it was here in Nebraska and how “I’m feeling very brown right now!” She was Brahmin caste, and nothing about her family or her life in India spoke of anything other than the highest levels of privilege. She was a lovely person, but it was so strange in hindsight to recognize how exactly she fit in the standing order and how happy she was to do it.

Here’s another clip from the Musa pod:

Another listener points to a post-election piece by Rebecca Solnit titled, “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do”:

It’s amusing that the Solnits of the world find America so confusing. They still don’t get it, and they lash out at the ones who were left behind. A lot of my peers in the Bay area are also perplexed.

Thanks to one of your recent guests, Tina Brown, I watched The Insurrectionists Next Door, and it sunk in a bit more clearly for me — that, plus my fellow Indian tech engineers who were pro-Trump because of the illegal immigration, deficit spending, and culture-war nonsense. I’ve always said that if the Bay-area folks care more about Guatemalan illegals than the poor, all-color “trash” in Alabama, this country will fall apart. For us immigrants, it’s clear that the only supporters of illegal immigration are liberal elites or transactional business types.

Also, I loved the Musa episode — finally someone with the balls to say what we all think in academia. The only ones who benefit from the DEI positions of leadership created are elites with the correct skin color or ethnic origin and not actual poor minorities trying to rise up from the ghetto/hood coming from disadvantaged families. Somehow the society is so racist that it needs examples of rich elite Black Americans (often not even American citizens or even permanent residents) in positions of power.

Here’s a guest recommendation:

I would absolutely love to hear you talk to Dr. Anthony Daniels, also known by the pen name “Theodore Dalrymple.” He is primarily a cultural critic but spent his earlier years working as a prison psychiatrist. He’s a contributing editor to City Journal, a Manhattan Institute fellow, and a recurring contributor to The New Criterion, among many other publications. Just look at the titles of some of his books: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, and Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality.

Anyway, he’s my port in the current storm, and might make a great guest after we have this election in the rear-view mirror. (Please, get in the rear-view mirror.)

Always grateful for recs. Another:

That photo of Truman is irresistible! You wrote, “Dogs FTW.” How about dogs For The Dishcast? Brian Hare is Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Psychology and Neuroscience, at Duke University:

He’s also a dog expert, and has a new book out, together with Vanessa Woods — the director of the Duke Puppy Kindergarten. It’s called Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog. I’d love to hear them join you for a discussion about evolutionary anthropology and, of course, dogs.

Yeah I watched that documentary on Netflix. Lovely, but a little cringe at times for my taste. Here’s a listener with a perennial question:

I’m writing to ask you to consider providing written transcripts for your podcast. I’m not deaf, but I have another illness that makes it impossible for me to listen to podcasts for any longer than a few minutes. But it’s also worth considering that not providing transcripts (or putting the entire conversion on YouTube, where CC is provided) keeps deaf people away from your content. I am a former sign-language interpreter, and I can tell you that I realize what an invisible (bad pun I suppose) issue this is for most podcasters. Though inelegant and often funny, AI transcripts are becoming popular with some podcasters; perhaps you could consider that.

Problem solved! Substack auto-transcribes each episode using AI, and you can find the transcript on each pod page here:

A reader writes:

Despite being deeply engaged in this issue, somehow I had never seen this Trump campaign video (h/t Rod Dreher) on Trump’s very detailed plans to stop the ongoing homophobic crime against humanity of mutilating gay kids on the basis of pure medical quackery:

So glad to see it now. The big battle is over. Now activists like me just have to make sure that the famously inattentive Trump does not get distracted from carrying out these plans. But I don’t think he will. His team was smart enough to run tons of ads on it (I saw some even here in deep blue California during the World Series), and I think they will know that they must follow through.

Here’s a dissent for our trans coverage:

I’ve spent years reading your weekly concerns about transing kids. This topic is difficult for me because it’s so personal.

I’m a liberal parent of an 8-year-old child who has been experiencing persistent gender dysphoria since the age of 3. Despite this, I have kept my child enrolled at an evangelical Christian school (the same one I attended as a child). Sometimes my wife and I think we are crazy for continuing to keep our child there, but we love the place and feel deeply attached to the tradition it provides for our children.

We live in an upper-middle-class suburb of a very blue city (St. Louis) in a deep red state. And we live down the street from my doctor dad and nurse mom who — bucking the trend among highly educated people — have remained steadfastly Republican. These circumstances inform my position on the issue.

Like you, I understand the concerns about puberty blockers, and I certainly would be quite hesitant to authorize their use on my own child. Not saying I never would, but I have a presumption against their use on my child.

But for a true “conservative” position on the broader public policy of the issue (and I really do admire the way you’ve wrestled with the definition of “conservative” over the years), the question isn’t, “Are puberty blockers safe for gender dysphoric kids?” I really don’t know the answer to that question. The only question I can really answer is, “Who should have the authority to decide if puberty blockers are safe for gender dysphoric kids?”

I would hope that the right answer is something along the lines of: “Parents, with informed consent and the help of medical professionals.” But since the puberty blocker bans that have been enacted in my red state like several others, the answer has changed to: “Partisan hacks in Jefferson City who believe in using the power of government to oppress liberals.”

The tragedy of a person like Jamie Reed (the transgender center “leaker”) is that her actions against the clinic gave more power to the Jefferson City hacks. I can’t speak for Reed’s intentions, but those hacks she has empowered do not act in good faith when it comes to gender dysphoric kids. These are folks who are far to the right of Trump on all things LGBT and would be happy to do crazy things like reverse Obergefell and Bostock (despite the fact that most of their GOP allies across the country would not support that cause). Call me crazy, but I don’t trust the Jefferson City hacks to determine whether my kid should have puberty blockers or not.

I search for a “conservative” answer to this question that leaves room for doubt. Not just doubt of conventional wisdom among the medical elite (yes, I agree with you that there has been unhealthy groupthink among this predominantly progressive crowd), but also doubt of any state government — left or right— that doesn’t see the grey area in the complicated issue of gender dysphoria among children. I can’t think of someone I’d trust less to determine the health of my child than a politician of any stripe. I want the government OUT of that decision for me and my child. That to me is a conservatism of both doubt and limited government.

For me, the question is about: 1) whether we know the treatment is effective, i.e. do the benefits outweigh the costs?; and 2) can a child really give meaningful consent to be sterilized for life and denied orgasms as an adult? Our usual answer to 1) is to conduct serious clinical trials. And that seems to me a conservative position. In the UK, that’s the new policy.

On 2), I honestly don’t believe it is possible to distinguish clearly between a gay kid and a trans kid with gender dysphoria, and even if it were, I don’t think a child on the verge of puberty can make a meaningful decision to consent. If you’ve never had an orgasm, how can you decide never to have one? If you haven’t gone through puberty, how do you know what you’ll feel on the other side of it? Many of us gay adults remember how puberty changed and helped us. We want to keep that option open for gay kids.

No, in general, I don’t want politicians deciding these things. But when the medical profession has been captured by activists and gender and queer theorists, when grotesque lies have been told by doctors, when suicide is used as a way to emotionally blackmail parents, I don’t want this decided by profit-seeking medical cowboys.

Another reader turns to abortion:

You wrote:

Some questions — like abortion — really are hard to compromise on, but forcing one side’s settlement on everyone (Roe) is the illiberal move. So in some ways, Dobbs has actually made liberalism easier, not harder. It allows for different legal regimes — and experience of them.

Forgive me for going identity-politics on you, but this could only have been written by a man whose body has never been commandeered by the state to carry a fetus and then birth a baby. The reason abortion is “hard to compromise on” is because the only way to satisfy the anti-choice side is to give the state control over women’s bodies. Have all the nice debates you want over when life begins, but in the end there’s simply no other way to do it.

That’s why I find your sanguine description of “different legal regimes” so hard to swallow. Well, sure, the Northern and Southern states in the early 19th century also had “different legal regimes” — how did that work out? It took 600,000 dead soldiers and a constitutional amendment.

Roe v. Wade did a similar thing: it constitutionalized the right to bodily autonomy for half the country’s population. No longer, thanks to Dobbs. Now women are suffering and dying in states all over the country solely because of “differences” in state law. That happened before Roe, then it didn’t happen for 50 years, and now it’s happening again. This is not just about bodily autonomy — a matter I would imagine you, as both a quasi-libertarian and a gay person who came of age in a pre-Lawrence/Obergefell era, would be extra-sensitive to. It is literally about life and death.

And before you say, well, there’s another life in the mix too! … I’m sorry, but no. The “other life” is not the same. It exists in a different physical and moral sphere, inside an autonomous human’s body, and it depends entirely on that body for its survival until the very last weeks of pregnancy.

On late-term abortions, I acknowledge I am outside the mainstream in believing the government should fuck off when it comes to what anyone — pregnant women included — does with their own body. Still, because this specter keeps coming up, I will point out that such abortions are both extraordinarily rare and virtually always the result of unimaginably devastating diagnoses of fetal incompatibility with life. As Pete Buttigieg pointed out recently, such abortions involve, almost by definition, wanted pregnancies that a woman — either alone or with a partner — decides to end for a medical reason (again, none of our fucking business).

Let me note that there are many, many women who disagree with you. If this were such an obvious question of women’s core rights, then surely no women would be against Roe? And yet millions are. How does that identity politics point feel now? And let me also just say that almost every other Western country legislates a compromise on abortion, rather than making it a constitutional right. I respect your position; but I don’t think it carries all before it.

Another reader on abortion:

I rarely ever comment, but I have to after you wrote this: “So in some ways, Dobbs has actually made liberalism easier, not harder. It allows for different legal regimes — and experience of them.” So far, at least two women have died in Texas (alone) from being denied life-saving miscarriage care by doctors afraid of being jailed and ruined because of the draconian anti-abortion law in Texas. This is the direct fruit of Dobbs and was entirely predictable. And the GOP would like to bring this to the entire USA. This is what comes when politicians write laws regarding healthcare, rather than doctors.

My wife needed this kind of care (thank goodness in Minnesota) for one miscarriage. Miscarriages and this kind of medical situation are common. How many women should die in this way to serve the religious convictions of certain groups in certain states? It’s “God’s will,” after all, isn’t it? Sorry for the passion, but the deaths of fully functioning adult women with families and children infuriates me.

One more on abortion:

I’m pro-choice, but I still want to thank you for acknowledging that Roe v Wade was an “illiberal” decision. I cringe every time I hear about “a handful of people in black robes deciding what women can do with their bodies,” when that’s basically the exact opposite of the Dobbs decision. I also completely agree with you that even this Court is unlikely to undo marriage equality.

But you missed the opportunity to highlight a really important connection between those two points: the Respect for Marriage Act. This law was passed in 2022 in direct response to Dobbs, with significant bipartisan support, and it means that even if the Supreme Court DOES overturn Obergefell, federal law itself now recognizes gay marriage and compels all states to recognize gay marriages from other states. It’s the obvious compromise that should have been passed a dozen years earlier, but only passed now because Dobbs forced legislators to stop grandstanding and do their job.

Despite left-wing distortions of their decisions, the current SCOTUS (and the Federalist Society that put most of the Justices there) is really focused on moving lawmaking power back to the legislative branch where it belongs. Because of this, I believe this Court will be a good check against whoever is president next year, and that Democrats’ declared intention to pack the Court is a much larger threat to our democracy than anything a president could currently get away with.

The RFMA didn’t get much coverage because it didn’t immediately alter the status
quo, but just imagine if the Democrats had done similarly with abortion at any point in the past 40 years. Forcing lawmakers to stop cowering behind the hems of those black robes is a good thing, and the Dobbs decision should be celebrated for having done so.

Here’s another on SCOTUS:

Good Dish last week, as usual. But I was disheartened to see you buy into the description of the conservative Justices as an “outlier court.” If by outlier you just mean that what has in recent times been a 5-4 ideological divide has become 6-3, then sure, the current composition is (barely) an outlier. But I do not see how this Court’s decisions can be fairly described that way.

Contrary to popular perception, the Roberts Court overturns precedent less frequently than previous iterations. Dobbs was obviously an exception, but even there the decision enabled democracy and disempowered the Court. The decision overturning Chevron similarly made the government more democratically accountable by helping ensure federal agencies act within the scope of their congressionally-delegated authority and can’t just do whatever the president wants. Even the despised immunity decision was a relatively straightforward extension of Nixon v. Fitzgerald (and will probably be the only thing protecting Biden from prosecution if Trump wins). The Court also reversed several aggressive Fifth Circuit decisions involving gun rights, abortion pills, and the CFPB.

Were the purportedly much more reasonable liberal Justices to have their way, however, cities across the country would be powerless to prevent homeless encampments from terrorizing cities (Grants Pass); Congress could concentrate the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury in the hands of the Executive Branch (Jarkesy); and state-sanctioned racism would still be occurring and celebrated across America’s colleges and universities (SFFA). I’ll take this “outlier Court” eight days a week.

Back to the election, another reader:

I’ve been a faithful reader of yours. I don’t always agree with your conclusions, but I love the open dialogue and that no topic or idea is off limits — everything is subject to rational critique. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the election results, and I believe the mistakes of the Harris campaign can be summed up in this one sign I’ve seen around DC:

“Obviously” was the attitude of the Democrats, Never Trumpers, and most of the corporate media. I truly believe it’s in America’s DNA to reject leaders and their allies who lecture and condescend. I appreciate how you have tried to make a reasoned case for why Harris would have been better while still taking seriously the plethora of issues that would make people prefer Trump.

Yep. I live in deepest, deepest blue America. The cloud of smug was suffocating this election.

Another reader points a finger — well, two:

There are two Dr Jills who should be held accountable for Trump’s victory. Dr Jill Biden kept demanding Biden’s second term, despite all painful evidence.

And Dr Jill Stein steadfastly refused to endorse Harris for purely self-promoting reasons. (Her role is similar to the one of Ralph Nader, who received more than 100,000 votes in Florida in 2000.)

Another reader “wanted to write this before your upcoming column that will surely dissect Tuesday’s election results”:

Thank you for being the canary in the coal mine on the Democrats losing the pulse of regular people when it comes to illegal immigration and identity politics. I, like many, thought Harris had a chance. Boy, was I wrong! But I wasn’t surprised.

The Democrats started this path from a place of genuine goodwill: empathy and compassion for people who say they’re in need of both. I think that’s a noble impulse. However, the ideological underpinnings of the party’s activists demanded that they dole out empathy to one group with overt scorn for others higher on the intersectional totem pole. The performative contempt blinded them to the very real economic needs of the people they’ve historically supported: poor people, blue-collar labor, and more. Once you begin to champion the demands of trans activists, who purport to advocate for 1% of the population, you risk pissing off 99% of the country.

The reason that the Trump campaign spent more money on trans-related TV ads is because it’s reflective of an elite class catering to the demands of a very small minority and ordering everyone else to not only accept them, but change how they engage with the world as a result:

Telling people that they have to insert pronouns when they introduce themselves, replace an entire gendered language like Spanish with “Latinx”, and treat men with beards in dresses as full-fledged women is a radical social change. And that’s before we get to the issue of affirming trans children. Harris attempted to downplay it during the campaign, but this was an identity politics administration. There are videos of her introducing herself in meetings with pronouns. The clip of a trans activist flashing her tits on the White House lawn was jet fuel for people that thought the Biden administration focused too much on this stuff.

I say this as someone with trans family whom I love, affirm, and refer to as their preferred gender. But the reality is that they’re 1% of the population. All people want from politicians is to be seen, and a lot of voters felt like they were being ignored in favor of a sexual minority whose fringe activists make unrealistic and contemptuous demands of society at large.

Then there’s illegal immigration. The optics of it are shockingly potent with many voters. It’s the issue that turned my septuagenarian mom from a Kerry-Obama-Obama-Clinton-Biden voter into a Trump voter, even though illegal immigration does not directly affect her cloistered life (aside from the subsidized prices of things like groceries, restaurants, home construction, etc).

What people saw was an administration that allowed asylum laws to be broadly abused for nonpolitical reasons, put illegal immigrants up in hotel rooms at taxpayer expense (a large reason I believe Trump gained so much in New York City), and lost track of them while they waited years for court dates. Once inside the country, they saw these people competing for scarce resources like housing.

And then Biden suddenly closed the border, illegal crossings plummeted, and he tried to blame Trump for killing the border bill! While the latter is completely true, it does nothing to disprove the fact that the administration opened the doors and was slow to respond to high waves of illegal immigration. The subsequent executive action solidified, for many voters, that it was a problem of their own making.

There’s certainly an undercurrent of racism that makes it easier for some people to become radicalized by this issue. But, fundamentally, poor Americans suffered through the worst inflation in 40 years and saw a government that appeared more interested in helping non-citizens than their own countrymen. That goes for growing opposition to Ukraine, too. Support waned for that cause once it became clear we were throwing money at, at best, a stalemate — while the bottom 40 percent of wage earners couldn’t afford groceries or homes.

The image of siding with illegal immigrants while the growing pool of poor Americans yearned for recognition from the president was very powerful. Trump gave them that recognition. I don’t think he’ll really do anything to fix it — after all, capitalists love a pool of cheap, exploitable labor — but he at least acknowledges struggling Americans and gives them somewhere to point their finger.

Yes and yes. I’m proud that Dish readers should not have been too shocked by what happened this week: we were, I think, a better guide than most legacy media institutions. On that note, one more reader for the week:

I consider myself similarly politically aligned as you. I often vote Republican in my stringent left corner of the country (Washington state), but in my 20 years of voting, I have yet to vote for a Republican president. This time was the closest I came, but in the end I opted for a third party candidate. My gut told me, similar to you, that Trump was going to win. In your various articles leading up to the election, I often felt you did a better job of convincing me to vote Trump than Kamala.

What I have been reflecting on the last couple of days is how our entire media needs to be reshaped and how this should happen. It cannot continue that the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, and The Economist all continue to adamantly oppose Trump and write of him as if he is an anomaly. The Financial Times last Saturday had a headline that picked up on that obscure poll that came out of Iowa saying Harris was leading. My family is from Iowa and no one believed it for a second.

On Election Day, I tuned into the PBS Newshour, which had about ten people lined up ready to go through the results. Nine of them are openly anti-Trump and the one Republican strategist probably was too! Additionally, I turn on my podcasts, yours included, and the host plus guest after guest are all clearly against Trump.  The post-election podcasts all expressed their dismay at the results openly. And these are right-of-center individuals.

My question is this: is Fox News the only source I can go to obtain views from the MAJORITY of the country that voted for Trump? I love your writing and insights, but I start to grow concerned if a Trumpian never appears on your podcasts and you openly admit that none of your closest friends vote Trump. I am not much better, but I do have a couple Trump friends at least (and may now consider myself one but still in the closet).

I think the reckoning for legacy media should be huge. But I don’t know how you change it when a huge majority of the journalists are social justice activists, and proud of it. As far as Trump supporters on the Dishcast, we recently had on Rod Dreher and Erick Erickson (return appearances for both of them), as well as Walter Kirn, who is very sympathetic to Trump and his supporters, if not explicitly pro-Trump. We had Chris Rufo on before he was hot. You can also browse the Dishcast archives for many more guests over the years who were either pro-Trump (e.g. Vivek Ramaswamy, Michael Anton) or very Trump-adjacent. But we will be doing better in the months ahead.

Thanks as always for the dissents and other comments, and please send yours — along with any pod guest recs — to dish@andrewsullivan.com. See you next Friday.

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