It may not be much yet, but rumors of the death of actual conservatism are overblown.

“Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court, ever. You can disagree with it, within the bounds of legal ethics, you can criticize it, you can appeal it, or you can resign,” – Republican Senator John Kennedy, to judicial nominees last Wednesday.

The Tate brothers — an anti-woke online duo of rapey, depraved misogynists — treat women as inferior sex objects, beat them, tape their sexploitations, and brag about it. Andrew Tate recently tweeted: “Fact. Women are sex workers.” Detained by Romanian authorities after charges of sex trafficking, Andrew Tate explained why he held out hope they could soon return to abusing women in the US:

The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever.

I mention this not because I’m shocked. The two most prominent men in the Trump administration, after all, have either regularly “grabbed women by the pussy” or sired 13 kids from four different mothers — and evangelicals love them all the more. So of course, the Tates are beloved by Candace Owens, Benny Johnson, Richard Grenell, among other MAGA luminaries.

I mention it solely because some on the right actually don’t like the Tates at all. Ben Shapiro has fumed: “The right should DUMP Andrew Tate.” Chris Rufo called him “a common pimp with social media following.” Washington Examiner’s Kimberly Ross thundered: “The Left and Right don’t agree on much. But when it comes to a misogynistic predator such as Tate, we can agree on this: We don’t need more like him.” Senator Josh Hawley just said, “I don’t think conservatives should be glorifying this guy at all.” Super-rightist Pedro Gonzalez agreed: “Andrew Tate is a scumbag. Whatever cultural forces propelled his rise, Trumpworld’s embrace of him is disgusting and wrong.” And yesterday, Ron DeSantis told the Tates they weren’t welcome in Florida.

I know this is not exactly a big ask: distancing from alleged rapists and human traffickers. But in the current cult-like climate, as the Trump peeps repeatedly huff their own methane, and the crazies appear to be pushing on countless open doors, it’s something. (I wish there had been similar liberal call-outs of left-extremists under Biden at the very start.) And it’s not the only sign of internal, conservative resistance to a reactionary, lawless populism.

So let us now praise National Review, whose writers Ed Whelan, Andrew McCarthy, Charles CW Cooke, and executive editor Mark Antonio Wright have consistently called out Trump’s rhetorical assaults on core American values. Substacker Richard Hanania has been on a roll as well, decrying the dumbness of the Muskovites: “Coming around to the idea that it’s all just stupidity. I can’t think of any obvious or 4d chess reason why you would stop funding biomedical research.” Me neither.

Among veterans on this lonely path: Jonah Goldberg, George Will, David Brooks, and David French (the latter somewhat defanged by being coopted as the NYT’s darling). And let’s also note Jack Goldsmith’s erudite deconstructions of Trump’s violations of even unitary executive theory, rightly understood. On the president’s refusal to enforce the law in the TikTok case:

Mr Trump’s claimed discretion to not enforce statutes … turns his constitutional duty to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” on its head and undermines Congress’s core constitutional power.

Goldsmith has also devastated Trump’s attempt to remove all processes ensuring that his actions as president are, you know, legal. No one can call Goldsmith a wuss when it comes to executive power. He’s largely in favor of an expansive view. But: “Trump’s early political and messaging wins on executive orders are signaling a cavalier-about-the-law presidency that will make it hard for Trump to prevail before the unitarians on the Supreme Court for many of his aggressive Article II actions.”

Then there is Danielle Sassoon, a Federalist Society, Scalia-groomed lawyer whose commitment to the rule of law meant she chose to resign rather than dismiss a valid corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams — as a quid pro quo for Adams’ support for Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Let’s list and name some of the other DOJ resisters to this bald-faced corruption of the law: John Keller, Kevin Driscoll, Ryan Crosswell, and Hagan Scotten. From Scotten’s resignation letter:

No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives … I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion [to dismiss the Adams case]. But it was never going to be me.

Again: Scotten is a former clerk for Kavanaugh and Roberts, and a Special Forces vet with two bronze stars. Not exactly an MSNBC viewer. Other conservative legal voices have also condemned the dirty Adams deal: Ed Whelan, who writes a regular feature for National Review called “This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism,” and Andrew McCarthy, a legendary rightwing legal voice. Whelan has been very impressive. Again: this isn’t a hard case. If Trump wanted to do a quid pro quo with Adams, he could have once again abused his pardon power — which, though gross, would still be constitutional. Instead he and his goons at his DOJ trampled on the integrity of the legal system.

Other conservatives have been decrying the “woke right,” by which they mean those so caught up in their far-right bubble that they risk jeopardizing the entire project of restraining the left. Two honorable mentions: Bari Weiss’ speech at the ARC conference in London, raising alarm about Tate-like excesses; and James Lindsay, a constant wild card, who nonetheless sees the same groupthink, cultish behavior, and intolerance on the right that we saw on the woke left under Biden. Here’s Lindsay, for example, on Bannon’s kinda-Nazi salute:

Either you disapprove and look prudish or Woke, or you let it fly as part of an escalating provocation cycle. We’ve seen this tactic before. It’s not better when “we” do it.

Speaking of Bannon, we also have his rather splendid open-warfare on Musk, calling him a “truly evil person” and, even worse, a “parasitic illegal immigrant.” Do you recall any such open dissent by centrist liberals as the Biden era began its surge to the far left?

The WSJ, the highest quality right-of-center paper, has also been airing dissent on a regular, intelligent basis. Today alone, in a Trump symposium, you’ll find one regular columnist decrying the chaos of Musk’s appointment, another worrying about Trump’s military designs on Panama, another that, “under this administration, for better or worse, it’s not clear there is a script,” and another that the administration is opening “the Overton window in ways good and bad.” The paper openly campaigns against Trump’s tariffs. Its chief political columnist, Kimberley Strassel, wrote this week:

Influential Trump supporters are honing their own methods for stamping out even mild disagreement with the president’s approach rally online supporters to pile on, label the target a member of the “uniparty” or the “establishment,” threaten a primary … It’s a recipe for intellectual stagnation. It’s a departure from the modern conservative movement, which has been defined by its innovative ideas…

This week, the WSJ’s foreign policy columnist also took a serious shot:

MAGA promises a realism-based approach to foreign policy. What Messrs. Musk and Vance delivered in Germany is almost exactly the opposite.

Trump supporter Rod Dreher is against the looming tax and Medicaid cuts: “They will come to regret this.” Pedro Gonzalez is just as concerned about shutting down the CFPB: “Is it ‘America First’ to let corporations scam Americans and engage in predatory practices with impunity? Does that feel like ‘winning’ in the ‘Good Timeline’?”

Last but not entirely least is the Babylon Bee, the right’s attempt to replicate The Onion. Once cringe, it is now serving up headlines like this one on the Tate affair: “Conservatism Saved As Muslim Sex Trafficker Brought Back To U.S.,” and this one on the Trump budget: “Republicans Clarify That Deficit Spending Only A Problem When Democrats Do It.” As the Onion became super lame/woke/unfunny, the BB is actually scoring some hits against its own side. Imagine, say, Stephen Colbert ever doing such a thing with the Biden administration. Unthinkable.

Don’t get me wrong. These exceptions prove the rule of total capitulation to Trump and Musk. The way AG Bondi and her deranged deputy, Emil Bove, bungled the Adams case and their desire to weaponize the DOJ to punish Trump’s enemies, reflects the degenerate reactionism of this era.

But this is the very beginning of the second-term roller-coaster ride, the moment when all doubts are supposed to be set aside by the faithful exulting in the honeymoon. And these small acts of conservative defiance matter. They are putting on record all of Trump’s overreach, in a manner unknown among dissident Democrats when Biden began his woke Kulturkampf. They keep the conservative tradition alive, even as most of the GOP abandons it in favor of strongman, tech-bro authoritarianism. That’s something. And when in the future we begin to undo the madness of this moment, it will, unlike Trump’s derangement, age remarkably well.

Back On The Dishcast: Christopher Caldwell

Chris — an old friend and, in my view, one of the sharpest right-of-center writers in journalism — returns to the Dishcast for his third appearance. He’s a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books, a contributing writer for the NYT, and a member of the editorial committee of the French quarterly Commentaire. We covered his book The Age of Entitlement on the pod in 2021, and in 2023 he came back to talk European politics. This week I wanted to talk to a Trump supporter as we survey the first month. And we hashed a lot out.

Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the vandalism of DOGE, and why Chris thinks Trump has been more consequential than Obama on policy. That link also takes you to commentary on our recent episodes with Yoni Appelbaum on zoning, Jon Rauch on Christianism, and Ross Douthat on God and the universe. Plus, Truman in the pod studio.

Money Quotes For The Week

“If (it means) peace for Ukraine, if you really need me to leave my post, I am ready. I can exchange this for NATO (membership), if that condition is there, immediately,” – Volodymyr Zelensky, the purported dictator.

“The Right misunderstand Putin like the Left misunderstand Hamas,” – Claire Lehmann.

“Bring back psychiatric facilities … but reduce govt health care spending on the poor? Bring back American manufacturing … but gut the implementation of CHIPS? Create a golden age of medical research … but waste a ton of scientists’ time with administrative chaos?” – Derek Thompson on the utter incoherence of DOGE.

“Elon Musk’s posts over the past year demonstrate frequent factual unreliability, with fact-checking reports consistently identifying misleading content, especially in election and immigration topics. The 33% unreliability rate from one week and 50 misleading election posts with 1.2 billion views underscore a pattern of misinformation,” – Grok 3, Musk’s own new AI tool.

“Green cards for Chinese elites. Just what MAGA voted for!” – Michael Sleestak

“The reassertion of brute reactionary power in the dual ascendancy of Donald Trump and Elon Musk has brought us to a cultural tipping point. Virtue be damned: Now we are living in an era of relentless, unapologetic vice signaling,” – Thomas Chatterton Williams.

“Joy Reid was replaced by two African-American anchors and a Latina anchor. But sure, everything is racist. Crying wolf to protect very rich, powerful minorities among the elites hurts the real cause of fighting racism,” – Cenk Uygur responding to Keith Olbermann calling Reid’s removal a “racist purge.”

“I just got tired,” – Demi Lovato on why she no longer uses they/them pronouns.

Yglesias Award Nominees

“We have no plan whatsoever to balance the budget other than growth, but what they’re proposing is to make the deficit worse,” – Thomas Massie, the only GOP congressman to vote against Trump’s budget bill.

“So long as people like Jon Lovett control the party’s messaging, Ds aren’t winning back any working class people. The way he treats Bill Maher’s totally reasonable concerns about minors and gender dysphoria with eye rolls and snark is literally why our brand is in the trash,” – Rachel Bitecofer.

The View From Your Window

Zermatt, Switzerland, 11.46 am

Dissents Of The Week: Cutting Through The Quagmire

A reader responds to my latest column, “Requiem for the West”:

The obvious explanation is that Trump is doing what Trump does when negotiating: starting with maximalist nonsense before haggling down. Zelensky needs to be bargained out of his maximalist insistence on not negotiating peace with someone evil. (Periodic reminder: peace negotiations are always with someone evil.) Putin needs to be buttered up to get him to the table. I still want Putin’s head on a pike outside the Hague, but Vance is right on the need for facing facts on the ground.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we? If all this turns out okay, I’ll be happy to recognize it. But I don’t think Trump is operating on some high level 4D Chess negotiating strategy. I think he’s winging it. Another dissent:

You state that Putin was “unprovoked” — this is Stage IV TDS talking. As you well know, he stated clearly from 2008 onward that NATO expansion into Ukraine was a red line. In the months leading up to the war, he again made clear to Biden and NATO that this would not be acceptable. Putin was met with a derisive rebuke by the NATO chief, to the effect that the West would decide that issue and he had no say in it.

Well, turns out he did. I believe/hope that’s what Trump was referring to when he said Zelensky and friends “started” the war. Trump understands that similar circumstances would have been met with similar action by the US — as indeed it was in 1963.

There are valid critiques of Western policy toward Russia in the 1990s and 2000s. I’m not unsympathetic to this argument. But the full invasion of Ukraine was indeed “unprovoked” by any immediate event or action by Ukraine, the victim of aggression.

Another reader looks to defense spending in Europe:

I found your Reagan quote inspiring, and I don’t like Trump’s abandonment of that moral vision any more than you do, but Trump’s words seem to have had the intended effect: only now do Europe’s leaders seem to take seriously his repeated demand that they invest more in defense.

If the Russian threat is so dire, why has Europe been so slow to ramp up their military spending? The US spends far more on defense, despite having much more debt — a level not seen since the wartime spending of the 1940s. Meanwhile, Europe’s budget is weighted towards social spending and away from defense. It begins to feel like America’s security guarantee is effectively subsidizing the famously generous social safety net of Europe.

The US cannot afford to be the credit card that finances all the world’s causes, even noble causes. I don’t want to see Russia rewarded for its aggression, and I wish that the moral purpose of the West felt more intact, but my initial feeling is that Trump introduced a shock to the system that spurred Europe into action in a way that three years of war in Ukraine failed to do.

Again, it’s hard not to be gladdened by the attitude shift in Europe. Trump deserves credit for this — which began in his first term. I just would have preferred not to blow up NATO at the same time, by making it clear that the US will only defend countries who pay it back, as seems the obvious inference of Trump’s many statements. Another reader adds:

The EU countries have consistently underspent on defense, used cheap Russian gas to subsidize their industry, forged commercial ties with China without regards to human rights, and allowed Russian oligarchs a playground in which to spend and hide their ill-gotten gains. Yes, Europe is an ally of the US, but a level of fairness should exist. Perhaps this horrible deal that Trump wants to work out with Putin and Zelensky will wake the Europeans up that they cannot live in the coddled, social-democratic utopia they seem to daydream in.

Point taken. Another reader:

I don’t get what nuance you’re trying to bring by insisting that the US cares less about Ukraine than Russia does. Of course that’s true: that’s why American boots on the ground aren’t involved, and why we still aren’t a party to the war (your insistence that we are is simply wrong). Your praise of Obama in 2014 is also absurd. Him abandoning Ukraine to Russia in 2014 is precisely why we are here at this moment: Putin gobbled up part of Ukraine before, and he felt it could get away with it again.

Another also looks to history:

The brazen negotiation of mineral rights in exchange for a seat at the table is unseemly, but it’s hardly a departure from the Bush Sr. playbook of international relations. While he may have coated the Gulf War in high-minded rhetoric about state sovereignty and democratic values, the war was ultimately about energy security. Trump is selfish, transactional, deranged (choose whatever adjective), and his rhetoric matches his character, but he hasn’t yet departed from historical US actions over the last 100 years — other than perhaps the most recent Biden/Obama self-deluded commitment to liberal internationalism, which frankly, needed to die.

As I recall, Bush Senior famously chose not to advance to Baghdad to depose Saddam after the liberation of Kuwait. He was very, very, very clear that his lodestar was the inviolability of internationally recognized borders. Even Bush Jr never attempted to get reparations from Iraq.

As always, please keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Mental Health Break

The rare feat of getting Larry David to lose it with laughter:

In The ‘Stacks

• Damon Linker sees German politics as no longer right vs. left, but chaos vs. establishment.
• Blaming Biden isn’t a real economic plan.
• A Trump supporter worries that GOP cuts to Medicaid will be “political suicide.” What if they gut science funding?
• Measles and flu? “The situation is not good,” says Matt Yglesias.
• The only policy area where Trump has majority support? The transqueer cray-cray.
• McConnell’s retirement is a “rare blow to the gerontocracy.” The younguns at DOGE and the MSM present their own problems.
• Veterans are getting DOGE’d at a rapid clip.
• The separation of powers is complicated by independent agencies.
• Yascha Mounk hopes DOGE will end the “American eye exam racket.”
• Lisa Abend describes what tourists lose when they travel with Google Maps.
• Tina Brown reflects on the 100th anniversary of her old mag, The New Yorker.

The View From Your Window Contest

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“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” – Orwell