“Two Perfect Months”

That’s how Trump sees his opening act. Believe him — or your own lying eyes.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

– T.S. Eliot, “East Coker.”

Yes, it’s been a big beautiful opener from MAGA 2.0., hasn’t it?

In all fairness, let’s start with a real, substantive achievement. The Southern border is more secure than it has been in decades. Biden helped a lot with his belated executive orders, but reinstating Remain in Mexico and ending largely fraudulent asylum claims have been even more effective. In February 2024, Border Patrol picked up some 140,641 migrants between legal ports of entry; this February, it was 8,347. Huge success. And proof that previous administrations actively chose to keep the border open.

But the rest is chaos, malice, revenge, and failure, tinged with levels of indecency never before seen from the Oval Office.

Start with immigration itself. If the administration had wanted to, they could have hailed the quiet border and focussed on deporting illegal immigrants by usual means. But nah. Trump decided he wants to go after legal immigrants and even legal permanent residents who have been charged with no crimes or immigration violations — because they have criticized a foreign country, Israel. He’s deploying a McCarthyite 1952 law to target any legal noncitizen who has criticized or demonstrated against the Jewish state’s wiping of Gaza off the face of the earth, proudly gutting the First Amendment for no good reason.

Wait, there’s more. Trump has also abandoned habeas corpus and due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to seize mere suspects off the streets and transport them instantly to a terrifying foreign jail in El Salvador. The law has only been used twice before in wartime, and, ahem, we are not at war. Anyone with brown skin and the wrong kind of tattoo is therefore now at risk of being carted off to torture by the US government, with absolutely no safeguards that they have gotten the right people. Or do you think that an administration that confuses billions with millions, and puts classified intelligence on a Signal app, is incapable of making an error?

We therefore have no way of knowing if a makeup artist who legally sought asylum was rightly grabbed off the street to face certain rape and violence. And when Tom Homan was asked about due process in this case, he actually answered: “What due process did Laken Riley get?” Unbelievable that this thug is in charge of anything.

Then the utter indecency. These wannabe fascists publicly delight and revel in their acts of domination in a manner that even despotic regimes avoid. For the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, to posture in front of a third-world gulag, with a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, in order to scare any brown person with a tattoo in the US, is an exercise in authoritarian pornography. It is fascistic in its essence. For the White House to put out photographs of an obese criminal detainee, and add a cartoon of her in tears so that Trump can get a dictator’s boner, is pure depravity. No Christian, no believer in human dignity, no decent human being, would ever do such a thing.

Now observe how this crew understands the Constitution. Elon Musk believes that in the American system, the president is the sole representative of “the will of the people,” and as such cannot be challenged by either Congress or the courts. Hence the calls to impeach and remove any judge who dares slow him down. Republicans who routinely practiced judge-shopping to stop or slow Biden now claim it is an outrage. There is no longer even a pretense of consistency. For Trump there is only power.

On foreign policy, Trump has in two months ended NATO in all but name, turning it into a protection racket, as the Signal texts prove. It is becoming clearer and clearer that Trump’s aim for Ukraine is to divide it between him and his closest ally, Putin. The US claim to Ukraine’s mineral and energy assets is now being massively expanded: a unique form of reparations from an actual victim of aggression. And Putin was licking his lips yesterday: “Not long ago I said we’d grind them [Ukraine] down — now it looks like we’ll finish them off.” Anyone who believed Trump is merely trying to get a workable peace now looks stupid. He just wants to share in the Ukraine spoils Putin secured by invasion.

With Russia as the new key world ally, Trump has — why not? — threatened to violate the borders with Mexico and Canada. He has backed full-on ethic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. He has alienated every European ally, and threatened Denmark with annexation of Greenland. These klutzy morons have even managed to diss and alienate the Poles. Their clownish incompetence means that our former allies in NATO will be very wary of sharing intelligence in the way they previously have.

In economic matters, Trump is fast tipping the US and the world into a potential depression with a trade war as nutty as it is random. These tariffs are on, then off, then on again. They’re up, then down, then massively up, then suspended. They are deployed for “fairness” in trade and then also because of fentanyl and immigration policies. Next week, we get another big shock with the vaunted “reciprocal tariffs” against the entire world. You need a timeline and a computer to keep all this straight.

And even if you support a tariff policy, no sane person can defend the sheer impulsivity of all this. It deprives businesses of any stability with which to plan, invest, hire, or fire. It’s the kind of whimsical behavior usually seen in monarchs or dictators. But on trade and foreign policy, that’s what we now have. The GOP Congress has long since become the equivalent of Putin’s Duma — a rubber-stamp body designed solely to support the executive branch. The King decides. And his mood varies.

Then there’s the attempt to vandalize the government, particularly the parts that help Democrats. Break first, then fix is the Musk model, which is why he had to quickly rehire nuclear weapon experts and bird flu analysts after blithely removing them. Incompetence is also central here: the public accounting of DOGE’s cuts is filled with errors — claiming billions of dollars in savings which are, on inspection, millions. DOGE’s cuts to the IRS mean we could actually lose $350 billion in revenue over the next decade — about three times the claimed total savings of all the rest. Do I believe Musk’s claims of savings so far? Nope. Do I think he’ll have cut a trillion dollars in three months, as he claimed on state TV last night? Of course not. He’s a ketamine-addled sociopathic teenager who knows nothing about government.

Even with the vital attempt to restore biological sex as a category in the law, Trump’s bigots have managed to bollocks it all up. The executive orders are dripping with so much gratuitous animus, they all but command even the more conservative judges to stop or slow them. On the EO to ban transgender people in the military, for example, a judge wrote: “Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.” This is the Trump way: vileness before effectiveness.

The disaster this week with Mike Waltz’s astonishingly reckless Signal messaging brings it all together. This is a crew of bigots, sycophants, Fox News drunks and bimbos, Hollywood loonies, Claremont nutters, and uber-online edge-lords cosplaying as statesmen. But they aren’t even faintly serious — as Russia and China now fully understand. And their response to being found out was classic Trump: lie, lie, lie and call journalists scum. By any objective standard, this is a clown car.

I’m not naive. As televised and online theater, the first two months have been worthy of Roger Ailes. Deporting foreigners, attacking college students, terrifying legal noncitizens, bullying other countries, brandishing brutality, and mocking left lunacy all have a real constituency. A state-sponsored cancel culture campaign against Israel’s critics gives the base and The *Free Press a real thrill. And I’ve been chastened by the obvious online enthusiasm for deporting foreigners. It appears that many Americans believe that noncitizens have no rights in this country and can be treated any way the government feels like. Suddenly, you see how fragile liberal democracy is in the hands of a duplicitous mob-boss like Trump.

But this embrace of indecency, aggression, and lawlessness is also itself fragile. Trump has always known how to craft a reality show. But behind the curtain, there is still a small, bitter, vengeful, incompetent man, surrounded by third-rate sycophants and hacks with no coherent strategy for economic or political success, no serious experience in government, and a record of making enemies of everyone and losing long-loyal friends.

A president who uses ancient laws and police-state tactics shows not only that he is a degenerate and a disgrace, but that he is too weak to do things the right way; he pushes executive orders because he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to achieve anything lasting; he has alienated allies he may well soon need; he has already had his lunch eaten by Putin and Xi and Netanyahu; and he is heading toward a period of tenacious stagflation when his most resilient advantage — that he manages the economy well — may evaporate overnight.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that this shit-show is even worse than many of us expected. It is far more overtly authoritarian than in the first term, far more dangerous in foreign policy, far more reckless in economic policy, far more intolerant of opposing views, completely contemptuous of free speech and free trade and free markets. The two aspects of tyranny I did not see in the first term — war-like territorial expansionism and contempt for habeas corpus and due process — have now fallen into place. My 2016 essay, in fact, now reads as more prescient than at any time since I wrote it. I was wrong in hoping that First Term Trump gave us some reassurance about Second Term Trump. He is still the petty tyrant, corrupt bully, and depraved fool he always was — but now emboldened, unleashed, seeking true revenge.

Our national character — the very meaning of America — is thereby being changed. Trump is now a textbook definition of a tyrant attempting to break a republic, propelled by propaganda, fueled by bigotry, contemptuous of law. And so, so many Americans are here for it. This, I truly fear, is not a drill.

New On The Dishcast: Nick Denton

Nick is an entrepreneur and journalist. The founder of Gawker Media, publisher of Gizmodo, and editor of Valleywag, he began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times — as a derivatives and tech correspondent — and later founded a Silicon Valley news aggregator called Moreover Technologies. He’s now working on Maze.com, which hosts a network map of near-future timelines. He is also a huge China enthusiast — and he believes that if the Twentieth Century was America’s, this one is very much China’s. We are a bit player and will soon be a distant second to the next true global hegemon.

Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the growing dominance of China, and the Chinese outcompeting Elon Musk. That link also takes you to commentary on last week’s hit episode with Mike White. Readers also continue to debate the lab leak theory, and we air dissents over entitlement cuts and NPR funding, with my replies throughout.

Money Quotes For The Week

“If I’m such a nefarious character, why am I in Mike Waltz’s phone?” – Jeff Goldberg.

“So President Trump is ‘using war authorities’ in the absence of a declared war when he deports Venezuelans, but it’s not ‘war plans’ (just ‘attack plans’) to bomb the Houthis because there is no declared war,” – Ed Whelan.

“This is dystopian. The government does not even allege this woman played a major role in the pro-Palestine protests, like Khalil did. And yet they’re trying to expel her to South Korea, where she hasn’t lived since she was 7. I don’t see how anyone can defend this. It’s un-American,” – Billy Binion on a 21-year-old college senior who’s had a green card since age 7.

“I think anybody who’s present in the United States has protections under the United States Constitution,” – Antonin Scalia, when asked “Do undocumented immigrations have the five freedoms [of the First Amendment]?”

“What we call ‘cancel culture’ is really the justice system of this [woke] revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next,” – Bari Weiss, in a 2021 piece in Commentary.

“If Elon is mass firing thousands of people who didn’t do anything wrong, but Trump won’t fire anyone after Signal Gate, the message is that accountability is only for people at the bottom. People at the top can get away with anything,” – Zaid Jilani.

“John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett had better wake up from their stupid little dreamworld and end this lawless nonsense from their precious co-credentialists in robes forthwith…. The Supreme Court controls no army and no bank account. … How on earth will it enforce rulings without the force of money or arms?” – Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, an increasingly fascist publication.

“The Paul Weiss settlements reveals Trump to be a mob boss — but a Don Fanucci-like boss. … Massive norm violation to extract a gesture of obeisance from his adversary — but extreme leniency in the terms once that gesture has been extracted. He just wants you to show respect and to a wet his beak a little,” – Wesley Yang.

“Y’all know got Governor Hot Wheels down there, c’mon now. And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot-ass mess,” – Jasmine Crockett, Texas congresswoman, keeping it classy at the transqueer group, HRC. (Abbott has used a wheelchair since 1984.)

Yglesias Award Nominees

“I hate [The Atlantic]. … [But] you can’t downplay [the Signal chat]. You have to sit up there and be like, ‘Holy shit. This is a fuck-up of epic proportions,’” – Dave Portnoy, the pro-Trump founder of Barstool Sports.

“Regarding this whole Signal debacle, the administration really just needs to come out and explicitly say they F’d up. The word gymnastics is making it worse,” – Tomi Lahren, Fox News.

“I do have a concern that if we don’t get the executive branch under control, we drift toward authoritarianism,” – Celeste Maloy, Republican congresswoman.

The View From Your Window

Porto, Portugal, 12 am

Dissents Of The Week: Approximate Origin

A reader responds to my lab leak column::

Your consistent calls for open-mindedness and intellectual humility is something I have always appreciated in you. But your recent tirade against Tony Fauci and the scientific establishment is in conflict with those principles, and I can only conclude that you have decided a lab origin for the virus is settled science. It is anything but.

While I, and almost all fellow scientists I know, as well as the majority of virologists studying coronaviruses, are open to the possibility of a lab leak being responsible for COVID-19, the scientific evidence to date still supports a zoonotic origin for the disease as the most likely. From everything I can gather, the conclusion from BND, CIA, and MI6 is circumstantial, based on evidence such as the types of research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the lack of safety standards therein. (And I might point out that these spy agencies are not immune from political considerations themselves). So there’s no smoking gun, such as actual samples from the lab matching the sequences of COVID-19 have been produced.

In contrast, there is ample molecular evidence for similar zoonotic events in the past, including other coronavirus outbreaks (SARS-1). Again, I am not writing to advocate for one hypothesis over another, only to suggest that you try to exhibit intellectual humility and charity of motive. I cannot vouch for Fauci’s integrity, but neither you nor I are in his head. Given a long career of scientific excellence and public service, I think he deserves some benefit of the doubt.

I don’t know and do not claim to know for certain where this virus came from. I’ve always believed the natural origin as a default option but always knew it hadn’t been proven. Yet Fauci told us it had been proven in the “Proximal Origin” paper. Now, every Western and US intelligence agency believes it was most likely made in a lab. So I’m the one with an open mind. Fauci isn’t.

One thing that concerns me: In every other zoonotic event of this kind, we have found out how a virus went from bats to another species to humans. That intermediary link is where the virus gets dangerous to humans. With Covid-19, after five years, we still have no third species to blame.

Occam’s Razor applies, no? No intermediate species; a notoriously sloppy lab investigating bat coronaviruses with gain-of-function research with security procedures far, far below what’s required; a Chinese refusal to air all the details; NIAID’s previous collaboration with the Wuhan Institute creating an obvious conflict of interest. I mean: please.

Another reader writes:

A plausible explanation for Fauci ignoring the lab leak theory is that he was directly ordered to do so on the basis of national security. A lab leak can be molded into an act of war.

It sure can. But Fauci is a scientist not a national security official. Another dissent:

I think the thing you’re forgetting is that it was very common back then for people to claim the source of Covid was an intentional lab-leak — that Covid was, in fact, a “bioweapon” unleashed by the CCP (they always said “CCP” because it’s more scary or something) to hurt Trump. This idea was all over social media, and I think it’s easy to forget that it was this conspiracy theory, along with many others, that the US government and medical establishment was fighting against.

Of course. But my point is that it is not a scientist’s job to push back on conspiracy theories. It’s his job to understand the science, period. And Fauci and others often conflated an accidental lab leak with deliberate one — to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.

One more dissent for now:

I write this as a loyal follower of practically 20 years, chagrined by your decision to apply your formidable intelligence to extremely peripheral issues such as the origins of Covid, instead of what is happening right now, in front of us, for all to see. I wish that the few erstwhile logical thinkers who have a broad reach, such as yourself, would focus every neuron you have on WTF is going on now and what could stanch the dissolution of our republic. These excursions into rabbit holes contribute nothing.

I do not think it is a peripheral issue that our government may have deliberately concealed the real origins of a virus that killed millions. I think the collapse of trust in government and science is part of why we are where we are. And I believe a writer can tackle more than one thing at a time.

More debate on this continues on the pod page, arriving in your in-tray shortly. As always, please keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Mental Health Break

If Mike Waltz joined this gym:

In The ‘Stacks

• Dan Drezner: “American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive.”
• Rubio is losing his soul at State.
• How secure is Signal from foreign spies?
• How promising are the anti-Hamas protests within Gaza?
• The search for thousands of kidnapped kids in Ukraine gets DOGE’d.
• The case for bringing back rescissions to cut spending.
• “‘Abundance’ liberals have a carbon problem,” argues Josh Barro.
• Could growing seaweed save us from the climate crisis?
• Bill Burr is thriving as he takes shots across the political spectrum.
• To call Jackie Robinson a DEI hire is absurd, yet here we are.
• Noah Carl makes “the conservative case against white identity politics.”
• Were Native Americans better at making their boys into men?
• A trans man walks into a gyno office …

The View From Your Window Contest