MAGA cracks

The American right has a problem: it can’t stop talking about itself. Commentators, academics and journalists of what used to be called a “conservative” persuasion all tend to think that their ideas are tremendously interesting. And, in the way a difficult child becomes argumentative when he or she isn’t getting attention, they fight. They fear irrelevance and so they fall out with each other and take sides in order to prove to themselves that they have something worth saying. Things become messy and nasty and everybody gets carried away – usually in the hope of grabbing their own slice of an all-too easily distracted online audience. (Why else am I writing this?

Notionally, Americans have never been better off. The ructions in tech stocks over the past few weeks cannot detract from the fact that the US economy has been outgunning other developed economies all century. The overall graph of real disposable income for Americans continues to trend upward, almost as if the sharp dip during the pandemic had not happened. That is certainly not true everywhere: in many countries, Covid has been followed by stagnation in GDP and wages. Yet, for all the wealth generated, many Americans simply do not feel that they are living in a thriving country. On the things that really matter, such as basic living costs, citizens at the lower end of the income scale feel their wages are increasingly inadequate. They are not imagining it.

The most powerful intelligence alliance in the world is breaking up. In January, Donald Trump restricted intelligence-sharing on Russia and Ukraine, cutting allies out of negotiations and freezing certain channels entirely. Then in March came the so-called “Ukraine intel blackout,” an unprecedented freeze that shut Britain and Australia out of updates on Russian troop movements. And last month, the Dutch said they were scaling back intelligence-sharing with America over fears of “politicization.” Trump tends to treat intelligence as leverage, a tool to reward countries that fall in line with Washington and punish those that don’t. In his hands, intelligence and secrets have become bargaining chips.

Sometime in 1953, Dorothy Martin was contacted by aliens. They had bad news and they had good news. The bad: Earth was about to be swallowed up by floodwaters. The good: as the leader of a chosen few, Martin would be saved by flying saucers. Mankind had brought this calamity on itself by following Lucifer’s agents – scientists – and abandoning Christ. Over the next year or so, Martin assembled a little flock of disciples who believed their salvation, and the world’s end, would come on December 21, 1954. A team of psychologists caught wind of Martin’s prediction.

In the year since his triumphant reelection, Donald Trump has racked up an enormous list of accomplishments, both foreign and domestic. His sweeping, “move fast and break things” approach to governance has generated a form of accepted normalcy which his first administration never experienced. His White House staff and cabinet, once full of leaks and disloyalty, has turned out to be incredibly faithful. On the international scene, he has credibly been suggested as deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. And at home, according to polling averages from RealClearPolitics, Trump is more popular at this point in his second term than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama was. Yet within the movement that made all this possible, it seems everyone is at each other’s throats.

Though reporters covering the Trump administration are very familiar with Steven Cheung, the Donald’s combative White House communications director, he’s not a recognizable face to the general public. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt plays good cop, deflecting questions; Cheung is bad cop, trolling the media on X. But Cheung had a moment in the spotlight early this month during a press conference in which Trump announced reduced prices for GLP-1 “fat drugs.” “Where’s Steve?” Trump said. “He’s taking it.” The press is very familiar with Cheung’s weight issues. When one media outlet compared him to the rather overweight Bond villain Oddjob, Cheung leaned into the racially tinged stereotype and posed for a photo while wearing a bowler hat.