Had a great fall
Of all the king's men, all the president's men, and America's baffling amnesia
It's a signal of how baffling our nation has become during the Trumpocene.
We're exactly one week away from a presidential election. Just twenty days ago we heard a bombshell of a news report, about one of the primary competitors, from a living legend of a journalist—and it has had no affect at all.
Do you remember the story about Trump’s ongoing contacts with Putin? From way back on October 9, twenty whole days ago? You can refresh your memory in your favorite news source:
Here are the basics: in his new book, Bob Woodward—yes, that Bob Woodward, who, as a young Washington Post reporter, broke the Watergate story—revealed that one of the major party candidates for the American presidency, Donald Trump, has been maintaining a back-channel relationship with America's most bitter rival, Russian Premier Vladimir Putin, even while that rival conducts a brutal war in Europe that threatens America's most important international alliance.
Woodward reports that Trump and Putin have spoken at least seven times since Trump lost the presidency. It is akin to discovering that FDR’s opponent Thomas Dewey was exchanging telegrams with Hitler, or that Nixon’s opponent Hubert Humphrey had made secret phone calls to Khrushchev. There are, of course, laws (the Logan Act) that forbid private citizens (like Trump, after January 2021) from negotiating with foreign governments. And while sometimes former presidents participate in international affairs, that’s always done under the blessing of the current administration. Not Trump’s calls, though. This was part of his secret bromance with Putin, which he has conducted like a 1980s teenager stretching the phone cord behind the door to thwart an eavesdropping brother.
Interlude: One of my minor pet theories of Trumpism is that the reason Donald Trump was so willing to reveal secrets to Bob Woodward in the later stages of his presidency is because Bob Woodward was played by Robert Redford in a movie. You might remember that Donald Trump was compared to Robert Redford in a flattering 1976 NY Times profile (“He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford” — from Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Buys Buildings, NY Times, November 1, 1976).
Donald Trump really loved being likened to Robert Redford. So when Trump spoke to Woodward during his presidency, he felt like he was speaking not to a journalist, but to a handsome movie-star version of his own younger self. And that sounds like Donald Trump’s ideal conversation partner.
And the baffling thing: this news of Trump extra-legally meeting with Putin won't be a factor at all in the upcoming election. Indeed, it has already been forgotten. In fact, just last week, we learned that one of Trump’s prime benefactors, Elon Musk, has also been carrying on conversations with Putin — and that too has already been forgotten!
Do you know of a single Trump voter who cares that any of this happened? (If you do, or if you are one, please chime in! I want to be wrong about this.) MAGA will either believe the Trump campaign’s pat response that Woodward is wrong, or they will not mind a whit that Woodward is right, or, I think most likely, they have never let this news absorb into their brains, so that explanation of it or even the merest engagement with it aren’t even necessary. Trump can say he didn’t talk to Putin, he can say he did it and was right to do this, he can say both at once, he can blame immigrants for these phone calls, or he can just wave his hand and make his bizarre and threatening ongoing relationship with Putin part of the magic act that his angry throng already love. And we are left to just accept their indifference to this news as the new order of things.
Predetermined Wimpiness
The ineffectiveness, the predetermined wimpiness, of a story like Woodward’s news about Trump and Putin demonstrates, once again, that the Trumpists' priority is nothing resembling what we once, not so long ago, called policy or principle.
As near as I can tell, their policy and their priority is only him, Trump the man.
His policy, his priority, his principles, can spin all the way to other side from what conservatives once called conservatism, or can veer from what Trump believed or said in 2016, or 2020, or yesterday. They’ll still support him. Because it’s him, the person, whom they revere.
To those of us not in MAGA, this is what is so inexplicable. Our perpetual bafflement (or mine at least) is rooted in the way MAGA has prioritized their mythologized person of Trump over any coherent conservative position or even vision. I just can’t imagine so yoking my own identity to another man like this—and especially to one who is so obviously lacking in character, wisdom, judgment, and seriousness.
I wish I could understand the source of it all. As near as I can tell, somewhere in 2016, or possibly earlier, this person Trump—as corrupt and bigoted and authoritarian a figure as we’ve ever seen in American history—became a pure representation of an individual MAGAist's own identity. I don’t know how it happened. It was like MAGA stepped through a looking glass. I honestly think that TV show, The Apprentice, might have been part of it. (I’ve never seen a minute of that show; perhaps if I had, I’d be less baffled by Trump. Was he honestly that great in it?).
And since then, they’ve fully bonded themselves with him, so now anything he says or does—including assaulting women, stealing nuclear secrets, lying about natural disasters that devastate American lives, and even attempting to overthrow the will of the people the last time around—bends back into the hard mass of MAGA identity and reinforces that identity. Each new lie and rant somehow strengthens the others. I think this is how black holes work. In MAGA, Trump is them; them is him; truth is false; language, psychology, and physics fuse into something vaguely organic, made of a new type of matter and wearing an ugly red hat.
Meanwhile, I remain baffled by it all. Disorientation has been my primary emotional response to MAGA since the night of the 2016 election. They really think this? About that guy? Why would they want to do this to our nation? That it is at all possible doesn’t seem at all possible.
I also remain weirdly optimistic that he might be trounced next week (though our nation is about to go through an ugly and sad stretch before we achieve certainty of this outcome). I’ll explain this in a coming essay.
Yes, I understand that most Trump supporters do not much care what I think. While in a more rational time, they’d try to explain their affection for him, so that they might win more support, in the MAGA mind, the refusal to explain it, and indignation about even being asked about it, is central to the bit.
Maybe they avoid explaining it to the rest of us so they don’t have to explain it to themselves.
From Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1902). Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Through_the_looking-glass_and_what_Alice_found_there_(1902)_(14566096099).jpg