Trump’s Very Own Basket of Deplorables
The president and his movement are dropping the fig leaf and declaring half the country the enemy. How can this go on?
Tech CEOs are another breed, exhibit 42,205:
Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, shocked San Franciscans last week when he said that he “fully supports” President Trump and wants National Guard troops deployed to their city. But his allegiance to Mr. Trump goes much further.
Screenshots of internal documents and communications obtained by The New York Times show that Salesforce has pitched Immigration and Customs Enforcement on using the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities to help ICE staff up as Mr. Trump expands immigration raids and deportations around the country. . . .
The company, which had hoped to land a paid contract, was responding to an ICE request that firms explain how they could help the agency hire more agents. It was not clear how much money the services could raise.
Happy Friday.
A Noun, A Verb, and Antifa
by Andrew Egger
“Those who love Trump are the devout, virtuous patriots that must be protected no matter what; those who hate him are the vile demons who must be destroyed by any weapon to hand.”
It’s been plain for a while that this axiom is the central guiding tenet of MAGA philosophy. But this week, we really got to see just how all-encompassing that rule is.
Last Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson kicked off a small scandal by describing the “No Kings” protests that will take place across the country tomorrow as a “hate America rally” run by “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” This week, those claims became the centerpiece of GOP messaging about the protests. Yesterday, multiple Republicans senators—John Barrasso on the Senate floor and Steve Daines on Fox News—denounced the protests as a “hate America rally.” On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz said he had introduced legislation to allow the Justice Department to target the funders of “these rallies, which may well turn into riots” for racketeering charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi continues to make the case that protesters carrying matching, professionally printed signs is proof they’re secretly Antifa. And Karoline Leavitt said yesterday, while speaking about the New York City mayoral race, that “the Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”
As we keep saying: The “No Kings” protests that took place in June were nothing like what these Republicans are describing. They were peaceful, patriotic, and overwhelmingly normie-coded: a bunch of regular people taking to the streets to exercise their right to object to the ongoing depredations of an authoritarian administration. Organizers held deescalation trainings—as they have done again this week—and instructed protesters to distance themselves from anyone who seemed like they were there to cause trouble. As a result, the mammoth protests went off pretty much without a hitch.
This Saturday’s “No Kings” protests are likely to again be the beau idéal of what peaceful protests should be. But they’ll also be anti-Trump, so Republicans are compelled to denounce attendees as anti-American troublemakers who are probably also paid actors and Antifa terrorists.
This was not the only piece of GOP discourse this week. The other concerned Politico’s revelation of the shockingly vile and bigoted group chats of Young Republican leaders across a number of states. The story initially sparked panic in conservative circles. Participants in the chat issued mealy-mouthed and slippery apologies, while the national Young Republican organization rushed to distance itself from the members and their rhetoric.
But MAGA thought leaders quickly reached a different conclusion: The texts were a non-story, trivial next to the outrageous stuff Democrats get up to, and the only real crime was that they’d been leaked at all. At this point, it looks like the person likeliest to face professional blowback for the texts isn’t any of the spewers of shock-jock racism from the chat—it’s Gavin Wax, the State Department staffer and former New York City Young Republicans honcho who is broadly suspected to have leaked the story to Politico. As the Daily Mail reported yesterday, citing a source “familiar with the matter,” the White House and others in Republican circles “know that Wax was responsible for this and he is likely to face consequences.”
It’s all right there in black and white, isn’t it? If you’re a Trump-backing Republican, there is nothing you can say vile enough that the party will cut you loose. If you’re publicly opposed to Trump, on the other hand, it doesn’t matter how peacefully and patriotically you express that opposition—it’s an article of faith on the right that you’re an America hater at best and a literal terrorist at worst.
How can this go on? It’s not just that the president of the United States looks at literally half the country with the purest disdain and hate—it’s that he has now built a movement around himself that makes that disdain and hate its organizing principle. We’ve come a long way from the days when a politician calling her opponents’ supporters “a basket of deplorables” was a years-long outrage against the American people, evidence of an intolerable contempt for her fellow Americans. “Basket of deplorables” would be one of the milder ways that the Trump movement—and, for that matter, the entire federal government now—talks about its enemies today.
“No Kings” tomorrow. Let’s see what they make of it.
A Wartime President with No War
by William Kristol
One of the charges against King George III in the Declaration of Independence—one of his “long train of abuses and usurpations”—is that “he has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.”
The framers of the Constitution were not pacifists or utopians. They expected the new nation would have to engage in armed conflict. But they did not want that conflict to be at the discretion or whim of one man. And so they specified in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that it was Congress that should have the power:
“To define and punish Piracies and and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;”
“To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;”
“To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;”
“To provide and maintain a Navy;”
and:
“To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”
They also, of course, understood the need for unity of military command. So in Article II of the Constitution, the framers specified that “The President is to be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” But it was Congress that was to authorize the use and to govern and regulate the conduct of the armed forces.
That was an important part of what it meant to have no king. It is an important part of what it means today to have “No King.”
Because today, with no authorization by or accountability to Congress, with no evidence presented as to the identities of those killed or their connection to any attack on the United States, with no serious legal justification or explanation to the public, the president has ordered the execution of citizens of other nations on the high seas. Since early September, U.S. forces have struck at least six boats off the Venezuelan coast, killing 27 people. On Wednesday President Trump said he was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory as well.
Soldiers and sailors swear an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Yesterday, as the New York Times reported, a four-star flag officer1 whose remit includes the Caribbean, where these boats have been attacked, resigned his combatant command.
Why is Adm. Alvin Holsey suddenly ending his 37-year military career, less than a year into what is typically a three-year posting? The Times reports that he “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.” As well he should have.
For, as the Times dryly notes:
As a matter of domestic law, Congress has not authorized any armed conflict.
As a matter of international law, for a nonstate group to qualify as a belligerent in an armed conflict — meaning its members can be targeted for killing based on their status alone, not because of anything they specifically do — it must be an “organized armed group” with a centralized command structure, and engaging in hostilities.
The Trump administration has justified its attacks on drug smuggling suspects as national self-defense at a time of high overdose deaths in the United States. But the surge in overdoses has been driven by fentanyl, which comes from Mexico, not South America.
The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces. But he is not the unitary and unaccountable commander of where and when our armed forces should be used.
In a March 15, 1789, letter to James Madison making the case for adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson remarked that,
The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for long years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.
That once-remote period has arrived. And so, when millions of Americans gather tomorrow under the banner of “No Kings,” they will do so in the spirit of Jefferson and Madison, and in loyalty to the Declaration and the Constitution.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Racist Young Republican Chat Leaves GOP Stumbling to Respond… In False Flag, WILL SOMMER reports on the MAGA split over whether to discipline the offending operatives who posted vile texts or just ignore the whole affair.
Meet the Man Who Trolled ICE… Vermin Supreme’s disciple and comedic protest artist ROBBY ROADSTEAMER joins TIM MILLER on Bulwark Takes for a wild ride about his Portland arrest and his and Tim’s briefly shared history.
The Loss of ‘Democratic Faith’... On the flagship pod, ANNE APPLEBAUM joins TIM MILLER to talk about how America’s democratic example has eroded—and what that means for the rest of the world.
Every Politician Is an Influencer Now… Lawmakers are pivoting to a content-first strategy above everything else, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
Just Reading About Nigel Kneale’s Horror Stories is Unnerving… BILL RYAN on a master at discomfiting and disquieting.
Quick Hits
TRUMP ♡ PUTIN … AGAIN?: Over the past month, the Trump pivot toward Ukraine started taking the shape of conventional wisdom. The president talked about Ukraine reclaiming its lands, treated Vladimir Putin as a loser, and even dangled the prospect of sending Volodymyr Zelensky Tomahawk missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia. The Russian opposition gloated that Putin’s arrogance had finally pissed off his would-be best friend.
And now, a word for the skeptics who warned against premature optimism. On Thursday, on the eve of Zelensky’s much-anticipated White House visit, Trump posted about a “very productive” phone chat with Putin and the resumption of peace talks. A new Trump/Putin summit—“within two weeks or so,” Trump said later—is scheduled in Budapest, Hungary, on Viktor Orbán’s Putin-friendly turf. Trump’s gushy tone suggests the bromance is back on (with lots of ego-stroking from Putin); he’s even back to lamenting that Putin and Zelensky “don’t get along too well.” Also: apparently he TACOed on the Tomahawks.
Has Trump unpivoted? Could Zelensky be walking into another White House ambush? Or will the Ukrainian president use his own impressive ego-stroking skills to undo the damage? We’ll soon see. But as this latest episode reminds us: don’t get your hopes up for an anti-Putin turn if those hopes depend on Trump.
—Cathy Young
THE CONTINUING CHAOS: Here’s something we genuinely don’t talk about enough: Ten months into the second Trump term, and six months after “Liberation Day,” the pace of new whipsaw changes to U.S. tariff policy has hardly slowed. It’s not just that businesses don’t know what tariff equilibrium point we’ll end up at in the medium term—they don’t even know what tariff rates are going to be weeks from now.
Take China, where tariffs are already at a huge 30 to 55 percent rate on most imports—with an additional 34 percent tariff scheduled to kick in next month, unless Trump delays it again. That unstable state of affairs was the baseline for the chaos Trump decided to add on over the last week. Last Friday, he announced via Truth Social that an additional 100 percent tariff on China would go into effect November 1. Two days later, he seemed to soften—”don’t worry about China,” he posted, “it will all be fine!” But he never actually said that he was backing off the 100 percent tariff. That task fell to U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer, who told CNBC a few days later that the tariff might go into effect, or might not—depending on what the Chinese do. “They are the ones who have chosen to make this major escalation,” he said.
Whether or not the escalation is China’s fault, one thing’s for sure: It’s U.S. businesses that are bearing the brunt of the punishment. Tariffs that you can predict and plan for are bad enough. But Schrödinger’s tariffs—tariffs that hang semireal out there in the future—are pure paralytics for businesses that rely on imports. All they can do is cut costs, cancel expansions, and brace for a blow that may or may not come.
EPSTEIN, INTERRUPTED: We hope you’re sitting down when we tell you this: The White House does not consider the Justice Department employees tasked with delivering the Jeffrey Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee to be essential employees during the government shutdown. Politico reports:
Two people granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics say that committee investigators have not heard from DOJ around the subpoena since federal funding lapsed Oct. 1, grinding to a halt what had until that point been a modest stream of information flowing between the agency and Capitol Hill thanks to a congressional subpoena.
Oversight Democrats have reached out for more information from DOJ and received no response, according to one of the two people. And now, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the panel’s top, is openly accusing the department of slow-walking.
“Despite multiple requests from Committee staff for an accounting of materials still within DOJ’s possession or plans to produce additional materials, DOJ has failed to provide any substantive or insightful information as to when the Committee may expect further productions of documents,” Garcia wrote in a letter Thursday to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Government shutdowns, it seems, are times when the White House keeps spending money on anything it wants to and pulls the plug on everything else. It’s a wonder Republicans ever wanted to pass a funding bill at all.
Cheap Shots
Correction (10 a.m. EDT Friday, October 17, 2025): An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized Admiral Alvin Holsey as a “four-star general officer.” He is instead a four-star flag officer.
If the Republicans are right, No Kings is the first I Hate My Country rally in world history whose attendees wave their country's flag instead of burning it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember the GOP talking much about No Kings in the lead-up to the June protest. What changed between No Kings 1 and No Kings 2 that they now feel the need to lie about it?