All the President’s Women Scapegoats
The women get the boot while the men get off scot-free.
It’s a big week in religious circles! A blessed end to Holy Week for all celebrating Easter this weekend, and a belated chag sameach to everyone celebrating Passover. And here’s an ecumenical offering for readers of all faith persuasions: At 11:45 a.m. E.D.T., Catherine Rampell and Sam Stein will be going live on YouTube and Substack to talk about the troubling state of the economy—unfortunately, it’s been a big week for other reasons, too. Happy Friday.
The Sexism of Trumpism
by William Kristol
According to the Access Hollywood tape, our president, Donald Trump, likes to “move on” women. In fact he seems to relish moving on them “very heavily.” “I don’t even wait. . . . Grab ‘em by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Trump likes to move on women. He also apparently likes to fire them. A month ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was the first cabinet official of Trump’s second term to be removed. She had tried dutifully to implement the mass-deportation agenda under the direction of Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller. But it was Noem, not Miller, who was dumped when Trump needed a scapegoat for its unpopularity.
Not that one should shed tears for Noem. Nor should one cry for Attorney General Pam Bondi. She too was more than willing and eager to do Trump’s bidding. But Trump judged her to have failed to secure adequate revenge against his enemies. He probably also blamed her for the botched coverup of the Epstein files—even though Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel seemed equally involved in that effort. But it was Bondi who was dumped, not Blanche or Patel. In fact, Blanche is now acting attorney general.
And then there’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who’s been a central player in Trump’s signal foreign policy failure, the war on Iran. He’s not been fired either. To the contrary. He’s doing a lot of firing at Trump’s behest. Hegseth is continuing to remove senior military officers who are not or might not be sufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.
Yesterday, Hegseth summarily fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. One of the precipitating factors seems to have been Gen. George’s resistance to Hegseth’s attempt to block the promotion of four officers, two black and two female, to be brigadier generals. General George, joined by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, with whom he’d reportedly formed a close relationship, refused to strike them from the list. They cited the officers’ long records of exemplary service. Hegseth had to intervene to purge them.
A few months earlier, Gen. George and Driscoll had refused to accede to demands from Hegseth’s office to block the scheduled promotion of Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant to take command of the Military District of Washington. The Washington District commander appears alongside the president at ceremonial functions in the D.C. area, for example at Arlington National Cemetery. Hegseth’s chief of staff reportedly told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a black female officer at military events. Driscoll and Gen. George skillfully deflected, insisting that the president was neither sexist nor racist (how could anyone say such a thing?) and that the objection to Maj. Gen. Gant’s promotion was therefore unwarranted.
So yesterday’s removal of Gen. George seems to have been gender- and race-related: the firing of a man who refused to discriminate against officers for being black and/or women.
The mass-deportation regime, the gutting of the rule of law, purges of the military—these would be serious enough threats to our democracy even if unaccompanied by sexism and misogyny. At the Pentagon in particular, Hegseth’s “sweeping overhaul of how officers are selected for promotion and command” deserves more attention, as does the fact that the man Trump and Hegseth have put in charge of that overhaul, Anthony J. Tata, is so extreme in his views that he could not be confirmed by a Republican Senate to a senior Defense position in 2020.
In any case, it’s striking that Trumpist authoritarianism has been accompanied by gross sexism and racism and that Trumpist autocracy is attended by unabashed hostility to women’s equality and freedom. It’s a reminder that gender and racial equality are part of human equality, that respecting the dignity of every individual is part of the American creed. And it could lead us to recall, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our rebellion against tyranny, the words of Abigail Adams in a March 1776 letter to her husband: “Remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. . . . Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”
Strait Talk
by Andrew Egger
Yesterday, we saw something astonishing. The president had just given a speech on the war in Iran that contained virtually no new information; in fact, it largely consisted of a restatement of thoughts he’d already put up on Truth Social days before. Writing it up for this newsletter, Bill accurately described the speech as a “nothingburger.” But commodities markets reacted as though Trump had unveiled some terrible revelation. Crude oil, which was under $100 a barrel when Trump’s speech began, jumped nearly 15 percent, and it is now sitting north of $110.
Was this irrational? I’m not going to sit here and act like I, a random political columnist with zero working knowledge of the finer points of oil trading, know better than the pros how to do their business. But it was certainly odd. In their ceaseless quest to turn a profit at the margin by reading market swings ahead of everybody else, traders seem to be pricing Trump’s washing his hands of the Strait of Hormuz Strait via Truth Social post more cheaply than Trump washing his hands of the Strait of Hormuz via primetime address. The theory seems to be that Trump says a lot of random nonsense on Truth Social, but if he sits down and reads the same thing off to a national audience, presumably he really actually means it.
If that’s the case, then oil markets are waking up late to an unfortunate reality: Trump really seems to believe his own nonsensical spin about the U.S. economy not needing the strait to reopen. Repeatedly now he’s offered an “alternative” plan to the world: Just forget about the strait, and buy what you need from America. Problem solved, and in a way that’s much more profitable for the good old U.S.A.!
Once again, Trump here betrays his staggering ignorance of the inadvisability of trying to reshape mammoth global supply chains by “hey, here’s an idea” presidential fiat. American oil companies can’t just snap their fingers and scale up production overnight to meet the global demand created by the closure of the strait. Even if they could, they wouldn’t want to. Ramping up production costs big money, and is only profitable if you’re sure you’ve got a buyer for what you’re pulling out of the ground. If your buyers suddenly vanish—as oil producers learned all too well during the COVID oil shock of 2020, when the price of the stuff briefly went negative—you’re up a creek: What are you going to do, pump it back?
This is exactly the sort of situation Trump wants to put American oil companies in again. They should ramp up production, he says, sufficient to backfill the supply bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz. But the closure of the strait is presumably not permanent; in fact, Trump insists he’s still working hard to end the blockade as soon as possible. And so, of course, American oil companies won’t comply with his suggestion, lest they find themselves grievously overextended if/when the strait does reopen. Demand will keep outstripping supply as long as the strait remains closed, the price of oil will keep spiking, and all the presidential wheedling in the world won’t alter that brute fact in the slightest.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Spirit of Passover and the American Story… Liberation and new beginnings are themes of the Jewish holiday that can help us to revitalize our sense for the prospects and future of our country, observes SAM B. GIRGUS.
The Expanded Trump War Glossary: WILL SALETAN with still more of what he *really* means about Iran.
Justices’ Questions Reveal the Stupidity of the Case Against Birthright Citizenship… Awkward SCOTUS stare-down as the president watches his government lawyer flail, writes KIM WEHLE.
Why Theo Von and Joe Rogan are Losing Patience with Trump… Trump world is starting to crack, and TIM MILLER is here for it. He went live last night and took viewer questions.
Quick Hits
BRIDGE BOMBERS: It’s been painfully clear for a while that aerial bombardment of military targets alone has not been sufficient for the Trump administration to break the will of Iran’s clerical regime. But rather than choosing to cut their losses or escalate with ground troops, the White House is apparently exploring a secret third option: What if we just started bombing civilian infrastructure instead? Here’s Axios:1
The U.S. military on Thursday attacked major civilian infrastructure in Iran for the first time, hours after President Trump threatened in a prime-time address to bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages.”
The attack on the B-1 bridge near Tehran signals a widening of the U.S. military’s targets and could be a first step toward attacks on energy, water and transportation infrastructure.
Trump has said the U.S. could conduct such attacks, which would have devastating effects for Iranian civilians, to punish the regime if it won’t cut a deal. . . . A U.S. defense official told Axios more bridges are likely to be targeted.
But remember, folks: America loves the Iranian people and wants them to flourish. This is all for them, really.
MEANWHILE, IN LEBANON: As war in the Middle East drags on, Americans have understandably been focused on what’s going on in Iran. But Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon will have major long-term consequences too. As the IDF has moved north, they have ordered mass civilian evacuation of the southern part of the country, where they have razed bridges, homes, and even whole villages. Lebanon claims a million civilians have already been displaced. And as the New York Times reports, it’s not clear Israel is in a hurry to leave:
This week, Israeli officials offered their most explicit plan to date to occupy a swath of southern Lebanon from the border up to the Litani River after the ground invasion ends. That would amount to about 10 percent of the entire country. Israeli officials have said they aim to establish a “security zone” to prevent the territory from being used to attack Israel.
The hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese who fled the south will not be allowed to return to their homes until the “safety and security of northern Israeli residents is ensured,” the defense minister, Israel Katz, said on Tuesday.
DISSENSION IN THE RANKS: As we noted yesterday, Donald Trump and GOP House and Senate leaders have all grudgingly lined up behind a partial acquiescence to Democrats’ Department of Homeland Security funding proposal: passing a bipartisan bill to fund all of DHS except ICE and the Border Patrol, then turning to a party-line reconciliation bill to get ICE funded without the concessions required to get Democratic votes. Rank-and-file House Republicans are far from pleased, however. Politico reports:
Dozens of members aired objections to a proposed two-step process backed by President Donald Trump in a lengthy private call Thursday afternoon, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the conversation.
Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders made a case for a bill funding most of the department—one they bitterly opposed as recently as this past weekend—leaving key immigration enforcement agencies for the party-line budget reconciliation process.
But several members on the call said they would oppose a bill that Johnson had publicly called a “joke” after it initially passed the Senate last week, with some reiterating they did not want to vote for a package that omits Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol funding.
The revolt leaves Johnson in the uncomfortable spot of likely needing to rely on significant Democratic votes to get the package through the House. Read the whole thing.
Cheap Shots
As usual, I have omitted Axios-speak signposting, since you are not a child.
I think this reveals a profound unconscious misogyny. The failures of his male lieutenants reflect the fact that they are persecuted just as he is persecuted. The failures of his women lieutenants represent the failure of all women to slavishly adore him and desire to be raped by him.
Jon Lovett was robbed of the great honor of being today's "Cheap Shots". I demand a recount!
https://x.com/jonlovett/status/2039770187952697401?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet