One stage in ending the conflict in Gaza is over; another begins. And as the New York Times notes this morning, the hardest questions may be the ones that remain outstanding: whether Hamas will give up its weapons, whether the Palestinians will agree to demilitarize, what the ultimate governance structure of the strip will look like.
For Trump, this is all stuff to hash out later. “I’m talking about rebuilding Gaza,” he told reporters last night. “I’m not talking about single-state, or double-state, or two-state. . . . A lot of people like the one-state solution. Some people like the two-state solution. We’ll have to see.” Happy Tuesday.
Fake It Till You Make It
by Andrew Egger
Yesterday, we briefly mentioned Trump’s weekend Truth Social claim that the “BIDEN FBI” had “PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6.”
“What a SCAM,” the president raged. “DO SOMETHING!!!”
I regret glossing over it. Not only because it was an objectively insane thing to tweet—given it was Trump, not Biden, who was pretty famously president on January 6th—but because the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me to be a keystone text of Trump’s second term.
Start with the double standard here. Imagine that last year, during the perennial (and understandable!) news cycles around Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office, Biden himself had claimed in passing to have been president during the January 6th attack. It would have been a field day for the opposition and a multi-day story for the press. Reporters would have demanded answers for how the president could be laboring under such a delusion.
Trump, too, is very old—older than Biden was when he took office in 2020. He, too, plainly seems less sharp, less aware of his surroundings than he did in the past. And yet he has set the bar so low for his own conduct and speech that drilling into individual loony pronouncements like this starts to feel like an exercise in futility, a waste of everybody’s time. He could be misremembering—but he could also just be lying for political benefit, throwing the usual low-vitamin, high-calorie chum to his base. He is perversely helped by the fact that you can’t tell whether you should attribute a specific Trump claim to his melting brain or his melted soul.
But there’s more than just a simple double standard going on here. The post is the core of how Trump sees the world: Trump people and Biden people, heroes and villains, patriots and terrorists, angels and demons. All political actors are sorted into two great camps, and what matters aren’t any of the actual relevant facts about their behavior, or their motivations, or their leadership. All that matters is whether Trump perceives them as loyal allies or outside agitators. He may have been president on January 6th. But an FBI that wasn’t jumping to do his will at that given moment was a Biden FBI, in his brain.
It isn’t just the tweets—Trump now runs the whole government this way. It’s the belief that underlies freezing half-finished green energy infrastructure projects, or purging law enforcement agents because they happened to work on January 6th cases, or carrying out firings at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency because he’s still mad at Chris Krebs. These people are the demons—they’re Biden-coded—so all you can do is root them out. On the flip side, there’s the pledges he has made to police officers not to prosecute abusive behavior, his firings of a host of internal government watchdogs, his dead-lettering of the Hatch Act and of corruption laws. All these things only exist to constrain him and his allies—the good guys.
During the Biden days, questions about the president’s awareness and fitness for office tended to boil down to whether it was actually him calling the shots. Was the president being shepherded through the motions of basic sane governance by the people around him?
Nobody’s asking that question today. At any given moment, Trump may be lying or he may be hallucinating. But he’s clearly calling the shots. The task for the rest of the apparatus of government is to get to work turning that lie or hallucination into reality. When he type-shouts “DO SOMETHING!!!” there’s no question: They do.
Saying Yes to No Kings
by William Kristol
I’ve been around politics quite a while, but I’ve always tended to avoid large demonstrations or mass protests. It’s not that I’m particularly hostile to crowds. I like crowds at baseball games. But I’m inclined to prefer political activity that’s filtered through organized elections and representative bodies.
I’m sure my aversion to mass demonstrations comes in part from the fact that the New Left was the source of such events when I was young, and I was anti-New Left. But I also had enough sense, even then, to be put off by some of the counter-rallies on the right. So though I was an (extremely lowly!) White House intern in the summer of 1970, I remember skipping the proto-Trumpian Nixon-backed July Fourth “Honor America Day” celebration on the Mall.
Later that summer, though, I did attend one political demonstration. I went with a couple of fellow young anti-Communists to Central Park for a rally for Captive Nations Week. We were demonstrating for the freedom of the peoples subjugated to Soviet rule. Most of the attendees were émigrés from those nations. I recall finding the event a moving expression of what then seemed a forlorn hope: that the captive peoples trapped behind the Iron Curtain would one day be free.
No Kings seems to me very much in the spirit of that demonstration. Both are protests against oppression and authoritarianism. Both are assemblies in favor of freedom. I was pleased to attend our local No Kings gathering on June 14, and I plan on being there this coming Saturday, October 18.
I’m far more inclined to attend because of the desperate and disgraceful Trumpist smears of No Kings as part of antifa and associated with domestic terrorism that Andrew and JVL detailed yesterday.
The fact is that the No Kings organizers have worked hard to try to ensure that the events are peaceful. This statement is featured on the No Kings website: “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events.”
The organizers have also gone out of their way to make No Kings non-sectarian. As Ellen Chapman, a member of the Sacramento planning committee, told the American Prospect, the organizers understand that “we need a big tent of opposition,” and that regardless of other differences, “we can all agree on one thing—that in America we don’t tolerate kings.” And so, Chapman says, “We’re hoping for a day where people come together and find courage for what’s to come, to know they can say no to all this in a safe and nonviolent way and that they’re not alone.”
Speaker Mike Johnson and one of his deputies in the Republican House leadership, Rep. Tom Emmer, called No Kings a “hate America rally.” But in fact, the three million-plus people who showed up on June 14, and the still larger number expected this Saturday, are there to speak for America. It’s not just that they’ll be peacefully exercising a core constitutional right—“the right of the people peaceably to assemble”—it’s that they’re assembling in order to defend our core constitutional rights.
One might say they’re rallying against the prospect of our becoming a home-grown captive nation.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Recapturing America… On the Flagship Pod, BILL KRISTOL and TY COBB join TIM MILLER to talk about the No Kings protests, Insurrection Act chatter, ICE abuses, and how to restore the rule of law.
What Is Going on Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Brain?! The Georgia congresswoman has been increasingly restless with Trump. What does it mean for MAGA’s future? WILL SOMMER investigates at False Flag.
The Dark Passions and How to Counter Them… BILL GALSTON discusses his new book with MONA CHAREN about the vulnerabilities of liberal democracies and how to relearn the importance of rhetoric.
Barron Goes Corrupt and Vivek Faces Racism at TPUSA! This week on FYPod, CAMERON KASKY and TIM MILLER break down one of the strangest stories yet: Barron Trump being floated for a leadership role at TikTok as the platform transitions to U.S. ownership. Also, the two discuss Vivek Ramaswamy’s rough reception at a Turning Point USA event, and what his experience reveals about racism and hypocrisy within the GOP’s youth movement.
Locking Down the Pentagon Press Is Dangerous… Pete Hegseth’s proposed restrictions would harm the people whom both the military and the press are meant to serve, argues GEN. MARK HERTLING.
Quick Hits
GETTING A BIT DUMBER:
One of the biggest risks of the White House’s war on academia and its slashing on scientific research funding has been brain drain—the situation where top scholars, spooked by the worsening climate, find working in other nations more attractive instead. So we read with interest yesterday the news that two Nobel-winning MIT economists, the husband-and-wife team of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, are decamping for the University of Zurich next academic year.
A source told The Bulwark that the pair’s departure was connected with the White House’s attacks on academic freedom and university research partnerships. The timing certainly is suggestive. MIT is among the top colleges the administration has been demanding adopt White House-approved conduct and academic standards in exchange for preferential treatment for government funding. The school spurned the “compact” last week.
Reached by email, Duflo told The Bulwark that “at this moment we are not commenting, especially given that MIT (where we remain affiliated) is already dealing with reaction to its refusal of the ‘compact.’” MIT did not return a request for comment.
Back in March, however, Duflo cosigned an op-ed in the French paper Le Monde warning that “universities and research are the target of unprecedented attacks in the US, threatening one of the pillars of democracy: academic and scientific freedom. Under pressure from the new administration, brutal budget cuts are directly affecting society, particularly in the fields of public health and the environment.”
MAGA may be fine with this. But we liked it when America was a magnet for Nobel laureates, not a place they wanted to flee.
THE ATTABOYS ROLL IN:
The GOP’s old foreign-policy hawks haven’t found a huge amount to like in Trump’s second term. But his brokering of an Israel-Gaza ceasefire is earning him praise even from some old rivals, as Politico reports:
“After two long years, we can finally breathe a sigh of relief,” former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley wrote on X Monday. “This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. God Bless Israel. God Bless the United States. Congratulations to President Trump and his team for paving the way to peace.”
One of then-candidate Trump’s chief rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Haley last year decried his politics as isolationist, calling Trump “weak in the knees” when it came to Russian President Vladimir Putin and centering her record at the United Nations as a selling point for her candidacy. . . .
Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, who on the campaign trail lashed into Trump for embracing “isolationism and appeasement” and fomenting what he called a “retreat on the world stage,” has also praised the president in the wake of last week’s ceasefire agreement.
Democrats are getting in on the praise, too. “A weight has been lifted off the world as the remaining hostages are released,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz tweeted yesterday. “Amazing day for the families, and for @POTUS and all the negotiators who made this day possible.”
MOST TRANSPARENT MILITARY IN HISTORY:
Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense is cracking down on press freedom at the Pentagon. Under guidance set to go into effect this week, Pentagon reporters must sign a document agreeing not to report on or solicit information that the government has not officially authorized to be released. Any reporter who refused to sign, the Defense Department said, would have their credentials revoked and be unable to work from the Pentagon from now on.
Because people have this thing called dignity, the policy has provoked a near-unanimous backlash—and not just from mainstream publications. The Washington Post, New York Times, Atlantic, Associated Press, and CNN all said they wouldn’t sign; so too did Newsmax, the Washington Times, and the Washington Examiner. The one outlet to have signed so far is One America News. (Congrats, Matt Gaetz: You get access to an executive branch agency after all!) The biggest question mark as of this morning is Fox News, Hegseth’s old employer, which has not yet commented on its plans.
The Pentagon Press Association said in a statement that the Pentagon had put its press in an impossible situation, demanding that they “surrender your press pass or sign a document acknowledging vague new policies that, on their face, appear to violate the First Amendment.” Hegseth, embodying the warrior ethos, appeared to be enjoying the prospect of being shielded from basic press coverage that every other defense secretary has handled—posting emojis waving “bye” in response to several outlets’ statements. Whether the strong across-the-board rebuke from both left and right outlets will matter more than the desire for social media clout remains to be seen.
Cheap Shots
Trump is not “clearly calling the shots”. He calls the shots relating to vengeance against his ‘enemies’ and to taking illegal graft. All other shots are called by Miller and Voight.
I disagree that t**** is calling the shots. Yeah, he bleats out some crazy crap every now and then that someone appears to react to, but it’s all apiece of the project 2025 playbook. Honestly I doubt t**** really cares that much about the specifics of it other than it gives him unlimited power to grift. If project 2025 called for mandatory sex reassignment for all kindergartners and unlimited state-funded abortions and also gave him unlimited power, he would be on board with that, too. He parrots out the sweet nothings that Russel Voight has been whispering in his ear and all his underlings go about the business of destroying democracy, just like they were already doing. All he cares about is money and constant praise for his malignant narcissistic brain. The end. Full stop. By what means, he could not care less.