She Was MAGA’s Precursor. And Then She Kinda Disappeared.

Plus: The Epstein Files will be the House’s first agenda item.

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

WHEN MICHELE BACHMANN FIRST ARRIVED in Washington eighteen years ago to represent Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, she immediately made a name for herself. The year was 2007, and the leaders at the top of the Republican party were people like President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain, then-House Minority Leader John Boehner, and then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. Compared to them, Bachmann was an absolute radical. Her political stances were far right—back then categorized as “fringe”—while her demeanor was brash. She mixed embarrassing gaffes with a reflexive McCarthyism. More to the point, she was always camera-ready.

In 2014, during one of her final public appearances before retiring from Congress the following January, Bachmann outlined her vision in a succinct, three-point structure:

Number one: We are taxed enough already. Number two: Government should not spend more money than what it takes in. And number three: Government should live under the Constitution. Pretty extreme, right? Pretty radical, right?

Simple enough. But then, in the next breath, came the typical Bachmannian flourish. “Unfortunately,” she added, “[Barack Obama] has a failing grade every step of the way.”

Years before Donald Trump burst on the scene to perfect the art of political slander and weaponized innuendo, Bachmann was performing those acts with glee. While she regularly described Democratic policies as creeping authoritarianism, she also denounced “anti-American” sentiment among her own colleagues.

During an interview with MSNBC in 2008, she said she was “very worried” about Obama’s supposed anti-American views.

“What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look,” Bachmann told host Chris Matthews. “I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would be—would love to see an exposé like that.”

Among those whom Bachmann specifically accused of anti-Americanism were Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi—all of whom have since become not just objects of hatred and scorn among the Republican base but the subjects of wild conspiracy theories. But that was a mere appetizer for Bachmann’s brand of crazy. She warned that the HPV vaccine could cause mental retardation. She suggested Hurricane Irene in 2011 was a warning from God that the government had grown too big. She insisted that the Founding Fathers had “worked tirelessly” to end slavery. She suggested that the wife’s role in a marriage was to be submissive.

Then there are the positions that ring familiar today. Bachmann questioned the conduct of the 2010 census, warned that the Obama administration was considering adopting a global currency, and railed against AmeriCorps.

It’s but a short step from there to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s chemtrails, Laura Loomer making personnel decisions for the White House, and Elon Musk’s selective targets while at DOGE.

In Bachmann’s day, her frequent media dustups, conspiracy theories, and inflammatory statements irked colleagues. After he retired, former House Speaker John Boehner wrote that Bachmann “made a name for herself as a lunatic” in the House.

Writing about a request from Bachmann to appoint her to the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means, Boehner added that, “There were many members in line ahead of her for a post like this. People who had waited patiently for their turn and who also, by the way, weren’t wild-eyed crazies.” Boehner said the request was really a demand, and that she threatened to appeal Boehner’s decision to the real conservative powers: media personalities like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who favored her over him.

“I wasn’t the one with the power, she was saying,” Boehner wrote. “I just thought I was. She had the power now.”

Bachmann had understood something about Republican politics that Trump did too. And that Boehner hadn’t yet grasped. Authority wasn’t derived from relationships or seniority. It arose from the attention one could generate and the following one could develop off of it.

Boehner ultimately put Bachmann on the House Intelligence Committee despite her lack of relevant experience. He did so at a time when the Intelligence Committee was still for workhorses rather than showhorses, as it conducts most of its business behind closed doors.¹

Bachmann was both ahead of her time and not quite right for it. For a brief moment, she surged to the lead of the 2012 Republican primary—sending the GOP establishment into shock. But her campaign fizzled because the Republican party base still preferred more sober candidates, which that year included Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, in addition to the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney. In 2014, facing a tough Democratic challenger, as well as a campaign finance scandal, she chose not to seek re-election.

It’s worth considering what would have happened had she just stayed put in the House for a few more years before launching a run in 2016, even if it’s unlikely anyone would have competed with Trump (whom she endorsed).

Beyond Capitol Hill

Just a month after Joe Biden’s election as president, Bachmann began her tenure as dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, a private, interdenominational evangelical school in Virginia Beach, Virginia.²

During the Biden era, Bachmann hosted conferences echoing the same themes that had occupied her in the previous decade: conservatives had their backs against the wall, social progressivism and socialist totalitarianism are slowly enveloping America, etc. At one event in March 2022, titled “Globalism Rising: Authoritarianism and the Demise of Civil Liberties,” Bachmann moderated a conversation with right-wing media personality Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit.

Since leaving Congress, Bachmann’s penchant for outlandish statements hasn’t worn off. A few months after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel, Bachmann essentially called for a genocide of the Palestinian people, saying in an interview with Charlie Kirk, “It’s time that Gaza ends.”

“The two million people who live there, they are clever assassins, they need to be removed from that land,” she said. “That land needs to be turned into a national park, and since they’re the voluntary mercenaries for Iran, they need to be dropped on the doorstep of Iran, let Iran deal with those people.”

After protests on Regent’s campus and calls for her resignation, Bachmann backtracked, writing in a statement:

The context of my remarks in question centered on Hamas’ world view and how Hamas has hired themselves out as mercenaries working as terrorists on behalf of Iran. I used the term ‘clever assassins’ in my initial statement because that is what some Gazans have become under the force of Hamas. I know and should have stated that there are those who are innocent amongst the two million people who live in Gaza. However, polling data provided by the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research . . . shows that 72 [percent] of Palestinian respondents said the Hamas offensive against Israel was the correct decision.

I was asked a question regarding what to do with the 2 million Gazans living on the Israel border. As other Islamic nations in the region have declared their refusal to take in Gazan refugees, I suggested that perhaps Iran would take in Gazan refugees since it supports Hamas. I did not call for the death or forced relocation of any Gazans.

Bachmann made headlines again this May for describing her excitement at the war in Gaza, telling the Christian Broadcasting Network, “In the midst of all of this devastation, we’ve seen one miracle after another.”

“We’ve seen the faithful hand of God and, so, it’s literally like the Bible said, we are living in the days that the prophets long to see, and that’s how I feel: We’re watching God fulfill his word through the power of His faithfulness,” she added.

This time, she apparently felt no need to elaborate.

Bachmann’s other ventures after a nearly decade in Congress include owning a Christian counseling service run by her husband. The group engaged in conversion therapy practices and instructed homosexual participants that “God has created you for heterosexuality.”

Beyond that occasional commentary in right-wing media, Bachmann, who declined an interview request, has remained on the periphery of the MAGA movement. That she is toiling away at a small evangelical university a few hours south of Washington, D.C. instead of helming a Fox News show or coasting through a Senate confirmation for a plum administration post is odd. At the moment when her style of politics has become en vogue, she’s retreated from it. Has the Trump White House really not even offered her a gig?

Ultimately, Bachmann could be a victim of her own success: She wanted a more populist, conspiracist, pugnacious Republican party. She helped make it. And she made herself redundant.

Everywhere I go, I see his face

Jeffrey Epstein–related stories may be fading from the headlines, but not in the minds of America’s representatives. When Congress gets back to D.C. in the first week of September, one of the first scheduled items on the agenda is to resume the push for compelling the White House to release any and all files related to Epstein’s crimes and death.

Congress returns September 2, but votes will likely be postponed until the late afternoon or evening, as is customary to start the week. The next morning, to mark the first full day back in town, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) will be holding a press conference with multiple survivors of Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s abuse, as well as their attorneys.

Along with many other procedural attempts to compel the executive branch to hand over Epstein-related information, Khanna’s and Massie’s Epstein Transparency Act is what forced House Speaker Mike Johnson to cut business short in July and leave Washington. That the duo are immediately bringing it back to the forefront indicates the issue will return, whether it registers in major polling or not.

The bill currently has 44 cosponsors, 11 of whom are Republicans. After the August recess, the bill will also have been dormant long enough to be eligible for a discharge petition, the rarely executed procedural maneuver that forces legislation to the floor with or without the consent of the speaker. At least 218 members must sign the petition, and if the 11 Republican cosponsors join all Democrats in signing it, the full chamber will have to vote up or down on the bill.

Beginning the fall with a direct rebuke of President Donald Trump is not something the White House or Republican leaders want. But it might be what they get.

Baba booey

Amid news that Sirius-XM might not renew its contract with legendary shock jock Howard Stern, there’s an article in GQ Magazine that examines his slow transformation from provocateur to sensible centrist.

Vince Mancini writes:

“If woke means I can’t get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender or I’m for the vaccine, dude, call me woke as you f—king want,” Stern ranted in 2023.

If Stern’s centrist turn was unexpected, it wasn’t exactly radical. It was surprisingly non-radical, in fact, perhaps refreshingly so. His diminished edge probably contributed to his declining relevancy. But judged on the sliding scale of what it’s normally like watching public figures age, Stern becoming an accidental shitlib cat dad seems about the best we could’ve hoped for.

The whole piece is a fascinating account of how someone like Stern, who scored one of the few Biden interviews before Biden dropped out, ages along with his fans. Read the whole thing.

1. Bachmann may have accepted the assignment to burnish her foreign-policy credentials ahead of her 2012 presidential campaign. It wasn’t until Trump’s first term, two years after Bachmann left office, that the committee became a scene of partisan intrigue and spectacle. (The then-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, is now chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.)

2. Regent University was founded by the late televangelist Pat Robertson, and the Robertson School of Government was named for his father, Sen. A. Willis Robertson (D-Va.).