Don’t Cry For Me, MAGAtina
The president’s takeover of the Kennedy Center may be clownish. But clownish authoritarianism is still authoritarianism.
A gut punch from Politico Playbook this morning: “Eleven years to the day since Vladimir Putin illegally annexed Crimea—the first, calculated act of a military operation that would lead to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—the Russian president will today speak with the leader of the free world to carve up the spoils.”
The White House has been making somewhat more pro-Zelensky noises lately; whether that posture can survive a Trump-Putin phone call remains to be seen. (He’s just so damn charming!) Happy Tuesday.
Trump Takes Center Stage
by Andrew Egger
After a long day organizing extralegal disappearings of Venezuelans and pledging to prosecute enemies that Joe Biden already pardoned, Donald Trump took some time yesterday for a passion project: His first board meeting at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he recently replaced much of the board with MAGA performers and Fox News personalities and appointed himself chairman.
“It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country,” Trump grumbled to reporters. But not to worry: “The king of ratings,” as he called himself to the board, was on the job.
Since his time as a nouveau-riche New York developer, Trump has long moped about his inability to bully polite society into truly respecting him. During his first term, the Kennedy Center was a source of particular irritation: Honorees at its annual awards ceremony had an annoying habit of using the occasion to protest his presidency. No more! Putting up with that sort of thing was first-term behavior. From now on, the Times reports, Trump plans to essentially pick the honorees himself.
He’s got other big plans, too, to remake the place in his own singular image. He’s sour on the place’s latest outdoor extension, the Reach: “I’ve often wondered, what are the big cubes that they have outside that block the view?” He wants to zhuzh up the center’s signature metal columns: “I mean, they’re supposed to be covered by something, whether it’s marble or whatever, granite.” And he’s gonna get butts in the seats: “The thing that does well is Broadway hits,” he said. “I guess we have Les Mis coming.”1
Now, look: I am sure there are well-meaning and decent people in D.C. to whom this is all very dismaying. The Reach is a cool installation, one whose construction cost a lot of people a lot of money, time, and stress; it must be frustrating for them to hear the dipshit-in-chief complain about “cubes with a door in them” leading to “rooms that nobody’s going to use.” Kennedy Center employees can’t have been thrilled to hear Trump grumble about his “little problem with some people that work here” and their union structure.
But there’s important opportunity costs to consider here too. Every minute spent critiquing the upholstery in the Kennedy concert hall is one less minute the president has to search out new beefs with Canada or personally vet FBI agents to no-knock Liz Cheney’s home.
In an ideal world, micromanaging the Kennedy Center could become a real time sink for the guy. After all, it hits a lot of Trump pleasure centers at once. He gets to thumb his nose at D.C. society elites and at Hollywood liberals. He gets to posture as a Great Restorer of Western Civilization and as the hardnosed Deals Guy who’s going to put a bloated old institution back in the black. And he gets to indulge his love for Andrew Lloyd Webber. I can think of no other form of political alchemy that lets Trump blow off some enemy-destroying steam while indulging the single least malign facet of his personality. Lin-Manuel may get a few less royalties. We as a society may have to endure a resurgence of Cats. But is that worse than a president fully dedicated to assaulting habeas corpus rights? (Don’t answer that.)
Keeping Trump focused on the Kennedy Center will take some legwork from the rest of us. The man is one big exposed nerve: His primary mode of engaging with the world is punching back against people who aggravate him. JD Vance was roundly booed at the Kennedy Center last week, but that isn’t likely to reel Trump in completely, given how little he cares about his VP. (Trump told reporters yesterday he hadn’t heard about the episode.) Les Mis may prove our best bet. The production should solicit as much presidential feedback as possible. An endless procession of envoys back and forth from the White House, getting Trump’s yay or nay on fabric swatches, set mockups, playbills. Perhaps Inspector Javert could use an understudy?
Authoritarianism Is Winning
by William Kristol
As Andrew reports above, the Trumpist takeover of the Kennedy Center is clownish. But it is a takeover. Clownish authoritarianism is still authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism is the heart and soul of Trumpism. That heart is dark and that soul is damaged. But in the non-heavenly world in which we live, dark hearts and damaged souls can prevail.
And Trumpist authoritarianism seems, for now, to be prevailing. It’s not just what might be called intra-government authoritarianism that’s prevailing. Trumpist authoritarianism is not just about exercising personal and unchecked authority within the executive branch or trampling on the prerogatives of the other branches of the federal government—though it certainly is both.
It’s about controlling the commanding heights of the private sector. Or, if not directly controlling them, at least bullying and coercing them so that outside guardrails against unrestrained government power are weakened.
It’s clear that’s what Trump is doing. Trumpism doesn’t accept that there’s a big private sector and free society out there in which people and individuals can do what they want. Trumpists want not just to create an authoritarian government but to shape an authoritarian society.
And so right after the election Trump went after Big Tech. In a recent interview with Sharyl Attkisson, as Brian Stelter noted yesterday in his newsletter, Trump said that he didn’t think the media had [yet?] changed in his second term. “But what has changed is I think Facebook and Google and a lot of them have become, I think . . .” Trump didn’t finish his sentence, as Stelter noted. “[But] he clearly senses that Big Tech has tried to warm up to him this time.” And Trump then “invoked Jeff Bezos without any prompting: ‘I’ve gotten to know him, and I think he’s trying to do a real job. Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with the Washington Post, and that wasn’t happening before.’”
Trump believes the early intimidation of Big Tech has paid off. Intimidation works.
So Trump and his administration have moved ahead with an intimidation agenda in other areas. The attempt to bully Big Law took another step forward with yesterday’s announcement of the investigation of twenty major law firms for their past use of DEI policies. The legal basis of these investigations is unclear. But Trump and his enforcers believe the earlier attack on a couple of firms, which included revoking their lawyers’ security clearances and threatening their ability to meet with federal officials, is having a chilling effect.
Indeed it’s clear that other law firms haven’t been eager to leap to the defense of their peers. I’m told that Trump associates have been making clear to lawyers at various firms that it wouldn’t be in their interest to speak up in defense of the law firms under attack, to join an amicus brief on the firms’ behalf, or generally rally to their defense.
Here too, intimidation seems to be working.
“Every firm is scared to sign on [to the amicus brief],” one top lawyer told The Bulwark. “The fear factor is winning. We are in a crisis here.”
Much the same could be said about the assault on the universities. The Trump administration has announced a cutoff of $400 million dollars of federal funding to Columbia, including to its medical school and hospital system. It’s unclear that the government has the legal authority to do this. But Columbia’s peers haven’t risen in loud protest. Here too, intimidation seems to be working.
The authoritarian takeover is happening right here and now—in America, in 2025. Trumpists believe not just in an authoritarian government but in an authoritarian society. They’re acting on that belief. And they must be pleasantly surprised by the lack of resistance they’re encountering.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Is a reckoning coming for Schumer? Former NY Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones on how his voters saw a betrayal in the government funding fight.
The Lust Brothers . . . Be sure to make some time this AM for Will Saletan’s column which examines Trump’s expansionist rhetoric, economic grievance, and fantasies of erasing an “artificial” border. Our very own Pooty Poot!
Can VoteVets make Elon into a villain? Joe Perticone takes a look at their new ad campaign, which goes after vulnerable House Republicans by turning the spotlight on DOGE.
The Fascist Stuff . . . On a new FYPod, Tim Miller and Cameron Kasky discuss the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil and the lack of protests from Gen Z over the matter, as well as the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Quick Hits
NOT HIDING THE BALL: Sure is odd how the White House keeps making all these noises like they’re gearing up to defy the judiciary, huh?
Over the weekend, our old colleague Marc Caputo reported at Axios that the White House took great pains to carry out its first deportations of accused Venezuelan gang members under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act before courts had time to halt them. When a judge did order the flights back with a “Hey guys, you can’t use this law on Venezuelans when we’re not at war with Venezuela,” the White House made a show of throwing up its hands: Whoops, they’re already over international waters, your jurisdiction doesn’t apply! An administration official told Marc: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.” White House Press Secretary Karolyn Leavitt also declined to openly admit defiance on Monday.
Border Czar Tom Homan was less bashful. He suggested it’s only a matter of time before the administration tells a judge to pound sand. “We are going to make this country safe again,” he said. “We are not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.”
Homan is—as Joe Perticone puts it—a yapper. Trump brought him on board to be the gruff, off-the-cuff face of his mass-deportation operation on TV. When he says stuff like this—much like with Trump himself—you can wonder: Is this a real shift, or is the guy just blowing smoke?
Of course, that’s a style in which Trump’s norm-smashing thrives. It’s always a joke, or a pose, or a bit of good clean lib-owning, for as long as it takes people to get just barely used to it—then, boom, it’s our new reality.
REMEMBER USAID?: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is still in existence even after Elon Musk took it to the woodchipper, then took the shards that came out the other side and sent them through again. The agency shed thousands of staffers and huge swaths of its programs. But finalizing its dissolution has proved slightly tricky.
Tim Meisburger, the head of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, recently briefed staff about plans and pegged a final day for the agency’s existence at September 30, 2025 (notably, when the just-struck government funding deal runs out). According to notes of the briefing, which were obtained by The Bulwark, Meisburger expected that the agency would have a new structure, new names for subsections, and that there would be a “minimal overseas footprint,” with the possibility to expand in the future. They’d be incorporated into the State Department and officials had to “mentally prepare” to go from being agency leaders to senior staffers.
“Most of the madness is behind us,” Meisburger said, according to the notes. It was time to “make lemonade out of lemons.”
But what if you can’t get the lemons home? That’s one of the problems USAID is currently confronting.
Last week, Jason Gray, who was serving as acting administrator for USAID, sent an email to staffers outlining the process for overseas officials to use the agency portal to come back to the United States. According to one person familiar with those concerns, the American Foreign Service Association is seeking information about the use of the portal. As of now, some USAID employees stationed abroad face a Catch-22. Some fear that if they relocate voluntarily, they may not be eligible for all the reimbursements associated with relocation costs (such as the shipment of personal effects). Other overseas employees worry that if they don’t voluntarily return to the United States, they could be fired. But at least that would potentially make the government liable to cover more of the end-of-contract relocation costs (assuming the current administration doesn’t just choose to leave fired employees abroad).
Winding down is hard, especially if you’re a $30 billion agency.
—Sam Stein
MORE ON AUTOPENS: After we wrote yesterday about Trump’s insane claim that Joe Biden hadn’t actually pardoned members of the House January 6th Committee—he’d supposedly used an autopen, which is cheating, Trump claimed!—many of you reasonably wondered: How much had Trump availed himself of the autopen as president?
The answer: Seemingly not much. As with other presidents, Trump has procedures in place authorizing top aides to wield an autopen on his behalf. The New York Post reports that a January 28 memo gave Chief of Staff Susie Wiles “the authority to use the autopen ‘for all matters.’” But we couldn’t find a significant example of Trump making use of that authority. His last-minute blizzard of pardons in January 2021 were all lovingly hand-Sharpied. And his sweeping pardon of 1,500-ish January 6th criminals was issued in a single proclamation: hundreds of pardons, just one signature.
Trump was asked yesterday if he had auto-penned anything while president. His response: “Only for very unimportant papers.” He then asked the reporter where she was from. When she said NBC, he cut off the questioning.
Cheap Shots
No Hamilton, though. The show canceled a Kennedy Center stop formerly planned for next year after Trump’s hostile takeover of the institution. Trump waved them off: “I never liked Hamilton very much.” A rare point of Trump/Egger agreement.
I believe that the phrase "leader of the free world" should no longer be used to describe the president of the United States, even to make a contrast, as Politico did here. Let's be accurate about the current world order.
It's becoming clear to me that the American slip into authoritarianism is following the modern Russian/Chinese models fairly well:
The Russians and Chinese figured out that rather than having the government control the means of production (energy production aside), it's better to have an oligarchy control the means of production and then the central party need only focus on the workings of government while the oligarchs do the work of the party for them in the economy. If any oligarch gets out of line with the central party they either fall out of a window in Russia or get disappeared for awhile in China.
Trump uses the raw power of the state sure, but he's also coopted the oligarchy and keeps them in line with implied threats to their companies via punitive regulatory measures or tariffs. For the oligarchs who do his bidding, they get selective deregulation and tariff exemptions. Very similar to how Russia and China do their government-planned-economies, but the threats don't need to go as far as disappearances or deniable murders with American oligarchs. For American oligarchs, the mere thought of losing a fraction of their profits is enough to keep them licking authoritarian boots. American oligarchs have a fiduciary responsibility to keep the authoritarian happy with their company, and that's what drives their buy-in to American authoritarianism. It's capitalism supporting authoritarianism via fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Capitalistic greed and authoritarianism make a great pairing in that both seek monopoly and unchecked power. Authoritarianism is merely the monopolization of politics isn't it?