A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. In 1984, George Orwell observed that a fascist state relies upon its ability to control—or obliterate—memory. As Winston Smith, the ill-fated protagonist, ponders the Party’s ability to manipulate reality and history, Orwell writes, “Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” Another passage in the novel describes the Party’s relentless effort to construct the dominant narrative: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” Sound familiar? It’s been five years since a mob of thousands of Donald Trump supporters—which included Christian nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Confederate flag wavers, militia members, and other extremists—assaulted the US Capitol to try to halt the peaceful transfer of power from an outgoing president to an incoming president. The basic facts are well established: Trump refused to accept legitimate election results. He falsely claimed he had won the 2020 contest and spread baseless lies and conspiracy theories about the election. He spent weeks scheming to overturn the election and remain in power. Promoting these falsehoods, he incited that insurrectionist attack on Congress in which more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured. While the melee was occurring, he abandoned his duty to defend the Constitution and waited 187 minutes before calling on his brownshirts to leave the Capitol. > Like the Party in Orwell’s dystopia, Trump and the Republicans have sought to > rewrite history and erase the stain of Trump’s profound betrayal of America. This is all undeniable. Yet Trump and his cult refuse to accept these fundamentals. Like the Party in Orwell’s dystopia, Trump and the Republicans have sought to rewrite history and erase the stain of Trump’s profound betrayal of America. He pardoned the violent marauders, and his henchmen in charge of the FBI and Justice Department have fired agents and prosecutors who participated in the investigation and prosecution of these thugs. And Trump’s MAGA legions mounted a disinformation campaign that advanced various conspiracy theories—the FBI did it! Antifa did it!—to absolve Trump and his thugs. More important, an entire political party and tens of millions of American voters memory-holed Trump’s war on American democracy and his embrace of political violence. What is perhaps the gravest transgression ever committed by a US president has been airbrushed out of the picture and the perp allowed (by a majority of voters) to return to the scene of the crime. This is one of the most worrisome turns in American history. If our democracy cannot protect itself from such peril and repel such a dangerous threat, can it survive? Trump’s triumph over reality was made clear this past week. On New Year’s Eve—one of the deadest times for the news cycle—the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released the closed-doors testimony it had recently received from Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the investigations that indicted Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and for allegedly swiping highly sensitive White House documents. Both cases ended after Trump won the election in November. (Under Justice Department policy, a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for federal crimes.) > Smith insisted on a public appearance, apparently knowing he had the goods on > Trump. The Republicans said no and questioned him in a private session—all the > better for controlling the narrative. Smith, as you know, has been repeatedly denounced by Trump as a lunatic who waged witch hunts and investigated hoaxes generated by his fellow Deep Staters, the Democrats, and the media. And Republicans hauled Smith in as part of their never-ending crusade to find (or concoct) evidence to bolster Trump’s paranoid fantasies and conspiracy theories—and to buttress their hyperbolic charge that Trump and Republicans have been the victims of what they call the “weaponization of government.” Smith insisted on a public appearance, apparently knowing he had the goods on Trump. The Republicans said no and questioned him in a private session—all the better for controlling the narrative. The fact that they made public the transcript on a holiday night tells you what you need to know about who got the best of whom. The 255-page transcript is an important document that every citizen should read. (I know, I’m being fanciful.) Smith ran circles around the GOP committee members and their staff. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said at the start. He added, “Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” > Trump tried to take advantage of this spasm of cop-beating violence to > illegally remain in office. That foul deed should have disqualified him from > ever holding any position of authority. Yet… Smith patiently explained how Trump’s (alleged) crime related to January 6: “January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police that day. Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.” This is an accusation that sums up Trump’s perfidy: He tried to take advantage of this spasm of cop-beating violence to illegally remain in office. That foul deed should have disqualified Trump from ever holding any position of authority. Yet… A key exchange occurred when a Republican staffer (whose name is redacted in the transcript) asked, “The President’s statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud, those certainly are statements that are protected by the First Amendment, correct?” This has been a central contention of the Trump cult: You cannot prosecute Trump for stating his opinion that the election was rigged against him. But Smith fired back: “Absolutely not. If [these false statements] are made to target a lawful government function and they are made with knowing falsity, no, they are not.” Statements made to promote a fraud are not protected by the First Amendment. Later on in his testimony, Smith remarked that the elections case against Trump was much like an “affinity fraud”—that’s when, he said, “you try to gain someone’s trust, get them to trust you as a general matter, and then you rip them off, you defraud them.” Trump, he told the committee, “had people…who had built up trust in him, including people in his own party, and he preyed on that.” And once again, Smith reiterated, fraud is not covered by the First Amendment. This Republican staffer took another shot at it and said, “There’s a long history of candidates speaking out about they believe there’s been fraud [in an election]…I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core of the First Amendment rights of a Presidential candidate, right?” Not at all, Smith replied: “There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowing—knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.” The Republicans kept trying to mount a theoretical defense for Trump. This staffer pointed out that during the hullabaloo over the 2020 election, Trump was receiving information on supposed election fraud from Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell, and he asked, wasn’t Trump just “regurgitating what these people have told him?” Smith had a sharp retort: > No. And, in fact, one of the strengths of our case and why we felt we had such > strong proof is all witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the > President. They were going to be political allies. We had numerous witnesses > who would say, “I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for President > Trump. I wanted him to win.” The speaker of the house in Arizona. The speaker > of the house in Michigan. We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former > congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that > what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and > illegal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance > to the country before the party. Call 911. There was a murder in this Capitol Hill office, as Smith decimated the various lines of defense Trump’s handmaids hurled at him. He forcibly denied Trump’s indictments were political acts or that his office had been “weaponized.” In an exchange with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), he explained the importance of his investigation. > Jayapal: What happens if there is election interference and the people who are > responsible for that are not held accountable? > > Smith: It becomes the new norm, and that becomes how we—how we conduct > elections. > > Jayapal: And so the toll on our democracy, if you had to describe that, what > would that be? > > Smith: Catastrophic. The Smith transcript generated headlines…for a day. Like most everything else in our information hypersphere, this story did not have much staying power. Trump’s attempt to blow up the constitutional order has become old news. Ho-hum. He got away with this allegedly criminal act because he won the election. His pardons of the violent criminals who attacked hundreds of cops is just one item on a long list of outrages that quickly come and go. > Many Americans, it seems, couldn’t hold on to a clear memory of January 6 for > even a few years—or couldn’t be bothered to. A high-profile public appearance in which Smith vigorously presented the case against Trump might not at this point change the overall public perception of Trump’s attempted power grab and the violent raid he triggered. But that would have drawn more attention and served the truth. Which is why Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chair of the committee, and his fellow Republicans made damn sure that did not happen. Today is the fifth anniversary of January 6—a shameful day in American history. And in the last election, the nation—or about half of its voters—welcomed back into the house the arsonist who tried to burn it down. The past 10 years have sadly showed us that a wannabe authoritarian in the United States can succeed in denying reality and wiping away history. Trump did that with the Russian attack on the 2016 election, which he aided and abetted by echoing Vladimir Putin’s false claims that Moscow had not intervened and by insisting ad nauseum that it was a hoax. And he has done the same with January 6, hailing it a “day of love” and “a beautiful day” and calling the rioters “great patriots.” Many Americans, it seems, couldn’t hold on to a clear memory of January 6 for even a few years—or couldn’t be bothered to. This demonstrates how susceptible people can be to what the Party did in 1984: Erase the past (even the most recent past) and then erase the erasure. Trump is back in the White House, pushing his agenda of authoritarianism far beyond what he could only dream of during his first term. Future historians—if there is history in the future—will wonder about much in this era. But what might puzzle them the most is how the man who nearly annihilated our constitutional republic was able to worm his way back into the presidency. Gore Vidal once referred to the nation as the “United States of Amnesia.” On this dark anniversary, it’s good to remember that Trump is in power today because there’s been too much forgetting.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. For over a decade—!!!—Donald Trump has defied political gravity. After descending that Trump Tower elevator surrounded by fake supporters who had been paid to attend his campaign announcement, Trump pulled one disqualifying move after another. He insulted war hero John McCain. He mocked a reporter with a physical disability. He made crass and crude comments. He lied relentlessly. He celebrated fringe players like conspiracy theory–monger Alex Jones. And with each of these misdeeds and missteps, the pundits declared he was kaput. But he wasn’t. Not even after the grab-’em-by-the-pussy videotape. Trump was able to survive gaffes, controversies, and scandals that would blow away any other politician. In part that was because, as one of his early advisers told me, being an asshole was part of his appeal. It was baked into the cake. How many times since he was first elected president has a commentator said—or you thought—in response to some Trump outrage, no other politicians could get away with this? That includes bear-hugging Vladimir Putin, mismanaging the Covid epidemic (which led to avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans), his first impeachment, his effort to overturn a legitimate election to retain power, his incitement of political violence that aimed to destroy American democracy, and the countless instances of grift and graft he and his clan have perpetrated. It seemed that the rules of politics and public life did not apply to Trump. Yes, he lost the 2020 election, but he resurrected himself—yet again defying the conventional wisdom following the January 6 riot that he was finished politically. Trump still survives revelations and scandals that would destroy past presidencies—swiping classified documents, paying off a porn star. But the good news is that this does not mean that the political universe has been permanently upended. In recent weeks, there have been signs that political gravity does still exist and that we are not adrift in a cosmos free of all rules. > There’s no open rebellion—except for Marjorie Taylor Greene—but the 100 > percent obeisance of the GOP has dropped a point or two. The most obvious indicator was the off-year elections. History suggested that Democrats would fare well, given Trump’s falling approval numbers and still-too-high prices. And they did, even better than expected in many places. (See Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and Eileen Higgins, who this week became the first Democrat to be elected Miami mayor in three decades.) Beyond those electoral returns, we are seeing other normal political occurrences. Trump is technically a lame duck president. Given his hold on the GOP, which he has turned into a cult of personality, it might be expected that he could escape this diminished status and still dominate. And, mostly, that’s so. But there have been a few whiffs of Republican restiveness. His illegal military attacks on suspected drug boats prompted a few Hill Republicans to ask questions and even suggest the need for an investigation. That might not lead to a full-fledged inquiry. But it’s the most pushback we’ve seen from the GOP. And a handful of congressional Republicans have hinted that they are concerned by the dramatic hike in health insurance premiums that’s about to hit because Trump and the GOP killed the extended subsidies for Obamacare policies. Again, there’s no open rebellion—except for Marjorie Taylor Greene—but the 100 percent obeisance of the GOP has dropped a point or two. Then there’s MAGA. As historians of political movements will note, none of them live forever. The tea party, BLM, Occupy, the nuclear freeze—eventually they lose steam and develop fractures; leadership fights and disagreements cause fissures and sometimes cannibalistic internal conflicts. We’re witnessing that with MAGA now. There have been numerous splits and disagreements these past few months, with almost a civil war over the release of the Epstein files (and that may still transpire, depending on what the Trump administration does in response to the new law that compels the release of these documents). MAGA world had a major brawl over Tucker Carlson’s friendly and supportive interview with Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist and Hitler fanboy. On the right, there’s been a pitched battle regarding support for Israel. The aforementioned Greene, once a MAGA favorite, has cast herself out of Trump’s circle of trust after tussling with him over the Epstein records and calling Israel’s war on Gaza “genocide” and voicing worry over rising health insurance premiums. The manosphere—Joe Rogan and the army of Rogan-wannabes—have groused about the ICE raids going too far, especially when they round up day laborers outside Home Depot who are simply looking for work. Steve Bannon, the grand strategist of MAGA, is not happy Trump is handing Big Tech a blank check.  To get a sense of the insane vitriol and vituperation within MAGA land these days, check out this recent tweet from Laura Loomer, the avenging angel of Trumptown: I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to dissect and process this particular feud—for you or for me. But the point is clear: These people are nuts, and the internecine bloodlust is high. I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the other fractures that have arisen recently. But MAGA is behaving in a familiar manner, with grifters and ideologues vying for attention, money, and turf. Trump won’t be around forever, and there’s scrambling for positioning in the post-Trump era. That’s true within the GOP for those who yearn to run in 2028, presuming there will be an election, and it’s also true for those who want to claim the MAGA mantle next. These may be separate power struggles. > Trump’s approval rating, according to the latest Gallup poll, has plummeted to > 36 percent, with disapproval hitting 60 percent. Here’s another sign of the reassertion of political gravity. After Trump won the election a year ago, there was much blathering about a strategic realignment in politics. He had increased his share of votes among Latinos, Blacks, and young people, especially men in these categories. Republicans were giddy, believing Trump had cracked a code that would bring these traditionally Democratic voters into the GOP coalition permanently. That was then. In the elections last month, these voters switched back to the Ds, even and especially young men. No, Trump did not deliver a history-defying permanent shift in electoral politics. It now looks like there’s a regression to the mean. That brings us to Trump’s poll numbers. Cheap analysis focuses on this standard marker. But it shows us that Trump is not a supernatural politician. In recent decades, all presidents decline in popularity after they enter office. Trump is following that pattern—and more so. His approval rating, according to the latest Gallup poll, has plummeted to 36 percent, with disapproval hitting 60 percent. Some surveys have Trump a few points higher on approval. Yet it’s evident he’s getting close to hitting his floor. My unscientific guesstimate is that about 30 to 35 percent of the nation fully buys Trump’s bunk. They believe his bullshit—America’s about to be destroyed by migrants; radical lunatics, commies, antifa, Democrats, and the media are scheming to annihilate the nation; the Deep State is out to sabotage Trump; and only Trump, the smartest, strongest, and most noble man in human history, can save the US of A. No matter what happens, they will stand by their man. Yet the rest of the nation is not cottoning to his mass deportation crusade, his economic policies, his razing of the East Wing, his revenge-infused implementation of authoritarianism, his brazen corruption, his plutocratic policies, and his never-ending nastiness. It’s not wearing well. If you do a lot of crap that’s unpopular, you won’t be popular. That’s a rather basic rule of politics, and Trump is not escaping that. And Republicans, naturally, are wigged out that one of the major historical trends of American politics will likely hold next year: The president’s party gets socked in midterm elections. It’s far too early to make any predictions. External circumstances can always change any political equation. What happens if there’s a war in Venezuela? Or if the White House can find a trans migrant who commits a heinous crime? And we all ought to worry about Trump and his crew concocting ways to screw with next year’s elections. Don’t put on any rose-colored glasses. Trump has done so much harm and damage. According to Impactcounter.com, the ending of US foreign assistance and the demolition of USAID has led to nearly 700,000 deaths, including the deaths of 451,000 children. There’s still much harm and damage to come, here and abroad. But it is reassuring that the laws of politics remain partially intact. Trump, the GOP, and MAGA are not immune. But their opponents need to keep in mind that these vulnerabilities do not predetermine a downfall; they only provide an opportunity for a fight.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. The saga of Olivia Nuzzi consuming the polimedia-sphere has prompted me to think about my own journalistic failing regarding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. No, I didn’t become smitten by RFK Jr. while covering the anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theory–spewing oddball. Nor did I not report what I knew about him during the confirmation process that landed this deceitful promoter of disinformation and fake science in a position to oversee our public health system. But at a critical time, I did not succeed in drawing attention to an important story about Kennedy. And that haunts me. Allow me, dear reader, to explain. While I was chasing several stories about Kennedy after Donald Trump tapped him to head the Department of Health and Human Services (see here and here), a source who was once close to Kennedy told me that the scion had at least twice settled cases brought against him by women who claimed he had engaged in misconduct. In one of these instances, this source said, Gloria Allred, the famous attorney, supposedly represented the woman. When covering famous people, it is not uncommon to encounter gossip and tips about bad personal behavior, and this was not a surprising lead. A babysitter who had once worked for Kennedy had accused him of sexual assault. Her allegation had appeared in a Vanity Fair article. In a subsequent text to her, Kennedy said, “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.” That was not a denial. I contacted Allred by email and asked if she had handled such a case. I noted that we could talk off the record, if she preferred. Her reply was short: “Sorry. No comment.” I tried her again. Silence. I pursued other avenues and reached out to Kennedy intimates who might have been in a position to know of any settlements. I found no one with first-hand knowledge, and one person who would likely have been aware of such an arrangement did not respond to my many calls, texts, and emails. > “I have no other comment unless I receive a subpoena, and even then I would > have to consider what I would say,” Allred replied. While doing this, I came across an article published in the Daily Mail a few months previously in which Allred said of Trump’s Cabinet appointees, “I think all nominees should be asked, ‘Have you entered into any confidential settlement with a person who accused you of sexually inappropriate behavior? And if so, will you agree to release the person with whom you settled from the non-disclosure clause from which he or she agreed?’” Coincidence? Or did she know something specific? As Kennedy’s confirmation hearings were beginning, I pestered Allred again, emailing her that I had just read an “interesting article” and linking to the Daily Mail piece with her highly relevant comment. This did not change her stance. She replied, “I stand by my quote in the Daily Mail article. I believe that all cabinet nominees should be asked if they have entered into settlements with women (or men) who have made allegations against the nominee involving inappropriate sexual conduct. I have no other comment unless I receive a subpoena, and even then I would have to consider what I would say.” Did that mean she had something to say? Or was this merely legal boilerplate? As I continued to investigate, I contacted members of the two Senate committees holding hearings on Kennedy’s appointment, as well as their staffers, and I asked if they were aware of any such cases or settlements. Had anything come up during their research and preparation for the hearings? No one had any concrete information. After the first of the two hearings, which was conducted by the Senate Finance Committee, Democrats on the panel sent Kennedy a list of written questions. It included these queries: > Yes or no, have you ever reached a settlement agreement with an individual or > organization that accused you of misconduct or inappropriate behavior? > > > > Yes or no, have you ever agreed to or been subject to a non-disclosure > agreement with any individual or organization? The following day, during the hearing held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) raised the issue of personal misconduct with Kennedy. She referred to the former babysitter’s allegation. Kennedy denied the accusation, contradicting his response to the babysitter. Murray then asked, “Are there any other instances where you have made sexual advances toward an individual without their consent?” Kennedy replied, “No.” > As to the queries about reaching a settlement following an allegation of > misconduct or inappropriate behavior and being a party to a non-disclosure > agreement, Kennedy answered in each case with one word: “Yes.” Murray did not question him about any other allegations or settlements. I bugged Allred again and asked what she thought of this exchange. Her answer was terse: “That was not the question I suggested should be asked of a cabinet nominee.” With the hearings now behind him, Kennedy replied to the long list of written questions the senators had submitted. As to the queries about reaching a settlement following an allegation of misconduct or inappropriate behavior and being a party to a non-disclosure agreement, he answered in each case with one word: “Yes.” He supplied no further explanation. The tip had been accurate. I contacted Kennedy and asked, “Will you disclose what those agreements were? What was the misconduct? Who were the individuals or organizations that accused you? Did this involve women who accused you of personal misconduct? Will you release anyone who has an NDA with you related to any of those settlements from that NDA?” He did not respond. But Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller and MAGA advocate who was then serving as a spokesperson for Kennedy, shot back: “As a matter of policy, we don’t respond to Mother Jones.” I thought Kennedy’s acknowledgment of these settlements—and his reluctance to explain further—was a story that warranted widespread notice. But no Democratic senator raised a fuss. Once again, I reached out to Allred. Crickets. The senators did follow up with another written question they sent to Kennedy: > Please describe the nature of the financial settlements (including > total amounts) and non-disclosure agreements reached and what these agreements > involved. Please also indicate how many of these settlements and > non-disclosure agreements you have signed. RFK Jr. replied: > Twice, I have been targeted by frivolous, unfounded allegations, which I > strenuously denied at the time and continue to deny. I entered into > confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements to prohibit these individuals > from continuing to make these allegations. This was not a full answer. The Senate Democrats had asked for the total amounts of the settlements, and Kennedy did not provide that information. Nor did this response indicate what “misconduct or inappropriate behavior” had been alleged. He was not being forthcoming. Once more, I returned to Allred and asked if one of these cases did indeed involve a client of hers, would that client care to challenge Kennedy’s characterization. Allred replied, “I have not stated that I have a client in this matter, but if I did have one the client would be informed about all of your requests and questions.” > What was most surprising was that Senate Democrats dropped the matter. It was clear: If Allred represented such a client, that woman had no interest in saying anything. Hardly a surprising circumstance. One could easily imagine the assault that would befall a person who might violate an NDA and come forward with allegations about Kennedy. Possibly my original source had been wrong about the Allred connection. Allred never confirmed to me that she had such a client. But if I had to guess… And that was it. What was most surprising was that Senate Democrats dropped the matter. After Kennedy refused to provide details about these cases of alleged misconduct, there were no further efforts to press him for more information. No press conferences with senators complaining that he was stonewalling them. He was off the hook. Perhaps he had been unfairly accused. Perhaps he had done something horrible. Kennedy would keep the public—and the senators who had to vote on whether to allow him to take this position of great responsibility—in the dark. I wrote about all this (here and here), but Kennedy’s acknowledgement of these settlements received little attention elsewhere in the media. It seemed that in the second Trump era, the possibility that RFK Jr. had engaged in misconduct or inappropriate conduct did not matter. After all, Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth had been credibly accused of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and financial mismanagement, and he had won Senate confirmation to become secretary of defense. Such transgressions were apparently not disqualifiers in Trump 2.0. The Democrats appeared to have no appetite for demanding details about possible Kennedy misdeeds, and I did not unearth any further information on these episodes. I failed to crack the case. Kennedy was confirmed and went on to implement calamitous policies at HHS, denigrating vaccines, pulling the plug on critical scientific and medical research, and increasing the nation’s (and the world’s) vulnerability to pandemics. If the specifics of his alleged misconduct had been revealed, might that have sunk his nomination and prevented the disaster he’s wreaking? We will never know.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. The appointment of Bari Weiss, the former New York Times opinion writer who started the heterodox Free Press website, to lead venerable CBS News set the media world in a tizzy. Since she had no experience in television broadcast news operations, David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, must have selected her for ideological and editorial reasons. Weiss had positioned herself as the scourge of supposedly woke and DEI-driven liberal media, presumably a stance that appealed to Ellison, the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter who put up much of the money that financed his son’s recent takeover of Paramount. Weiss’ first days at the network yielded worrisome signs. She asked senior staff at 60 Minutes, why does the country think you’re biased? This query suggested she buys the right-wing narrative Donald Trump propels about the media. CBS News, according to recent polling, is actually one of the most trusted news outfits, and the overall decline in popular trust in the media has been fueled over the past few decades mostly by a steep decline among Republicans—who have been the target of a concerted campaign waged by Trump and, before him, other conservative leaders (and Fox News!) to discredit the media. (A loss of trust among Democrats and independents has occurred but it’s been less pronounced.) Trump and the right’s war on the media has largely succeeded. And Weiss, whose rise to power has been a result of her crusade against the libs, seemingly accepts Trump’s terms—not a good sign. > Weiss’ inexperience, her embrace of the right-wing assault on the media, and > her eagerness to boost her political opinions over her network’s reporting are > all reasons to worry about her tenure at CBS News. Nor were other recent developments at CBS News that the New York Times reported: “In the two weeks that she has worked at the network, Ms. Weiss has not promoted any articles or reporting from CBS News on her X account, which reaches 1.1 million followers…As a Middle East peace deal came into view, Ms. Weiss shared numerous pro-Israel opinion pieces from The Free Press, and an editorial that said Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, had failed ‘the Hamas test.’” She seemed more interested in opinion warfare than news reporting. And according to Status, Weiss has been considering hiring Fox News host Bret Baier and bringing back to CBS News Catherine Herridge, who was laid off from the network last year and whose past work included credulously reporting hyped-up Republican charges of Democratic misdeeds. Weiss’ inexperience, her embrace of the right-wing assault on the media, and her eagerness to boost her political opinions over her network’s reporting are all reasons to worry about her tenure at CBS News. But there’s something else: artificial intelligence. Larry Ellison is deeply involved in the AI gold rush. He’s chairman and founder of Oracle, a critical player in the AI boom, providing cloud computing and infrastructure for many AI applications and partnering with OpenAI. (He’s predicted, with enthusiasm, that AI will give us a surveillance state in which citizens “will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”) And David Ellison, like most CEOs these days, is looking to AI to turbocharge his company. > There’s much to worry about regarding AI—most notably, massive job > displacement and assorted doomsday scenarios about the end of humanity. But at > this moment, a potential peril is at hand: the end of truth. AI may well be the biggest story of the coming years, and a news organization owned by a corporation with huge interests in the sector and run by a person plopped into the top slot because of her views, not her broadcasting know-how, might feel pressure on this front. But what’s most concerning is indeed the issue of trust—though perhaps not in the way Weiss has approached it. We are on the cusp of a dangerous new world. There’s much to worry about regarding AI—most notably, massive job displacement and assorted doomsday scenarios about the end of humanity. But at this moment, a potential peril is at hand: the end of truth. You might have heard that before. The introduction of Photoshop years ago was going to make all photographs—and, thus, all news images—suspect. Yet we got on. The threat now is more profound. A few weeks ago, OpenAI introduced a new version of Sora, its application that allows users to create short videos entirely through AI. You want a video of yourself reaching the top of Mt. Everest? No problem. Initial reviewers—it’s not yet widely available, but it soon will be—have praised the easy-to-use program and the realistic-looking videos it produces. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s leader, has proclaimed Sora “the most powerful imagination engine ever built.” But just as Sora can manufacture fanciful creations, such as a dog conducting open-heart surgery, it can yield the deepest of deep fakes: videos of prominent people making statements they never said, of natural disasters or terrorist attacks that didn’t happen, of crimes that were not committed, or military strikes that did not occur. As the New York Times reported, “In its first three days, users of a new app from OpenAI deployed artificial intelligence to create strikingly realistic videos of ballot fraud, immigration arrests, protests, crimes and attacks on city streets—none of which took place.” The possibilities are endless—and damn scary. Faked videos could intensify or trigger conflicts, undermine elections, defraud consumers, swing financial markets, and frame people. Sora has guardrails—for now. There is a watermark noting its videos are AI-generated. You may not produce videos of living people uttering words they did not speak. The production of videos with graphic violence is not permitted. But clever folks have already found ways to evade the limitations, and other systems won’t even bother with such restraints. Very soon our social media buckets will fill with AI slop. Much of it will be irrelevant and of no import. But there will be malicious disinformation produced to inflame, defame, mislead, and frighten for political advantage, for profit, or just for kicks. How will we know what’s real? > Who or what is left to protect reality? Who’s going to vet the AI-orchestrated > falsehoods to come? This is what we need the media for. In a less imperfect world, the government might be of use in this regard and monitor and address the most malevolent and consequential AI disinformation. But liberals would not want to see the Trump administration in charge of such fact-checking, and conservatives for years have viciously assailed and beaten back counter-disinformation efforts mounted by government agencies, colleges, nonprofits, and other entities, decrying them as Big Brother censorship aimed at silencing right-wingers. I understand their concern, for Trump has essentially turned MAGA into one big disinformation operation. It’s no wonder his allies attack endeavors to confront such propaganda. Who or what is left to protect reality? Who’s going to vet the AI-orchestrated falsehoods to come? This is what we need the media for. Major news organizations will have to assume the task of quickly scrutinizing disinformation and misinformation, telling us whether the video of a tsunami heading toward the West Coast or another of thugs beating up a senator or one of explosions in downtown Chicago are legitimate. When a video appears of a political candidate confessing to a heinous crime or telling a racist joke, we will need to look to a source to determine whether that occurred. This should be the job of major news operations. Of course, the big media outlets—the New York Times, CNN, broadcast news—tend to be for-profit enterprises. Who knows if becoming all-important arbiters of reality will fit their business models? But most important will be if their vetting is trusted. These institutions will have to be believed by large segments of the population—though there will always be people who will be unpersuadable. > As the AI Matrix approaches, we are going to need large institutions with > influence and reach to help us prevent the truth from being wiped out by a > flood of lies. And we will need somewhere to turn for guidance. Thus, we return to Bari Weiss. She accurately points out that the news media has fallen on the trust scale. But she appears to have fallen for the false right-wing explanation: They’re too damn liberal. Though it’s early in her tenure at CBS News, her ideologically fueled appointment does not inspire confidence that Ellison (or the Ellisons) intend to direct CBS News in the direction where it could function as one of the essential vetters in this new and chaotic information ecosystem. Like many in the non-mainstream media, I have long been critical of various aspects and actions of major news outlets, while recognizing they often produce wonderful and consequential works of journalism. Yet as the AI Matrix approaches, my hunch is that we are going to need large institutions with influence and reach (no matter if their audiences are smaller than they once were) to help us prevent the truth from being wiped out by a flood of lies. As consumers of information, we will have to learn not to accept the first impressions caused by AI disinformation and wait for confirmation—an exercise humans are not well designed for. (In the jungle eons ago, Homo sapiens could not afford to take their time to evaluate a possible threat. That could endanger them. Immediate absorption of information and snap judgments were essential for survival.) And we will need somewhere to turn for guidance. CBS News is positioned to provide what might become the most valuable service of the news industry. Yet Weiss is not the obvious choice to guide it toward this mission. Perhaps she will surprise us. I’m rooting for what used to be called the Tiffany Network. But if we’re all left alone on the sea of AI slop, our democracy will drown.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. It’s hard to define Trumpism without Donald Trump. So much of what Trump does arises from demagogic political self-interest, not ideology or well-formed policy. He assaults elites and decries politicians for having screwed over middle America, while gold-plating the White House, grifting his way to billions, and pushing legislation that tosses big tax cuts to the well-heeled and raises the cost of health insurance for millions. He proclaims that politicians have betrayed the citizenry, but he guts safeguards that protect consumers, workers, investors, and retirees, allowing powerful corporations to run wild. He boasts he’s pursuing an America First policy, yet he’s spending up to $40 billion to bail out his pal in Argentina. Trumpism, as practiced and presented by Trump, is a hodgepodge—a mélange of impulses, insults, contradictions, and half-baked ideas, far from a coherent set of principles. > He signed an amicus brief that contended LGBTQ people were not protected by > workplace discrimination bans. He filed lawsuits to kill the Affordable Care > Act. He sued the Biden administration, alleging it was censoring anti-vaccine > activism. He’s full MAGA. But there are others who do a better job than Trump of shaping Trumpism into a coherent ideology that melds nativism and oligarchism. And they present as much danger—possibly more?—to American society as the undisciplined, erratic wannabe-autocrat who leads the MAGA cult. One of these Trumpers is Eric Schmitt. Never heard of him? He’s the junior US senator from Missouri, a Republican, naturally. He was elected in the 2022 election. Prior to that he was the Show Me State’s attorney general. In that position, he championed Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election and supported failed lawsuits that tried to overturn the election results. He signed an amicus brief that contended LGBTQ people were not protected by workplace discrimination bans. He filed lawsuits to kill the Affordable Care Act. He sued the Biden administration, alleging it was censoring anti-vaccine activism. He’s full MAGA. In the Senate, he has not yet become a national figure. But it’s clear this 50-year-old career politician has supersize ambitions. He demonstrated his ability to be a post-Trump leader of Trumpism with a speech he gave in September at the National Conservative Conference held in Washington, DC. It’s worth considering it in detail. Proclaiming himself a champion of “national conservatism,” Schmitt defined this ideology as a “revolt,” within a “culture war,” against “the elites who rule everywhere but are not truly from anywhere.” Before explaining precisely what he meant by that, he assailed traditional (pre-Trump) conservatism for having gone along with the “Washington consensus” of foreign interventions, free trade, and pro-immigration policies that “undercut American wages, replace American workers, and transfer entire industries into the hands of foreign lobbies.” This is standard fare for Trump acolytes who have tried to bend conservatism to fit into Trump’s mold. But Schmitt devoted much of his speech to the question of who is a true American. He derided those on the right and the left who have depicted America as an “idea,” noting: For decades, the mainstream consensus on the left and the right alike seemed to be that America itself was just an “idea”—a vehicle for global liberalism. We were told that the entire meaning of America boiled down to a few lines in a poem on the Statue of Liberty, and five words about equality in the Declaration of Independence. Any other aspect of American identity was deemed to be illegitimate and immoral, poisoned by the evils of our ancestors. The true meaning of America, they said, was liberalism, multiculturalism, and endless immigration. In a speech in 1998, Bill Clinton said that the continuous influx of immigrants was—and I quote—a “reminder that our America is not so much a place as a promise.” > Real Americans, he asserted, have been betrayed: “Their true adversary did not > live in the faraway sands of some foreign nation, but in the halls of their > own government.” Not really, Schmitt insisted. The foundational principles are critical to the nation, he said, but America was not “a universal proposition” available to just anyone. He told his audience, “That’s what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike: He knows that America is not just an abstract ‘proposition,’ but a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests.” You see where he’s heading with this? Real Americans, he asserted, have been betrayed: “Their true adversary did not live in the faraway sands of some foreign nation, but in the halls of their own government.” These Americans were heirs to a particular history: The Continental Army soldiers dying of frostbite at Valley Forge, the Pilgrims struggling to survive in the hard winter soil of Plymouth, the pioneers striking out from Missouri for the wild and dangerous frontier, the outnumbered Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks from behind their stockade walls—all of them would be astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a “proposition.” They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. The key word here is “descendants.” Schmitt was suggesting America belongs more to some than others. (In Animal Farm, the fascist regime declares, “Some animals are more equal than others.”) America, the senator said, is not a “universal nation” open to anyone who wishes to join. After referring to the United States as “the most essentially Western nation,” he hammered this point: “We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God.” He celebrated the waves of European settlers in the 1800s, noting his own ancestors arrived in Missouri from Germany in the 1840s, and that it was the brave Christian souls who headed West “to build a home at the edge of the known world” who made America and—most important—bequeathed it to future Americans. > “We’re not sorry,” Schmitt said. “Why would we be sorry? America is the > proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.” Schmitt denounced those who would dare take notice of the genocide of Indigenous people or other ills of America’s past: For some time now, we’ve been taught to be ashamed of these things that defined us—to treat our curiosity, adventurousness, and ambition as a stain on our moral conscience. We’ve been taught that, by settling this continent and building our home here, we committed a world-historical sin, and that we should rue the day that our forefathers arrived in North America, and condemn their vision, their strength, and their will as an expression of something perverse and evil. He added: “The American heritage is not a narrative of oppression and evil, but the unfolding story of our people’s pioneer spirit—a spirit that drives us to expand beyond limits, to assert ourselves upon the world…We’re not sorry. Why would we be sorry? America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.” As for those who would raise questions about America’s glorious past—including those Americans who joined protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020—Schmitt said, “America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.” Who is the “we” in that declaration? The descendants of the European Christians who claimed the West. The fight at hand, Schmitt contended, “is about whether our children will still have a country to call their own. It’s about whether America will remain what she was meant to be: the apex and the vanguard of Western civilization.” Schmitt’s speech was an articulate and sophisticated embrace of blood and soil. His message was that America is a land not for those who have come here drawn by its ideals and promises but for those whose ancestors were on the wagon trains and who conquered the frontier. American greatness is derived from the legacy of those people, not whatever values and principles a diverse and pluralistic society shares and honors. (“If you imposed a carbon copy of the US Constitution on Kazakhstan tomorrow,” he said, “Kazakhstan wouldn’t magically become America. Because Kazakhstan isn’t filled with Americans. It’s filled with Kazakhstanis!”) In his celebration of American history, Schmitt fixates on a particular set of ancestors who helped form this nation. His story does not include the contributions of enslaved people whose free labor generated much of its wealth, or the Chinese workers who laid the tracks for railroads that transformed the country, or the Mexican workers whose toil and sweat turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. Nor does his narrative include immigrants who arrived later from non-European countries. He is focused on—shall we say it?—white people. > Schmitt aptly combines explicit nativism, implied white supremacy, purported > economic populism, and anti-elitism into a neat package, and he’s a damn good > salesman for this noxious brew. Schmitt deftly ties his skewed history lesson to the grievances held by white voters of today, arguing that those who don’t accept this particular view of American greatness are the same folks responsible for the economic policies and decisions that have hollowed out middle America and left many Main Streets in tatters. He is integrating racial and economic resentments, with a dash of Christian nationalism, into a coherent and divisive strategy for prosecuting the culture war against them: unidentified elites, critics of American society, and…well, fill in the blanks. All of this is present in the Trumpism espoused by Dear Leader. But Schmitt more aptly combines explicit nativism, implied white supremacy, purported economic populism, and anti-elitism into a neat package, and he’s a damn good salesman for this noxious brew. He’s a crafty and disingenuous fellow who’s skilled at performative politics. Two weeks after this speech and six days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where FBI Director Kash Patel was the witness, Schmitt used the occasion to describe America as in the grips of a titanic battle between good and evil, with the latter being a left that encourages political violence. He cited instances of violence committed by people with left-leaning agendas, but absent from his list were shootings and massacres perpetrated by those motivated by conservative beliefs, such as the killing of Democrats in Minnesota by a Trump supporter. He also ignored January 6, the largest act of insurrectionist violence since the Civil War. Don’t give me this both-sides bullshit,” Schmitt angrily exclaimed. He claimed that political violence in the United States is happening on a “mass scale” and is “not organic.” It is part of a nefarious and orchestrated plot, he insisted, the offspring of a dark clandestine system funded in part with our own tax dollars with a large network of foundations, NGOs, activist organizations, and front groups. This system lurks behind every radical leftist movement in our nation today. The George Soros empire has financed a vast ecosystem of radicals, all working together, dropping off bricks at riots, to unleash a tidal wave of violent anarchists on our streets and to prop it up in an army of researchers, experts, and journalists, and propagandists who downplay the political violence. Schmitt’s fact-twisting—the claim that Soros’ organization supplies bricks to violent protesters has been debunked repeatedly but remains a right-wing article of faith—and his amnesia about January 6 and other horrific violence from the right show that he is yet just another MAGA fabulist willing to lie and misrepresent to exploit hate, paranoia, and distrust to score political points. Like you-know-who. But he is much better able than Trump to convey the ideology that animates Trump’s own political movement and that is the foundation for Trump’s march toward authoritarianism. That’s quite a talent, and Schmitt intends to put it to good use—that is, good for himself.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. About a dozen or so years ago, a staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ultraconservative Republican from Alabama, reached out to me and asked if we could meet. I don’t hear from too many GOP aides on Capitol Hill, so I was game. We rendezvoused at a coffee shop around the corner from my office. The aide was eager to pitch me an idea. Shouldn’t liberals who care about American workers make common cause with immigration restrictionists? Fewer immigrants, he contended, would mean more jobs available for American citizens. And if these were the sort of jobs employers had trouble hiring for, those owners would then have to pay workers more—and Americans would earn more. How could unions and liberals not support this? He was quite earnest and a tad nerdy, and he discussed this notion with a missionary zeal. It was clear he was not having much success on the Hill connecting with Democrats or Republicans on this. He was an outsider and reminded me of those proud libertarians I had met in college who were certain they had figured everything out and didn’t understand why others didn’t embrace their logic-driven ideology. I told the fellow that I was hardly a representative for liberals or labor but that I would think about what he said. Nothing concrete came out of our conversation. I pinged the aide a few times with questions about in-the-news matters involving the Senate, and he replied, usually with information that was not that useful. What struck me most was that he was so sure he had found the path for America’s future and that he just needed to persuade the unenlightened (like me) to see it. His name was Stephen Miller. > When I first met Miller, he did not seem like a likely propagandist for > autocracy. I guess you never know. Years later, I was surprised to see him as a top commander in Trump’s MAGA army. Sessions, the first GOP senator to endorse Trump in the 2016 campaign, had brought him into the fold. Though Trump fired Sessions less than two years into his stint as attorney general, Miller remained in Trump’s inner circle, becoming a top enabler—perhaps the most important one—of Trump’s dangerous id and a power-hungry extremist guiding Trump’s crusade of nativism and march toward authoritarianism. When I first met Miller, he did not seem like a likely propagandist for autocracy. I guess you never know. These days, Miller, as Trump’s mini-me, has been paving the way for Trump’s war on dissent—and that’s a literal war, with Trump deploying troops to cities to do battle with protesters (who tend to be peaceful) and to show Democrats that he’s a strongman who can exert military power to seize control of their cities and states. In remarks and social media posts over the past few weeks, Miller has declared that Trump as president has unlimited power; that “left-wing terrorism” is rampant across the land; that Democrats support violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, back “domestic terrorists,” and are a “domestic extremist organization”; and that governors, mayors, and judges who oppose and block Trump’s deployments of troops to American cities are engaged in an “insurrection.” He claims there’s a war raging in America’s cities due to antifa, ICE protesters, and hordes of criminals; he’s obviously attempting to establish a predicate for Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and expanding his use of troops within the United States to solidify his rule. > The Trump-Miller effort to delegitimize, if not criminalize, freedom of speech > and protest has been embraced by Capitol Hill Republicans. Miller was a force behind Trump’s recent moves to designate antifa, a decentralized movement, as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which Trump had no authority to do, and to issue a National Security Presidential Memorandum that associates a variety of political views—“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”—with “violent and terroristic activities.” As the Brennan Center for Justice notes: This breathtakingly broad list easily encompasses everyone from labor organizers, socialists, many libertarians, those who criticize Christianity, pro-immigration groups, anti-ICE protestors, and racial justice and transgender activists, to anyone who holds views that the administration considers to be “anti-American.” Under NSPM-7, the antifascist label can be attached to any of these types of people and groups and many more besides, giving the government maximum flexibility to pick and choose its targets. As the center says, much of this memo “is squarely directed at speech and nonviolent action by organizations and individuals protected by the First Amendment.” The Trump-Miller effort to delegitimize, if not criminalize, freedom of speech and protest has been embraced by Capitol Hill Republicans. This Saturday, there will again be No Kings marches and rallies across the nation opposing Trump. Millions could turn out for this event—in a continuation of the peaceful demonstrations that were held in June that drew an estimated 4 to 6 million participants. And this seems to scare Republicans. On Friday, during a press briefing held by House Republican leaders, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the majority whip, exclaimed that the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party was “set to hold…a hate-America rally in DC.” > Emmer: "This is about one thing and one thing alone — to score political > points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold a hate > America rally in DC next week." > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-10T14:25:31.189Z House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) got his licks in, too. He said the protesters would be “the antifa crowd and the pro-Hamas crowd and the Marxists.” The same day, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said, “This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. We’ll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it.” > Sen. Roger Marshall: "October 18 is when the protest gets here. This will be a > Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. > We'll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I > doubt it." > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-10T14:41:54.779Z On Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy chimed in, saying the No Kings rallies are “part of antifa, paid protesters.” > Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of > antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it." > > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-13T12:22:30.198Z It looks as if the Republicans are running a disinformation campaign to smear the opposition. This Miller-like denigration of peaceful protest—commies! terrorists!—is deplorable fearmongering, which has become Miller’s specialty: depicting America as land wracked with left-wing violence and lawlessness. When millions gathered in June at over 2,100 No Kings rallies, there were no violent eruptions. But in Trump’s cult, Milleresque demagoguery is contagious, and conservatives who claim to hold the Constitution near and dear have no problem lying to denounce and undermine First Amendment–protected activity.   It’s all part of Trump’s—and Miller’s—assault on constitutional rights and freedoms. Republicans, evidently worried about the pro-democracy protest this weekend, are trying to preemptively tar as extremists the citizens who gather to resist Trump and his assault on American democracy. Miller, I’m sure, has learned a lot since he came knocking on my door, a lonely Senate aide seeking attention and across-the-aisle company. One lesson appears to be that hyperbole, lies, and demonization are essential tools for an authoritarian looking to crush democratic opposition and impose autocratic rule. But I doubt Miller has changed much. He’s still a zealot—but one who finally figured out how to transform his fanaticism into influence and power.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. Of all the unqualified extremists Donald Trump has appointed to his Cabinet, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as of now, poses the most direct threat to the nation. The secretary of health and human services is devastating the United States’ public health system and promoting quack science that imperils the lives of Americans. In recent weeks, he has decapitated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, canceled mRNA vaccination research that held the potential for amazing medical breakthroughs, and loaded an important vaccine advisory panel with vaccine critics. > Kennedy is a threat to the well-being of the American citizenry. That’s why > House Democrats should move to impeach him. His promotion of vaccination opposition—don’t call him a vaccine “skeptic”; he’s a vaccine foe—has fostered an environment in which Florida this week announced it was ending all vaccine mandates for schoolchildren, with the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, bizarrely declaring every vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” It’s unlikely a state would have taken this risky and outrageous step if the federal government—led by the HHS secretary and the president—would have denounced the move. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has no such worries with Kennedy and Trump. Kennedy is a threat to the well-being of the American citizenry. That’s why House Democrats should move to impeach him. This week, in a column for the New York Times, nine former CDC directors—who collectively served under every president from Jimmy Carter to Trump—asserted that Kennedy has waged a war on public health. Here is their summation of the damage he has done: Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing [CDC director] Dr. [Susan] Monarez — which led to the resignations of top CDC officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire. > He testified that he doesn’t know how many people died of Covid and whether > the vaccines prevented Covid deaths: “The problem is they didn’t have the > data.” But that data does exist. More than 1,000 current and former HHS employees signed an open letter calling for Kennedy to resign or be fired. They noted he has appointed “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts and manipulate data to fit predetermined conclusions”; selected “David Geier, supporter of debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, to lead an HHS investigation on vaccines and autism”; refused to be “briefed by well-regarded CDC experts on vaccine-preventable diseases”; rescinded “the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines without providing the data or methods used to reach such a decision”; and insulted the HHS workforce by declaring, “Trusting experts is not a feature of either science or democracy.” On Thursday, Kennedy, appearing before the Senate Finance Committee, repeatedly lied during a contentious hearing. He insisted he had not broken the vow he previously made to senators to not do anything to limit vaccines, though that’s exactly what he has done. He falsely claimed the CDC was overrun by financial conflicts and inaccurately said that was why he fired all 17 members of a vaccine advisory panel. (His new appointees have their own financial conflicts.) He testified that he doesn’t know how many people died of Covid and whether the vaccines prevented Covid deaths: “The problem is they didn’t have the data.” But that data does exist. Kennedy demonstrated his slipperiness by agreeing that Trump ought to receive a Nobel prize for Operation Warp Speed, which developed the Covid vaccines, though he has previously said the Covid vaccine killed many people and was a “crime against humanity.” He told the senators that “there are no cuts to Medicaid.” But the Congressional Budget Office says that Medicaid provisions in Trump’s tax-and-spending bill would increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.8 million in 2034. And RFK Jr. hurled other falsehoods. None of this is new. Kennedy has long been shown to be a deranged liar and conspiracy theorist. He lied during his confirmation hearings to hide his not-secret agenda to annihilate the nation’s vaccine regimen. And now we can see what happens when a disingenuous crusader obsessed with crackpot notions is put in charge of the US public health system. Medical and scientific organizations—including the American Public Health Association, the American Society for Virology, and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society—have called for his dismissal. And numerous Democratic senators have done the same. House Democrats ought to do them one better and introduce articles of impeachment. > Do Americans want to Make Measles Great Again? Do they desire a wrecked public > health system and severe cuts in research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, > Parkinson’s, and other diseases? Do they want to be unprepared for the next > pandemic? Cabinet members can be impeached. This has happened twice in US history. William Belknap, who served as secretary of war for President Ulysses Grant, was impeached in 1876 for his involvement in what was called the trader post scandal (in which he was accused of receiving kickbacks on federal contracts). He was acquitted by the Senate. In 2024, House Republicans impeached Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for supposedly not complying with federal immigration law. The Democratic-controlled Senate dismissed the articles of impeachment, contending they did not “allege conduct that rises to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor.” Yes, there’s not much chance that articles of impeachment filed against Kennedy in the House, which is ruled by Trump’s cult, will get too far. But as Trump continues his authoritarian rampage and his administration implements profoundly harmful policies, the Ds need to acknowledge they are not in a conventional political battle and, most important, show some fight. Do Americans want to Make Measles Great Again? Do they desire a wrecked public health system and severe cuts in research for cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases? Do they want to be unprepared for the next pandemic? These are extreme times. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries a few days ago stated that he’d like to work with Trump on affordable housing legislation. (See Dumbass Comment of the Week below.) The desire for bipartisanship is a tough craving for some of these guys and gals to kick. But to earn the trust and votes of concerned Americans, Democrats must show that they understand the multiple crises at hand and that they are willing and able to engage in the trench warfare that the Trump threat demands. Targeting Trump’s worst henchmen (and henchwomen) is just one way they can do that. This can be a piece of the party’s 2026 strategy. The Democrats are aiming to regain the House and have hopes—though not as high—for the Senate. The most likely positive outcome for them at this point is a win in only the lower chamber. (I’m assuming nothing exceptional occurs to prevent or hinder the midterm elections—which is not an unsubstantial assumption.) Were the Democrats to triumph only in the House, their ability to thwart Trump’s assault on American democracy would increase but still be limited. They could mount investigations and issue subpoenas, but they could not pass legislation. And it’s important to keep in mind that much of what Trump has done in the past seven months to grab and consolidate power has not involved legislation. But the Democrats would hold the power of impeachment. And laying down a marker now for a Kennedy impeachment would be a serious flex. > What’s his impeachable offense? Endangering citizens ought to count, and lying > to Congress is indeed a felony. His lies are life-and-death matters. Why not move to impeach Trump? you ask. His authoritarian, unconstitutional abuses of power and arguably illegal moves could justify that. But the country has been through this before (twice!), and impeachment of a president is a direct defiance of the electorate’s will. Another Trump impeachment would allow an unpopular Trump to rally his supporters to oppose what he will call a new Democratic “hoax.” And his brown-nosing GOP lickspittles in the Senate would have his back. Also, a Democratic attempt to impeach Trump might make it seem the Democrats are as bent on revenge as Trump. Impeaching Kennedy would cast the spotlight on his policies—which are not supported by the public—and place pressure on the handful of Republicans in the House and Senate who still have some connection to reality and who realize that Kennedy is a menace. What’s his impeachable offense? Endangering citizens ought to count, and lying to Congress is indeed a felony. His lies are life-and-death matters. A handful of Republicans have begun to challenge Kennedy—or, that is, express concern about his perfidy. Talking about Kennedy’s recent decisions on vaccines, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical doctor who has long championed vaccination, said, “This is about children’s health. This is about how we protect the children of the United States of America. There’s allegations that that that health is being endangered. We need to try not presupposing anybody’s right or wrong. We got to get to the bottom of it.” For a Republican in the Trump era, that weaselly statement counts as criticism. The bottom is already evident. Kennedy is undermining vaccinations for children and for adults. Cassidy had the chance to stop this during Kennedy’s confirmation process, when he was a key vote. After much pondering, he chickened out, backed Kennedy, and assumed a huge chunk of responsibility for the mess Kennedy is creating. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also was grousing about Kennedy this week. She asserted that the firing of Monarez and the departure of other high-level disease experts at the CDC raise “considerable questions about what is happening within the agency. Americans must be able to fully trust that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rigorously adheres to science-based and data-driven principles when issuing policy directives. The removal of the director after such a short tenure appears to be evidence that politics are taking precedence over policy. I fully support…Cassidy’s call for congressional oversight and look forward to participating in the committee’s work.” She, too, voted to place Kennedy at HHS. No point in crying for the barn door to be closed now. The mad horseman of the apocalypse is on a breakneck gallop. Kennedy presents a clear and present danger. He is Exhibit No. 1 that the Trump regime is a fever swamp of fringe views, grift, extremism, and conspiracism. As the House Democrats prepare for the coming electoral battle against the forces of Trumpism, they will have to do more than highlight their gazillion policy proposals and proclaim their ideas for health care, the economy, retirement security, and you-name-it are the best. They must display fierceness—over and over. Moving to impeach Kennedy is one way to do this. And it has the benefit of being fully warranted.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. Toward the end of The Godfather, Michael Corleone, who has risen to become the head of the crime family his father built, orders the assassinations of the heads of rival mobs—brutal murders that occur as he attends the baptism of his sister’s baby. Also on his hit list is his sister’s husband, Carlo, who has betrayed the family. Before one of Michael’s lieutenants garrotes Carlo, Michael tells him, “Today I settle all family business.” In his second stint as president, Donald Trump has taken the same mob boss stance: settling scores with his perceived enemies. Since returning to the White House he has been on vengeance spree. He removed security details from former government officials who criticized him. He has launched or encouraged the initiation of sham investigations of former President Barack Obama, former CIA chief John Brennan, former FBI chief Jim Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former special counsel Jack Smith, and others—for having dared to investigate his 2016 campaign’s contacts with Russia (as Moscow attacked the election to assist Trump) or his attempt to steal the 2020 election. Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, his national director of intelligence, have yanked the security clearances of dozens of current and former national security officers, some who were involved in crafting the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia assaulted the 2016 campaign to help Trump, some who signed a letter in 2020 warning that stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop could be advancing Russian disinformation (which they were). Several intelligence analysts who had worked on Russia were dismissed. At the FBI, Director Kash Patel, a Trump toady, has fired veteran agents who were involved in the Russia and January 6 probes. The Justice Department has fired prosecutors who worked on the Capitol riot criminal cases. It is investigating two Trump antagonists—Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James—for alleged mortgage fraud. (Apparently, no Republican legislator or state official is being probed for this.) Trump also has gone after news organizations that have covered him critically and law firms that have ties to his political rivals.  > As I have been saying for almost a decade, Trump is obsessed with retribution. > In fact, if one were to list his psychological motivations, the top three > probably would be revenge, revenge, and revenge. And it’s not just a matter of settling old grudges. Trump has shitcanned current officials who challenged his pronouncements. This includes the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which released figures showing a low level of job creation) and the chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (which produced an assessment that questioned whether Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was a total success). Most recently, the FBI raided the home and office of John Bolton, who was Trump’s second national security adviser during his first presidency and who then became an ardent Trump critic. The above is a partial recap. (Don’t forget Trump in 2023 suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had opposed Trump on various policy matters, deserved to be executed.) None of this unexpected. For as I have been saying for almost a decade, Trump is obsessed with retribution. In fact, if one were to list his psychological motivations, the top three probably would be revenge, revenge, and revenge. Perhaps more so than money and greed—though it’s a close competition. During the 2016 campaign, I watched videos of speeches that Trump had delivered in the years before he entered politics on the keys to his success. He had a line he often repeated that went like this: I’m going to tell you the primary rule of business that business schools and successful execs won’t tell you—if someone screws you, you must screw them back harder. Here’s one example from a 2007 speech: It’s called “Get Even.” Get even. This isn’t your typical business speech. Get even. What this is a real business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ’em, but they teach you some stuff that’s a lot of bullshit. When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, the reason is, the reason is, not only, not only, because of the person that you’re after, but other people watch what’s happening. Other people see you or see you or see and they see how you react. Trump repeated this advice to crowds of thousands who paid good money to get the inside dope on how to become fabulously wealthy. (At least, it was cheaper than enrolling in Trump University!) After reviewing a load of these appearances, I wrote an article headlined, “Trump Is Completely Obsessed with Revenge.” I noted that revenge was “embedded in his DNA” and that his “favorite form of revenge is escalation—upping the ante, screwing ’em more than they screwed you.” And I observed that “constantly behaving vengefully is hardly a positive attribute” for a president. Unfortunately, this was a point that largely went uncovered during the circus of the 2016 campaign. In the years since, I have updated that piece again and again and again—including recently in this newsletter. (See here and here.) > “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.” – Alfred Hitchcock > > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2014 Yet this pathological aspect of Trump’s personality has not fully registered with the electorate. He presents as a tough guy. But a close look reveals he’s full of rage and resentment and seethes with that desire to get even and destroy his presumed foes. Is the cause his childhood, during which he was tormented by his tyrannical father? Does this stem from the initial refusal of the Manhattan elite to welcome into its ranks this brash and obnoxious self-promoter from Queens? Whatever the reason, Trump has repeatedly displayed this twisted nature of his soul. And as the GOP has become a cult, it has embraced this fundamental—and very un-Christian—feature. Trumpian revenge has become a rallying cry for all of MAGA. And his disciples have not been shy about this mission. In a 2023 book, Patel presented a list of the Deep State denizens that deserved investigation. It was a long roster of 60 names, including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Merrick Garland, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, as well as Republicans Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein, who together ran the Justice Department in the first Trump administration. (Barr did much to undercut the Russia investigation and undermine special counsel Robert Mueller, but he did not go along with Trump’s plot to steal the 2020 election.) Many on the list have already been targeted by the Trump gang. > Patel ought to have recused himself from any probe related to Bolton. Yet that > would have diminished his usefulness to Trump, for his job as FBI director is > to extract vengeance for Trump. Bolton was one of the so-called Deep Staters that Patel marked for revenge. And for Patel, it was personal. In his book, Patel recounts that when Trump wanted to hire Patel for the National Security Council staff, Bolton initially blocked the move. But Bolton was forced to concede and give Patel a job. Patel considered the position Bolton offered beneath him. He took it anyway and eventually gained the post he wanted—though, he claims, Bolton’s people kept trying to sabotage him. Clearly, Patel has his own beef with Bolton. It was absurd to appoint an FBI director with a hit list. (Patel notes in his book that his Deep State roster only covers past or present officials in the executive branch; the full list includes reporters, consultants, and members of Congress. Thus, the enemies in his sights must be in the triple digits.) And it was wrong for Patel to approve the investigation of Bolton, a personal nemesis of his, for alleged mishandling of classified information—an inquiry that led to this raid. Patel ought to have recused himself from any probe related to Bolton. Yet that would have diminished his usefulness to Trump, for his job as FBI director is to extract vengeance for Trump. In February 2024, Trump said, “I don’t care about the revenge thing…My revenge will be success.” That was a lie. Yes, one of many for Trump. But it’s a falsehood that illuminates his essence. He lusts for vengeance. He always has. And the success he has had on this front in only seven months in office is a warning that he will go much further. He must have his own list of all who have slighted or attempted to thwart him. And Trump is working his way through that call sheet. He will not stop on his own accord. As he gets away with each brazen act of revenge, he is emboldened and encouraged to continue his get-even crusade. I imagine other Democratic officials will be targeted, as will additional news organizations and, eventually, specific journalists. Who else? Donors who have stiffed him? Business competitors who bested him in deals? If you can imagine a particular person who might be a target, I am sure Trump has already etched that name on the slate. Trump, with the expanding power he is grabbing through assorted authoritarian measures, is bolstering his ability to make his past or present foes pay for their transgressions. He will use the FBI, the IRS, the CIA, the NSA, ICE, and perhaps the military to nail his adversaries. During the 2024 campaign, Trump exclaimed to supporters, “I am your retribution.” That was bullshit. He is his own retribution. It’s about him. In the Godfather, when Michael Corleone volunteers to kill a mob rival and a crooked police captain, he tells his brother Sonny, “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” For Trump, it’s not business; it’s strictly personal. When Trump was merely a reality TV celebrity, his braying about revenge was harmless. It was a schtick. Now that he is abusing the powers of the federal government to fulfill his revenge fantasies, we can see institutional guardrails crumbling. His revenge-a-thon may only be starting.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. I spent much of the summer of 1975 working on cars at my friend Jamie’s house. His older brother had a business renovating vintage sports coups—MGs, Triumphs, Jaguars—and Jamie and a group of his pals were the worker bees. The brother didn’t pay us—I was making money that summer pumping gas at an indie station—but every once in a while we earned a beer. Most of what we did was highly unskilled work: smoothing panels (by hand with sandpaper) and de-gunking disassembled motor parts. It was fun, and at night after quitting time there’d be the usual underage drinking in the garage behind the house or the basement rec room. On the evening of August 15, as we were finishing up, I suggested we find a radio. A somewhat new-to-the-scene musician named Bruce Springsteen was playing with his E Street Band at the legendary Bottom Line club in New York City, as part of a 10-concert showcase, and WNEW-FM was broadcasting this performance live. Springsteen was about to release his third album, Born To Run. His first two—Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle—had garnered critical acclaim and airplay on the hippest FM stations but weren’t commercial successes. Columbia had signed Springsteen as the new next-Dylan, but so far, he had not delivered. This new disc could be his last shot. A pre-release of the “Born to Run” single—an operatic, full-throttle rock anthem that incorporated the sounds of Phil Spector and R&B—had quickly become a favorite at WNEW and other taste-making outlets, and expectations were high for the new album, for which Columbia Records was spending a ton to promote. Yet when I said we should listen to this show, my gang—which included Deadheads and aficionados of middle-of-the-road arena rock—said, no dice. “He’s just greaser music,” one offered, which I found amusing, given that we spent our days reviving junkers—which seemed adjacent to the car-centric mythology at the center of Springsteen’s universe. I can’t recall how much of an argument I put forward, but I ended up alone in Jamie’s bedroom, sitting on the floor in the dark, with the stereo tuned to WNEW. I hung on every note, hook, and riff. Little did I realize that I—and many others listening at that moment—were forging what would be a lifelong relationship with this scruffy dude from Jersey. His Bottom Line performances and the Born to Run album launched Springsteen into rock ‘n’ roll stardom. Two months later, he was featured on the covers of Newsweek (“Making Of A Rock Star”) and Time (“Rock’s New Sensation”). Springsteen was on his way to becoming not just a rock luminary but a guiding light for millions. He was composing what would be for 50 years the soundtrack for their lives. His timing was propitious. After a decade or so of accompanying social upheaval, rock had become bloated. In the middle of the 1970s, it was no longer the music of peace-and-love-and-protest, as it had been in the 1960s. And much of the optimism that had accompanied the chaos of those years had evaporated. Watergate. The oil embargo and the end of cheap gas. The defeat of the United States in Vietnam. A mood of cynicism had started to take hold. Those of us who had been born at the end of the Baby Boom had missed out on the fun of the ’60s (Sex! Drugs! Revolution!). Though we had been too young for the party, we now were saddled with the morning-after hangover. After the cultural and political spasms of the previous decade, the nation was still at odds with itself and still with no direction home. With mainstream rock having become flabby, there were stirrings of a new sound: punk music. Lou Reed (formerly of the Velvet Underground), the New York Dolls, the Stooges, MC5, and others were kicking a new jam. Just as Springsteen-mania was hitting, Patti Smith, a beat-style poet who hooked up with garage-rock musicians, was finishing her pioneering Horses album, full of dark and mystical lyrics. At the core of this rock rebirth was a sense of alienation and anarchy. The nihilistic message of much of this music: It’s all shit. In England, the Sex Pistols were being slammed as a sign of civilization’s end. Soon the Ramones would show up singing about sniffing glue and beating up brats. The arrival of The Clash would add a dose of politics to this countercultural sneer. It was all powerful stuff—especially for anyone disaffected and wondering where the hell the world was heading. Springsteen offered something different: aspiration. His songs captured what had been the traditional essence of rock: yearning for more. That more could be more fun, more love, more freedom, more community. What had Elvis symbolized? The ability to break free of convention. Springsteen’s songs focused on a fundamental American ideal: the pursuit of happiness. That was the main moral of the myths he created about teenage racers, street toughs, and guitar-wielding gangs. The protagonist of Born to Run was desperately seeking to escape the “death trap” of a “runaway American dream” to find “that place” where he and his love could “walk in the sun.” You didn’t have to be a motorhead who could rebuild a Chevy to identify with this compelling sentiment. In fact, as he has acknowledged, Springsteen wasn’t one either. That was just the realm where he located his poetry and storytelling. More fundamental, he was tapping into a universal desire of young people as America was experiencing an unsettling backlash to the 1960s. He did this by embodying the spirit of early rock ‘n’ roll. During that Bottom Line performance, Springsteen played several covers, including “Then She Kissed Me” (a gender-flipped version of the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me”), “Having a Party” (Sam Cooke), and “Quarter to Three” (Gary “U.S.” Bonds). Each had been a hit for a Black musical act. And just as significant, his long-term relationship with saxophonist Clarence Clemons, a towering Black man, rendered the E Street Band a multiracial endeavor, a not-so-common lineup in mainstream rock. With such covers and original compositions that sought to capture the fire of his progenitors, Springsteen was honoring and building upon the past, not rejecting it—incorporating it into a modern retelling of American life. His mission was to show that music could be a positive and reaffirming spark in the lives of those who listened. As an ungainly and out-of-sorts teen reared in a home in which family love and dysfunction competed, rock had been his salvation. He believed it could be the same for others. Music was a way to cope with the disappointments, mysteries, and longings of life, as well as a source of exhilaration and delight. Most important, Springsteen grew up with us—or we with him. On the albums that followed Born to Run, he expanded his palette from songs that chronicled the exuberance of youth to tracks that confronted the responsibilities and obstacles of adulthood. It wasn’t always pretty. His most recent album of original songs explored the sense of loss experienced by anyone who makes it into their mid-70s. Without mawkish sentimentality, he sung about the friends he had lost—including each member of his first band—and the inevitability of the final farewell. Springsteen examined the hardships of life without ever giving up on hope. “And I believe in the promised land,” he would sing—for decades. Even though burdens and challenges only increase through the years, he constantly reminded his audience that it was crucial to seek, recognize, and celebrate moments of jubilation. One of his basic rules remained untouched by time: Rock is supposed to be joyous. He demonstrated this whenever he hit the stage with his fellow E Streeters for one of his marathon concerts. He was always a hard-working showman dedicated to inspiring and uplifting those who cheered and applauded before him. He wanted to give them something to hang on to. On the dark and moody Nebraska, his unplugged solo album, he put it simply: “Still at the end of every hard day / People find some reason to believe.” The camaraderie he displayed with his bandmates extended to the audience. For decades and through various stages of life—his and ours—he reassured us: We’re all in this together. As he and his audience matured, Springsteen became more attuned to the world outside the cosmos of his lyrics. He began addressing deindustrialization and the decline of blue-collar America (“Johnny 99,” “My Hometown, and “Youngstown”), the poor treatment of Vietnam veterans (“Born in the USA,” which was absurdly hailed by Ronald Reagan as a patriotic anthem), AIDS (“Streets of Philadelphia”), the cruelty of 1990s Republicans (“The Ghost of Tom Joad”), police violence (“41 Shots”), 9/11 (“The Rising”), and the Iraq War and the use of torture (“Long Walk Home”). On his 2006 album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen offered his interpretation of 13 folk songs, including several protest songs, that Pete Seeger, the activist and folk musician, had popularized. As a side gig, he became an articulate advocate for progressive American values. In May, during a show in Manchester, England, he introduced “Land of Hopes and Dream”—a quintessential Springsteen gospel-esque number that encourages optimism and faith—with a diatribe against Donald Trump: “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!” The Springsteen generation came of age at a time when decline loomed. America seemed to be slipping on the world stage. The post–World War II economy that had birthed a powerful and secure middle class was no longer so mighty, and the wildness and thrills of the 1960s were heading toward the conventions and cultural conservatism of Reaganism. Fifty years ago this month, Springsteen unveiled Born to Run and offered a different path, presenting a revived rock ethos that would forge a bond with his fans for decades. Springsteen maintained his relevance through all that time with deep respect for this relationship and with much discipline and mountains of hard work. He grabbed ahold of us long ago and took us on an exciting journey, as a ringleader and fellow seeker. It’s easy to poke fun at a certain demographic of white guys (and gals) for their devotion to Springsteen. But he mirrored our desires, transforming these notions into songs and stories that helped us better understand ourselves and our world, delivering both amusement and reflection. And he stayed with us, never letting go of that original dream, even though its contours inexorably changed as the years flew by. As an artist and an entertainer, he has been a faithful companion and a steady guide. He has held fast to that promise he presented half a century ago. He has given us a helluva ride.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. As the nation celebrates its 249th birthday, it’s hard not to wonder about the future of the American experiment. Two-and-a-half centuries ago, a collection of disparate colonies overcame regional differences to forge a nation. Sure, on slavery, the most divisive issue of the time, they punted. And the mighty rhetoric of freedom and liberty was deployed to the advantage of wealthy male landowners. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they banded together beneath a banner of ideals for a common cause. These days, the people in charge do not seem keen on bolstering our communality. President Trump and his MAGA cult are propelled more by animus and retribution—let’s crush the libs!—than by a desire to strengthen the bonds among the diverse citizens of this large nation. In a highly symbolic act that did not receive sufficient attention, Trump declined to attend the funeral of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who had been assassinated by a Trump supporter who opposed abortion rights and gay rights. The day of that memorial ceremony, Trump golfed with Republican leaders and posted on social media, “WHY ARE THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS ROOTING AGAINST AMERICA???” Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance spends much of his time snarkily trolling progressives and Democrats on social media. This pair evinces absolutely no interest in bridging gaps, healing wounds—much less in serving as role models of comity and decency. At every opportunity, they choose bombast and insult over discourse and debate. They seek to divide and conquer, and they define their politics by identifying and pummeling enemies. In one conversation I had with Barack Obama when he was president, he remarked, “I am the president of all Americans, including those who did not vote for me. I have to consider what’s best for them, even the ones who don’t like me.” That’s not how Trump and Vance see it. Trump has no recognition of the public interest, only his own self-interest. Which is how we ended up with the atrocious legislation passed by congressional Republicans this week. As we have heard repeatedly, it gives to the wealthy (handing them huge tax breaks) and robs from the poor (stripping millions of Americans of their health care coverage and slashing food assistance for children). Even Republicans who initially opposed these draconian provisions—including those who represent huge numbers of Medicaid recipients, as well as other constituents who will be severely harmed by this legislation—allowed themselves to be bullied by Trump and his MAGA henchmen into voting for it. The measure is estimated to expand the deficit by $3.3 trillion or so over 10 years (and maybe more). It will pour $100 billion into ICE and border enforcement, bolstering the burgeoning police state that the Trump administration is creating to deport law-abiding and hard-working residents. (For comparison’s sake, the annual FBI budget is $11.4 billion.) > The message to many Americans is this: We will pick your pocket to deport > people who work the jobs you’d rather not. Besides breathtaking cruelty, this bill features an absurd internal logic. Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants must be rounded up for the sake of American prosperity. Yet to pay for this operation, he and his Republican minions will decrease after-tax income for some Americans within the lower 20 percent and snatch health insurance from millions—and cause fiscal instability. Moreover, expelling millions of migrants will likely trigger a labor shortage that will spur a rise in prices. The message to many Americans is this: We will pick your pocket to deport people who work the jobs you’d rather not. In a much-noticed social media post, Vance declared that the impact of the cuts in Medicaid and nutrition assistance of the bill were “immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.” As if persecuting immigrants will offset the human suffering this bill yields. Try telling that to a parent whose child goes hungry or an adult child whose parent loses his or her care for dementia. Or a low-income family that will have to get by with several hundred dollars less a year. The gleeful malice of the past few months has been nauseating. Trump, Elon Musk, and their crew relished demolishing USAID, not pausing for a nanosecond to consider the dire consequences. A new study concludes that from 2001 to 2021 USAID programs prevented 92 million deaths in 133 nations. This included 25 million deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, 11 million from diarrhea diseases, 8 million from malaria, and 5 million from tuberculosis. The study forecasts that the annihilation of USAID will lead to 14 million deaths in the next five years. Yet Trump, Musk, and others have cheered the demise of this agency. How can plutocrats be so mean? The USAID budget last year was a mere 0.3 percent of the total federal budget. Down the line, Trump and his MAGA band have expressed little concern or empathy for those clobbered by their vengeful policies. They are smashing the scientific research infrastructure of the nation and assaulting universities. They are demonizing public servants. They are eviscerating laws that protect our water and air—the common resources we share—and sacrificing our children’s future by unplugging programs that address climate change. All while recklessly vilifying their fellow Americans who disagree with these moves as enemies of the nation. Hatred is the currency of their realm—and crypto is the currency of their corruption. This is a far cry from the originators of the union who were forced to overcome differences to achieve independence and place America, with all its ills, on the path to becoming one of the most dynamic forces in human history. So on July 4, 2025, we can celebrate the imperfect start of our national enterprise, despite the dark turn it has taken. As we do so—and as we contend with the discouraging and disturbing developments of the moment—we ought to keep in mind a fundamental fact: There are more of us than them. More Americans reject the cruelty of Trump’s mass deportation crusade than accept it. More Americans oppose the profoundly unfair billionaires-enriching-Medicaid-slashing-deficit-busting tax-and-spending mega-bill than embrace it. More Americans disdain the Trump presidency than hail it. The question at hand, all these years after Thomas Jefferson provided the original pitch deck for American democracy, is whether the majority can triumph. Can it overcome institutional barriers, disinformation, and distraction and find a path toward responsible governance that addresses the shared interests and values of the citizenry? We all may have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it demands great work—eternal vigilance, you might say—to protect that right so we all can put it to good use. Enjoy your burgers, hot dogs, tofu sausages, and ice cream.