Politics

I heard something on NPR yesterday that stopped me cold. They were covering what might shake out to be a competitive congressional race in a reliably red Tennessee district, talking to Trump supporters. One voter said this—and I'm quoting directly here: "I like to get away from the issues of transgenderism and homosexuality, and I like somebody that's backing the way Trump's got the country going."

It's not that these people are stupid. Just the opposite. It's that they've learned the same trick flat earthers perfected years ago: when the evidence doesn't support your position, change what the position is about.

When I was a teenager, my dad handed me a tattered copy of A.E. Hotchner's "The Unfinished Odyssey." It was a dispassionate portrait of Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign. Better yet, it was a window into what actual public service looks like when it's driven by something other than ego, ambition, or the desperate need to be the smartest guy in the room.

RFK cared about people. His son? He's convinced himself that his opinions matter because he's brilliant, not because his last name opens doors that would remain permanently locked for anyone else. That's not confidence—that's pathology.

Somewhere around the third or fourth time I watched a Nobel Prize-winning economist appear on CNN to explain why Donald Trump's tariff scheme was economically illiterate, I realized we were all living in a Monty Python reality where punch lines have metastasized into policy.

Two words would have sufficed: He's wrong. Two more for good measure: That's crazy.

But no. Instead, we got fifteen minutes of someone with a Zoom background that looks like the Alexandria Library, surrounded by spines bearing names like Keynes and Hayek, launching into a dissertation about "comparative advantage theory" and "supply chain elasticity" that would put a graduate seminar to sleep...

Donald Trump authorized Qatar's air force to build a military facility on U.S. soil. A foreign military. On American soil. The same Qatar that Trump himself called "a funder of terrorism at a very high level." And nobody's talking about it.

While cable news obsesses over the latest Trump tweet or cabinet appointment, a genuine constitutional crisis is unfolding in plain sight. The Commander-in-Chief has granted a foreign military—from a nation with documented ties to terrorist organizations—the right to establish permanent infrastructure on American territory.

The Justice Department has become the personal grievance law firm of the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi has unleashed the full prosecutorial power of the federal government against Trump's enemies list. Not suspected criminals. Not threats to national security. Trump's enemies.

This isn't law enforcement. This is political persecution with a badge. And it's happening right now, in broad daylight, with the full blessing of an Attorney General who once took a $25,000 campaign contribution from Trump and mysteriously dropped an investigation into Trump University.

Republicans will stand by their people through scandals that would make a mafia don blush, while Democrats can't wait to throw their own overboard at the first whiff of impropriety. The greatest currency in politics is unwavering loyalty, and the Republicans have cornered the market.

George Santos fabricated his entire resume, lied about everything from his education to his grandmother's Holocaust survival, and committed campaign finance fraud. Republicans kept him in office for nearly a year. Bob Menendez got indicted, and Democrats immediately called for his resignation.