And I think it’s also because this is happening at the same time that they were waging war at home on their own residents and citizens, many of whom are also children, right? You know, the assault on Minneapolis was understood as an assault on children. In a lot of ways we have that little kid with his little bunny ears being hauled off to a detention center. We have that woman holding up a baby for the cameras in El Paso. And we’re beginning to see that the racist and fascistic policies of the Trump administration harm children. And I think that is getting through to people. There’s serious evidence I’ve seen that especially some Republican-voting women are starting to feel awfully queasy about inflicting so much death and destruction on children.
really interesting. There is definitely a through line there. And the other
through line, of course, is unshackled state violence, right? And I want to
float an actual polling number as well. G. Elliott Morris, the data analyst,
averaged together a bunch of polls on Iran—he took the high-quality ones—and
found that an average of only 38 percent approve of the Iran war or Trump’s
handling of it. Those are bad numbers. And so you take that along with this
news about the school, and this is going badly for them politically.
And so if you step back
and keep that in your head and then listen to Karoline Leavitt go full cult the
way she does over and over, you can kind of see what’s really going on there,
right?
They are going full cult
in order to drown out the bad news. That’s what I think is going on as well.
Both to keep it from Dear Leader’s ears, obviously, but also to drown it out in
the public realm. If Trump is just eternally strong and invulnerable and
invincible, then there can’t be bad news by definition, right?
38 percent is such a fascinating number, right? Because that’s the number that
for a decade now we know is basically the MAGA die-hards—the people that really
are in the cult, the people that really will never, ever, ever admit that Trump
is wrong about anything. 38 is where he fell after the Charlottesville riots in
2017. 38 was kind of where he fell during the worst parts of COVID. 38 percent
is where he landed after January 6th. Those are the people that are in the
cult—American fascists who will never change.
And what he needs is a
little bit more than that. But the fact that they’re doing only base
management, that they’re strictly trying to remind their base: remember, if you
admit that Trump did something wrong, the liberals were right, and we can never
allow that—that says to me that they’re afraid they can’t even keep that 38
percent.
And on this, they may not be wrong. Because one of the things that
allowed Trump to win in the first place was that he really held himself out as
absolution for all the people that voted for George W. Bush and had residual
resentment, guilt, and shame over what happened there. Trump was a different
kind of Republican, so they could trust that he was never going to shame them
the way Bush did with the Iraq War. And that’s what he’s doing now—doing
exactly the same thing, except more ham-fistedly and stupidly.
Sargent: Yeah.
Well, the base management element is really interesting. If I understand you
correctly, you’re basically saying that when Karoline Leavitt goes out there
and says MAGA is what Trump says it is, she’s saying to the base: don’t let the
liberals be right.
Marcotte: Yeah.
I think at the end of the day, the most important psychology that keeps these
people on board is just that admitting that Trump is bad or wrong or a failure
is admitting that all those people who for a decade have been telling you that
you made a mistake were right. And what’s weird is the longer this drags on,
the harder it is for them to let go without some kind of off-ramp. And I will
say, if there ever was an off-ramp, I do kind of think the Iran war might be
it—because again, they don’t want another Bush. Trump ran pretty explicitly the
first time as: I am not another Bush. He made fun of the Bush that was in the
race, and here he is, another Bush.
Sargent: All
other Republicans are losers. That’s the crux, right?
Marcotte: Yeah.
So he lied to them pretty directly. And I think if they want to take it, they
can use it as their way out—which is to say, well, I thought I was voting for
no more wars, and I was lied to.
Sargent: Yeah.
And she’s trying to say you can’t do that—Leavitt is trying to say that. So we
also just learned that the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, which caps a
stretch in which job creation was significantly worse on Trump’s watch than on
his predecessor’s watch. Trump’s polling on the economy has been absolutely
brutal of late. The tariffs are completely underwater and his general economic
approval is also completely underwater. So if you take that along with the 38
percent who support the Iran war, you’re looking at a presidency that’s on very
shaky ground, aren’t you?
Marcotte: And
that’s before the midterms, right? I think we need to understand that if
Democrats win both the House and the Senate, Trump is in very real danger. For
one thing, the thing he’s been trying to avoid for a year now—which is the full
release of the Epstein files—is coming down on him. And all sorts of other
accountability could be in play.
economic approval is in terrible shape. He’s losing ground on national security
and his immigration numbers are upside down. Harry Enten of CNN just put out
new numbers showing that Trump has lost 20 points on net approval on
immigration in the last year or so. You’ve got something that may be
unprecedented, in which a Republican president is losing ground and throwing
away the traditional Republican advantage on three different things—the
economy, immigration, and national security. You’ve got all this bad news
coming out. And so to what degree do you think that’s linked directly to these
kinds of displays of obsequious cultishness from Leavitt?
Marcotte: There
are several layers to it. One layer is that she just wants to make Trump feel
better, right? Then there’s the other dimension, which is that he is physically
in decline and all of MAGA world knows that they are looking at a world beyond
Trump—after he’s passed from the scene, maybe passed from this earth as well.
And so I think you really can see the psychology of MAGA sort of in the raw
when they go out there and hail his greatness the way they do at moments like
this. What’s your basic thought on all of it?
agree that her first and foremost motivation is making her boss feel good so
she keeps her job. I would love to like look inside her head and see if she
actually thinks it makes a difference to say these obsequious, like laughable
things — if she thinks she’s actually persuading anybody, or if it’s just
Trump, her boss, like managing her boss’s feelings, because it might just be
that.
any other tools — I think that is probably a piece of this. Like, the
traditional tools that MAGA has used to sort of bamboozle a lot of people in
the past are falling apart on them. And I don’t think that they know what to
do.
lot of people who are behaving like they don’t know what to do. They don’t know
what’s going to happen next. They’re at the whims of a mercurial boss who may
not be remembering super well what he said one minute to the next. And I think
that there is no plan here. I think that they’re just kind of winging it in the
most like ridiculous way.
It makes me happy because
I don’t think that that’s a sustainable plan, but I don’t know that there’s
much more to it. I definitely don’t think Karoline Leavitt is going out there
and talking to cameras like she’s Baghdad Bob, because she thinks that that’s
going to turn the tide in any way.
I don’t think she thinks she’s going to move the middle, but a lot of this is
base management. And just, can you wrap up sort of your thoughts on that? Like,
the base is being bombarded by a lot of mixed signaling.
propaganda bubble to some degree, but then like on the outer edges of the MAGA
base, you’re going to see people who get pretty damn upset about the kid
getting thrown into detention with the child’s hat, and they’re going to get pretty
damn upset about people getting shot in their cars on the street by Stephen
Miller’s paramilitary goons, and pretty damn upset about the bombing of a
school.
So it’s almost like going
out and then saying to those people, this man is invincible and perfect, is
like another insult, but they don’t see it that way. You know what I mean?
And that’s where it
breaks down for me. If you’re trying to hold MAGA together, why are you telling
the people who are going to be upset by these horrors that this man is, you
know, of unquestionable greatness? I don’t get it.
Marcotte: It’s
foolish. I would say, like, I watch Fox News sometimes, and other right-wing
propagandists who are much more effective at this stuff, like Tucker
Carlson or Candace Owens, or the people that the MAGA base actually is putting
their trust in more and more every day. And that’s not how they play this.
Like, when Trump is fucking up and they can’t defend it, their strategy is to
say the left is worse, the left is dangerous, the left is chaotic, the left is
demonic, and they’re the bad guys.You know, the problem with Renee Good and Alex Pretti getting shot is that these people won’t stay in their houses,
that they won’t stop fussing with ICE. The problem is the protesters are
violent. The problem is blah, blah, blah.
effective strategy. And then you look at the White House themselves, and they
have abandoned what has traditionally been their most effective strategy of
distraction and like deflection, and instead are just saying, “Shut up, Trump
can’t do anything wrong.” And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these people are so deep
in the cult that there’s just not even going to be defectors.
But traditionally, even in like cult psychology, you find
that a lot of people, when they’re told to shut up and just obey the cult
leader, maybe they do, because they don’t have any other choice when they’re in
an actual cult, when they can’t leave. But they actually do question, and they
do resist, and they do internally field out. And the thing with MAGA voters is they don’t have
nearly as many constraints on their ability to leave as somebody who’s
actually like living in Jonestown, you know?
Sargent: Well,
yeah. And we should probably clarify that none of this necessarily means
Democrats win the House. Obviously they are favored for the House pretty
clearly right now, but Trump could rehabilitate himself. I mean, I think
stranger things have happened. You could see him reaching some sort of point in
this war pretty soon where he essentially declares victory in some way that’s
not completely nuts. You could see something of an economic rebound. Maybe you
could see them dial back the paramilitary executions of Americans in U.S.
cities.
So you could kind of see
him come back a little bit. Right. And you could see the House being way more
contested than it looks right now. I think that’s all possible. But right now
it seems like his presidency is in some trouble. What are your final thoughts
on that?
no, I agree. Like, the firing of Noem is a good leading indicator, right? They
had a no-scalps policy in the White House because they didn’t want to give
their enemies the satisfaction. And now they have decided that they have to
sort of take some of the blame for these political failures, stick it on
somebody, and throw overboard, and hope that that helps. Shows that they are
running out of options.
like, they could rebound. I wouldn’t just say this is a done deal. My biggest
fear is that Trump just pulls out of Iran, declares victory, and hopes that
nobody notices the fallout, which is totally possible because Americans don’t pay
a ton of attention to foreign policy.
But at this point in
time, they aren’t doing very well. I don’t think that they have any idea of how
to make things better. So if things improve, it might just be by luck for them.
But I don’t know that we’re looking at people that know how to fix the shit
show they’ve gotten themselves into.
Sargent: Right.
They are certainly not acting as if they are in the middle of a shit show, and
they are in the middle of a shit show. It’s just obvious to the rest of the
world. Amanda Marcotte, wonderful to talk to you as always. Thank you so much
for coming on.
Marcotte: Thanks
for having me.
