The Trump Outrages That Matter Most
In recent days, as President Trump neared the three-hundred-day mark of his second term, he made what amounted to a royal advance across Asia, brokering trade deals and lounging in gilded palaces. In South Korea, he was given a replica of an ancient gold crown. “I would like to wear it now,” he said, just eleven days after millions of Americans gathered to protest his rise to near-monarchical powers, at hundreds of No Kings rallies across the country. The South Koreans certainly knew their brand. During his trip, Trump also announced, via a social media post, the resumption of nuclear testing for the first time in decades; unleashed another deadly strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in what appears to be an undeclared war for regime change in Venezuela; threatened, during a political pep rally in front of the supposedly apolitical U.S. military, to send active-duty troops into American cities; and admitted that he would “like” to remain in office for a third term before reluctantly acknowledging the Constitution’s strict prohibition of this.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the US government remained paralyzed for the fourth straight week, the result of an impasse with congressional Democrats that Trump has apparently done nothing to resolve – even as thousands of workers are left without pay. In other words, it was just another week in the Trump era. The new normal is about forgetting yesterday’s scandals to make way for tomorrow’s scandals in our overcrowded brains. Remember when Trump imposed new punitive tariffs on Canada because he got angry over a TV ad? When he demanded that the Justice Department pay him more than two hundred million dollars in compensation for the costs he incurred following the Biden administration’s decision to investigate him? When he released an AI-generated video showing him throwing poop at Americans protesting him? This was the case last week. And last week, in the Trump era, might as well have been an eternity ago. The black hole in which our previous outrage resides is vast.
That’s why I was struck by the visceral and lasting anger that resulted from Trump’s decision to raze the East Wing of the White House without even a single public hearing or permit. One senior Republican, a former Trump voter, told me it was “disgusting” and “sick.” Polls show large bipartisan majorities oppose the demolition. It’s been over a week and people are still raving about it. Has something finally broken through? Is this still possible?
At a dinner I attended earlier this week, a question about the worst thing that had happened since Trump returned to the White House elicited a series of chilling responses, only one of which was the demolition of the East Wing. (Can you imagine if a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom woke up one morning and ordered a wing of Buckingham Palace to be destroyed, someone said.) It was the range of responses that seemed most revealing to me – from Trump’s politicization of the military and the Justice Department to the unleashing of a new power. MAGA culture celebrating cruelty.
I decided to continue the conversation by asking a few dozen smart people to share their thoughts on the most disruptive, significant, or truly surprising events of the last few months. The responses poured in – thoughtful, anguished, insightful responses that reminded me that there is value in naming the problem, even if nothing, at the moment, can be done to stop it. It is a response, however imperfect, to the feeling of being overwhelmed by events to take a minute to pause and evaluate them, to reflect on what really matters and what could last from the overwhelming and undeniably historic moment we are living through.
Some of my correspondents offered long lists of shocking events. Gary Bass, professor of global politics at Princeton, cited seventeen examples “that come to mind,” ranging from “forgiving the January 6 insurrectionists” to “working to rig the election so this nightmare never ends.” Others focused on a telling individual moment. Jake Sullivan, who served as national security adviser in the Biden administration, said it was the Paul, Weiss law firm’s early capitulation to Trump’s demands that set off “alarm bells.” It was, he added, “the canary in the coal mine.” Jill Lepore, a New Yorkers colleague who is the Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard and Professor of Law at Harvard Law, wrote that she was “genuinely surprised when asked whether it was his duty to uphold the Constitution, he replied, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s a surprising thing to say, given that the oath he took twice is to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” She noted, “It seems like a small thing, in a way, but I was struck by the glimmer of honesty there, a sort of shrug that seemed to say, ‘Hey, no, who knows.’ »
