Mike Lee and the Broken Brains of MAGA
Plus: Trump declares war on blue cities
This weekend’s split screen: Mass protests across the country; a quiet, cringey, low-energy Trump parade; war in the Mideast; and a horrific reminder of America’s rising political violence.
Happy Monday.
The last time we spoke of the “broken brains of MAGA”, Donald Trump had just been endorsed by a man with brain worms, who once dumped a dead baby bear in Central Park. As you know, it got worse.
There’s a lively, and quite interesting, debate about whether Donald Trump has befouled American culture, or simply revealed the ugliness that was always there, but lay beneath the surface. I’m not going to try to resolve that question today.
But this much is clear: Trump has given permission to the broken minds of MAGA to give full scope to their loathsomeness. Last week, we saw the definitive Rorschach Test for the world's worst human beings.
Unfortunately, we now have those Rorschach tests every damn day; and the results are not edifying.
As a constituent of Ron Johnson, I hesitate to cast aspersions on the brokenness of any other state’s senators. And the competition is fierce among the candidates for worst of the worst.
But, at least for today, I ask you to consider Mike Lee, the senior Republican senator from Utah. Over the weekend, as the nation reeled from the targeted assassinations of Democratic legislators in Minnesota, Lee betook himself to Xitter to troll the opposition. By Sunday morning, it was clear that the shooter was a Trump-supporting MAGA lunatic, who had a manifesto and a list of dozens of Democrats and pro-choice activists that he wanted to kill. One of Vance Boelter’ s best friends told CNN on Saturday that “Boelter was a conservative who voted for President Donald Trump and was strongly against abortion rights.” He was also a fan of Alex Jones’s InfoWars. [After a lengthy manhunt, Boelter was arrested last night.]
But on Sunday this is what Senator Lee posted, suggesting — without even a scintilla of evidence that it was true — that the assassin was a Marxist.
He quickly followed it up with a bizarre post that mocked (and misspelled the name of) Minnesota’s governor Tim Walz.1
WTF, doesn’t even begin to cover this.
"This is an honest to god U.S. senator who either has had his brain broken by the internet or is posturing as such to appeal to the most dishonest, deranged, and/or stupid people online,” wrote Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America.
“What the hell is Mike Lee doing? Has he completely lost it?” conservative commentator Brad Polumbo wrote on X. “Even for Mike Lee, this is beyond disgusting,” Norman Ornstein wrote. “Disinformation, beneath contempt.”
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As hard as it may be to believe now, Mike Lee was not always the depraved asshole on display this weekend.
Last year, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta wrote a lengthy profile that chronicled how Lee had descended from a respected constitutionalist to a “based” internet troll. Lee, who was once openly worried about Trump’s autocratic tendencies, transformed himself into something almost unrecognizable: an eager confederate of Trump’s attacks on democracy, and a cringey lickspittle for the convicted felon in the Oval Office.
The senator had begun to view Trump as something greater than a president. He was an avatar of masculinity and individuality, a middle finger to the governing class that had shown insurgents like Lee the same disrespect it had shown Trump. Lee was more than smitten; he was spellbound. And it was under that spell that he turned his back on American democracy.
Along the way, Mike Lee also transmogrified into a wooly, online wannabe edgelord:
To give a sense of the senator’s new online persona: During one stretch this summer, he used the vulgar sexual phrase raw dogging to describe Mormons’ approach to life; amplified a baseless far-right rumor that Biden was having a medical emergency aboard Air Force One; earned nearly 10 million views by posting a debunked video that purported to show a “badass” Trump golfing one day after he was shot…
Since then? This weekend suggests how badly his brain — and his conscience — have been melted by Trumpism.
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But this isn’t really mysterious is it? The source of all of this depravity is not a puzzle.
On Sunday, Trump was asked about the assassinations and whether he planned to call Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz. That would have been a bare-minimum courtesy; a moment of decency in the midst of a tragedy and crisis.
"Well, it's a terrible thing. I think he's a terrible governor. I think he's a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people too," the president said.
This is who he is.
Writing about the weekend’s tragedies, Brian Klaas reminds us:
From the beginning of his first campaign for president, Trump encouraged supporters to beat up hecklers at his rallies, saying he’d cover their legal bills if they “knock the crap” out of them. He floated the ideas of shooting looters, shooting shoplifters, and shooting migrants crossing the border. Trump also targeted the press, sharing a variety of violent memes involving specific outlets. He endorsed Greg Gianforte, now the governor of Montana, specifically because he violently attacked a reporter. (“Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type,” Trump said, to cheers.) And, at the end of his first term, Trump’s speech on the National Mall on January 6 inflamed an already tense environment, culminating in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol building.
Trump’s rhetorical incitements to violence extend to politicians too. He has called his political opponents “human scum.” Even more worrying are Trump’s endorsements of violence against specific Democrats. In 2016, he suggested that maybe there was something that “Second Amendment people” could do to deal with Hillary Clinton. In October 2022, when a QAnon disciple who had peddled Trump’s lies about the 2020 election attempted to assassinate then–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi—and fractured the skull of her husband, Paul, with a hammer—Trump made light of the incident. (His son Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo on Instagram of a hammer and a pair of underwear like the ones Paul Pelosi had been wearing during the attempted murder, with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”) Less than a year later, Trump openly mused that Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be killed.
When such language becomes normalized, deranged individuals may interpret rhetoric as marching orders. In 2018, Cesar Sayoc, a die-hard Trump supporter, mailed 16 pipe bombs to people who frequently appeared as targets in Trump’s tweets. (Nobody died, but only because Sayoc wasn’t skilled at making bombs.) In 2020, Trump tweeted that people should “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” in response to its COVID policies. Thirteen days later, armed protesters entered the state capitol building. A right-wing plot to kidnap the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was narrowly foiled months later.
Trump declares war on blue cities
In a more rational universe, this could be written off as the ravings of an addled crank. But last night’s bizarre presidential post (apologies for the redundancy) was both revealing and dangerous.
ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History," Trump wrote.
"In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens."
Context matters. Trump’s “order” comes in the wake of massive protests, and his own extraordinary Mother of All TACOs climbdown on workplace raids. Via the Wapo:
At the same time, the Trump administration has directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels , after Trump expressed alarm about the impact aggressive enforcement is having on those industries….
Exit take: Trump no longer bothers to pretend that immigration enforcement is anything but selective — and targeted at Democratic states and cities. The partisanship (and the revenge) is the point.
This used to be called “communism”
To save its takeover of U.S. Steel, Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to an unusual arrangement, granting the White House a “golden share” that gives the government an extraordinary amount of influence over a U.S. company.
New details of the agreement show that the structure would give President Trump and his successors a permanent stake in U.S. Steel, significant sway over its board and veto power over a wide array of company actions, an arrangement that could change the nature of foreign investment in the United States.
The MAGA split over Israel-Iran is very real
Israel-Iran war spotlights MAGA divide - The Hill
Figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have argued voters backed Trump because he would not involve the nation in foreign conflicts.
Carlson, in his morning newsletter Friday, said Trump is “complicit” in Israel’s attack on Iran and warned the escalating conflict between the two nations could lead the U.S. into war.
“What happens next will define Donald Trump’s presidency,” Carlson wrote.
Other MAGA figures, such as Fox News host Mark Levin, have advocated for a strong response to Iran, which hawkish figures in the MAGA movement see as a grave threat to the security of the U.S. and its key ally, Israel.
All of this puts Trump at a potential crossroads about how to proceed.
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Israel-Iran conflict splits Trump's MAGA backers - NBC
Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, polled his 5 million X followers on the question of whether America should “get involved in Israel’s war against Iran.” By Friday afternoon, the poll showed more than 350,000 votes, with an overwhelming proportion in the “No” column.
When Kirk read Rubio’s statement on the strikes during a podcast Thursday night, Jack Posobiec, a right-wing activist popular with the MAGA audience, interjected that it was “not a supportive statement at all.” Earlier Thursday, before the strikes, Posobiec had warned on X that a “direct strike on Iran right now would disastrously split the Trump coalition.”
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MAGA warns Trump of "massive schism" over Israeli strikes on Iran - Axios
Some of Trump's popularity can be traced back to his early promises to keep out the U.S. out of Middle Eastern quagmires and advocate solely for Americans interests. A strike on Iran, supporters argue, risks undermining one of his most fundamental promises: "No new wars."
Monday dog
Wolf in the woods. (Actually, Auggie.)
On Saturday, Lee bit hard on right-wing media attempts to link the killer to Walz and the left. He did not wait for the actual facts to catch up with his hot take:
The Lee example is particularly telling, in that he feels no urge or responsibility to try to curb any of the ginned-up anger and hostility and grievance-based rage that the loons on the right might direct, even are directing now, toward his colleagues and peers on the left. Yet he also exhibits absolutely no fear at all of any left-wing violence against him personally.
Sometimes what people don't say is more telling that what they do say. This is one of those moments. The far right is the problem, and they are officially out of control. Somebody try to tell us with a straight face that the real concern in America is those immigrants and protesters and others on the left who demonstrate in the name of peace and freedom, while those American-born on the right who mock and threaten them remain silent when and after the guns are trained on their opponents.
Mike Lee … another brave Red Cap who didn’t serve in the military.