The New Cruelty is Getting Old
Plus; Trump melts down over Epstein
The Senate goes full DOGE; the progressive hipster revolution has been postponed; and Trump melts down over his failure to make the Epstein Files vanish, and threatens to fire the Fed Chair.
Happy Wednesday.
The Same Old Cruelty
Several years ago, when we were all more innocent and shockable, I wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard, entitled “The New Cruelty.”
In the movie L.A. Story, the character played by Chevy Chase goes to a hyper-fashionable restaurant named, appropriately enough, L’Idiot.
He is greeted by the maitre d’, played by Patrick Stewart, who asks, ‘Your usual table?”
“No,” Chase’s character responds, “I’d like a good one this time.”
“I’m sorry, that is impossible,” Stewart’s character replies.
“Part of the new cruelty?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Although L.A. Story was released in 1991, it has supplied us with an apt rubric for our own times; the New Cruelty is the Trumpian successor to the New Deal and Great Society.
I was reminded of it watching the viral video of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, defend the policy of separating children from their mothers and fathers at the border…
Appearing on Fox News, Lewandowski mocked a story about a 10-year-old with Down syndrome being separated from her parents. “Wahh, wahh,” Lewandowski cracked, making “a dismissive trombone-like sound effect,” as the Washington Post described it.
The reaction to Lewandowski’s crassness was justifiably outraged. “There is no low to which this coward Corey Lewandowski won’t sink,” tweeted Megyn Kelly (!), “This man should not be afforded a national platform to spew his hate.”
And, indeed, Lewandowski seems especially vile in an era in which vileness increasingly appears to be a career path. But was his insensitive gibe off-message? Or was it simply a cruder version of the New Cruelty that has displaced whatever was left of “compassionate conservativism.”
Ah simpler times. Because these days Lewandowski would barely merit a shrug.
Indeed, he is now the Renfield for his surgically enhanced buddy Kristi Noem, who heads the Department of Homeland Security. A few days ago, Noem’s department actually put out this social media post.
This is real. This is not satire. It is not a parody. This is on the official DHS X-account. This is your tax dollars at work.
Pause for a moment to consider the thought (sic) process that resulted in this bit of dark MAGA porn. Imagine the sniggering snorts of Stephen Miller, Tom, Homan, and Kristi Noem (perhaps with Corey Lewandowski smirking over her shoulder), as they contemplated their handiwork and said, Well done, my good and faithful vampires.
And, oy, Wisconsin, a state once known for solons of distinction and seriousness, look what you have now.1 ICYMI, this was the Deep Thought shared by Representative Derrick Van Orden during the debate over BBB:
Van Orden later deleted it. But ponder again the culture that spawns such a sixth-grade sadist… and puts him in Congress.
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But all of this is merely prologue to this story: “The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food.”
Around the world, children are starving to death because of aid cuts. But The Trump Administration is about to set fire to enough food to feed about 1.5 million children for a week. Via The Atlantic (Gift link):
Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.
Meanwhile: Via the NYT: “For Trump, Domestic Adversaries Are Not Just Wrong, They Are ‘Evil’ —”The president’s vilification of political opponents and journalists seeds the ground for threats of prosecution, imprisonment and deportation unlike any modern president has made.” (Gift link.)
Trump’s Epstein Meltdown
Try as he might, Trump has not been able to exorcise the demons from his past, or make the Epstein Files disappear. Despite bringing some influencers to heel (more about that below), dissenters from the fringes continue to rattle the cage. Lauren Boebert called for the creation of a special counsel to look into the matter.
But Trump’s problems extend far beyond Boebert.
House Speaker Mike Johnson seemed to break with the Bondi-coverup. “I’m for transparency. We should put everything out there and let the people decide,” Johnson said. “Pam Bondi needs to come forward and explain it to the American people. Let’s get this thing resolved.”
Even more ominously, CNN’s new poll found that 50% of the public said they were “dissatisfied” with how Trump has handled the release of the Epstein files.
But the Killer Number? Only 3% said they were “satisfied” with how Trump’s administration has gone about releasing information on Epstein.
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If you don’t think Trump is freaked out by all of this, consider what just happened this morning: Trump put out a stunning Truth Social post branding the entire Epstein story — pushed by his own team for years — a “hoax,” and declared that he doesn’t want the support of “weaklings” who still believe “this bullshit.”
“Scams and Hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at – It’s all they have – They are no good at governing, no good at policy, and no good at picking winning candidates,” Trump said.
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker. They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!”
Here’s the whole feculent mess:
Exit take. Yeah, this isn’t going away.
I had some thoughts..
'Jesus, what a pathetic toady': MAGA influencer gets hit by brutal critique - Raw Story. I talked about the Epstein story on Morning Joe, yesterday.
"Let's start with with Charlie Kirk," Sykes said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I mean, Jesus, you know, what a pathetic toady… being able to flip-flopping that quickly."
"I mean, you have the MAGA influencers… the folks like Laura Ingraham and Charlie Kirk, and then you have the actual base, and they're they're trying to exercise this amazing Jedi mind trick, like, 'No, we didn't say anything that we said, you don't believe anything, you believe all of those conspiracy theories that we have been force feeding you were completely false.'"
The episode will be a test of these influencers' sway over Trump's base, Sykes said.
Wednesday dogs
Eli was up for another road trip.
And yes, I am old enough to remember when Wisconsin was represented in Congress by such worthies as Henry Reuss, Clement Zablocki, Robert Kastenmeier, Steve Gunderson, Reed Ribble, David Obey, and Paul Ryan.
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
And this administration - and country, apparently - is chock full of very limited people.
Trump doesn't really need MAGA anymore, and really, where is MAGA going to go? Trump is high on power (and why not, nobody seems to stop him?) but I do think when history looks back this will be the very tiny beginning of the end for him. Will take years for it to play out but in the end, everyone will hate him.