Trump Is the Author of the Ruin
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It was epochal and marks a new era in our political history. And for once everyone rushed to name clearly what happened.
The morning after the 2026 midterm elections, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was searingly blunt. For the Republican Party it was “close to an extinction level event.” Its effects will “reverberate for the next decade or more.”
“It was a Watergate-level repudiation,” said Ted Cruz, soon to be Texas’ lone Republican senator, on a podcast.
Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairman in the first Trump term, told Fox News on Wednesday the election wasn’t only a Democratic wave, it was “a Republican rebellion.”
It wasn’t only the number of Democratic victories, it was their size. It was a night of landslides—James Talarico of Texas by 12, Jon Ossoff of Georgia by 18, Roy Cooper of North Carolina by 20.
Jonathan Martin on “Morning Joe” said the old red-blue paradigm has ended. Derek Thompson similarly marveled on his Substack: “Kansas voted like New Hampshire and Mississippi voted like Wisconsin.”
In the age of Trump all politics is national.
A rising 10-year-old coalition came apart. Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and others had slapped its platform together based on what got cheers at the rallies of 2016. They made it up as they went along. But it takes a kind of genius to spy, imagine and build a coalition and make it hold for a decade, and it means plenty that it collapsed.
Mr. Trump was the author of the ruin. He picked the candidates to back, made the decisions on strategy, decided what to say and when to spend the money in his war chest. (Late in the election, according to the New York Times , when the price of ads had been jacked up; he considered it “my money.”)
He is fuming and casting blame—it was Fox News’s polls; if he’d been on the ballot it would have been “a landslide”; Greg Abbott is “a RINO.” Please. It was you, Fredo.
Vice President JD Vance rushed to lay down a marker on what had happened in a post early Wednesday on X. He said “the smartest data guy I know” had told him “a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed.” Smartest Data Guy is a real Sherlock.
Republicans, Mr. Vance said, did go to the polls—but “the main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”
Well, yes. What were they “pissed” about?
“The reason we lost is the war,” Mr. Vance typed. “The president himself said so last night.” To suggest there might have been other, more important factors is “gaslighting.”
But it wasn’t “the war.” If it had been the war, there would have been demonstrations across the country from the time it commenced. The war was part of it, and Mr. Vance’s framing is convenient. He is long said to have opposed the war, so making it the reason for the debacle makes him look prescient. Mr. Trump says it’s the war because he believes his decision to go in was heroic, and now he suffers due to his heroism.
A loss this size has many reasons, a river this raging had many sources. It was a pervasive sense of financial insecurity worsened by high prices, which are connected to the war but also driven by tariffs. And it was corruption.
The American people expect a certain amount of corruption in government because government is composed of people, and men aren’t angels. They’ll accept a normal amount if the government keeps a strong economy and peace. But fail on the economy and peace and they’ll see your corruption and be angered by it. And if you give them corruption that is showy and shameless, they will punish you. They will admit to themselves that you are unusually sleazy and moneygrubbing—Bitcoin! Crypto! Charges of pardons for sale! Federal contracts for the companies of the sons! PLS WIRE AMEX 100K SOONEST!—and they will turn on you.
In this regard most of all, this White House drove the Republican brand into the ground.
In election coverage on the Free Press, Meghan McCain noted that when you see Mar-a-Lago in the media, it’s always like they’re having nonstop parties out of “The Great Gatsby.” All the reveling, it’s fancy and rich and careless, and in a time, outside the club, of want and anxiety.
It’s all stilettos and tuxes and gowns and pricey surgery and shiny tuxedo loafers in there, and in the White House. On Halloween night, three days before the epochal election, the festivities were huge and jungle-themed. Yahoo News called it “a camp, spandex-and-glitter-filled affair” with a caviar bar. Some guests dressed “in elaborate or barely-there costumes.” The Washington Post pool report had people dressed as leopards and snakes and in “tiger-print dinner jackets.”
When I read of it I thought of the costume party in the classic 1962 movie “The Manchurian Candidate”—a scary scene in which affluent Washington power-brokers gather in a mansion and the corrupt Sen. John Iselin, dressed as Abraham Lincoln, drunkenly spoons caviar into the shape of an American flag.
This administration’s soul is seen in its social life, and it is the opposite of populism—it is more like a low-class, high-tack oligarchy dominated by patricians who feel no obligation to even fake a little class.
The most clueless 1980s Kennebunkport Republican grandee would never flaunt wealth as these people do in their vulgarity and conceit. In my lifetime the GOP has been many things good and bad, but it had never been decadent.
In a post-election piece Thursday, Josh Dawsey of the Journal reported that voters in focus groups who didn’t normally monitor Washington often brought up “Trump’s pet projects”—the ballroom, the Reflecting Pool. A political strategist told Mr. Dawsey they’d say things like, “He doesn’t really care what I’m going through” and “He wants to put his name on everything.”
It’s going to take years for the party to dig its way out of this.
I’ll end with a prediction I hope doesn’t come true. I include it because Republicans on the ground now are thinking about what he has been to them, and what they owe him, as they start to rebuild.
At some point I suspect Mr. Trump is going to turn on his party. They didn’t deserve him, they let him down, he tried to help them but they wouldn’t let him. It’s going to be real bunker talk. It’s how he was probably always destined to wind up, swiveling around from the desk and telling the audience it’s fired.
We’re thinking of the scene from “A Face in the Crowd,” in which the charming and garrulous Lonesome Rhodes, a great network television star, signs off from his weekly show. The credits roll, and we see him talking in the background, silently. But he’s not sharing folksy wisdom, he’s telling an actor what he thinks of the audience. The sound is secretly switched on in the control room, and America hears it: “Good night, you stupid idiots. Good night, you miserable slobs.”
I suspect that kind of moment is coming. Another betrayal, another reason for Republicans to stand up straight and recover themselves.
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The excellent writer Peggy Noonan grows up ... ?
Peggy Noonan is a very good writer, always has been.
Why didnt she care about any of this three months ago, six months ago, two years ago? These people have always been corrupt as hell, and she never used whatever influence her column has to say a damn thing about it. Same goes for 95% of the rest of the media.
Noonan has always been a gop apologist...
She is as mealy mouthed as Susan Collins!
Why didnt she care about any of this three months ago, six months ago, two years ago
From ChatGPT: My overall assessment of her published record: Noonan has been a recurring conservative critic of Trump, although she has also acknowledged his political appeal and supported some conservative positions and policies.
Her criticism is often rooted in traditional conservatism rather than opposition to conservatism itself.
ame goes for 95% of the rest of the media.
Your belief that 95% of the media was soft on Trump is not based in reality.
Your meme isn't wrong. If you came to America, thinking it deserved 9/11, that the constitution is something you wipe your ass with and that the country needs more Lenin and Mao, or are one of the useful idiots who enable them, then you are probably are as hopeful as ever today. One step closer to achieving the race communists dream.
Cold war red scare fear mongering and Islamaphobia FAILED!
Keep up! Do not stop! Go Go Go! Hit the throttle! Get it in gear!
MAGA was born out of both the 'far' left and the 'far' right seeking a populist leader. In 2016 for the left it was Sanders, for the right it was Trump and Hillary got squished in the middle. This year the election was won by the non-affiliated who seemingly have finally discovered their cumulative electoral power. Time will tell if they equally channel it in cycles to come.
Sort of like the "Arabs" in Israel,
They may effect more change through polics tha terrorism ever did.
I just got off the phone with a conservative friend that read me noonan's latest article. the lopsided conversation sailed thru a sea of conspiracy theories and harsh realities the faithful have had to accept in the last few days and couldn't even semi-articulate until now. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. The news this weekend will feature former trump loyalists who have seen the writing on the wall and are heading for the exits, especially those that need a 2 month head start in front of the law. I think america is about to witness the underside of monetization within the trump administration, by former loyalists, as they jockey to save their own worthless skins ...
knives out maga ...
Numero uno on my bucket list is for the times to become far less interesting.
How did any thinking person not see what was coming? Yes, I get that two years ago there was a massive duping of young folks stupidly suckered into voting for Trump - but two years is enough time to learn just how badly you fucked yourself. Of course this trash administration is not sustainable.
Lara Trump went on Fox News last night and said that Americans didnt give her father in law enough time , and he also sacrificed his popularity in order to keep Iran from getting nukes. Then again she has no choice but to say these things, I dont think she is independently wealthy.
Here is a video from this morning updating MAGA and Fox News reaction.
By the way, Laura Ingraham wants us to accept the loss in Iran and accept the status quo. What happened to the idea that Iran must not be allowed to pursue nukes?
She's scared
trump's iran victory lap for the midterms turned into a worldwide debacle and financial crisis, plus a major loss for maga ...
she needs to spend a long weekend on riker's island, in general population ...
What the hell is Jesse Watters talking about?
Getting excited about the chances of racial conflict. His guest Tim Poole says Trump is too far left for the likings of young white men and thats why they turned on him.
Trump is too far left
whoa - I didn’t know those five words could be used in a sentence.
And now the idiot in charge replaced Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff
I thought you were joking but it is true.
"What evil lurks in the hearts of men" ? That is the tease for an old radio show in the 40's, but I think it applies here.
Greenland is chomping the bit at the news.
wtf, you mean it doesn't get greater and whiter the farther north of canada you go?
Humor me here....
Wasn't Susie Wiles considered the most "adult" person in the room (with any kind of steering capability) at the White House?
I think that Trump putting Miller in her place as Chief of Staff at the White House, beyond it's obvious thumbing-of-the-nose at the American electorate, is a particularly infantile reaction to the election results, even if he claims it to not be related to the election at all.
And the part I wanted you to humor my suggestion: Could we be watching a Fascist meltdown, and if so, when will he go into the bunker and shoot himself?
The question that comes to mind is this:
When voters reject him, does he reconsider his policies, or increasingly treat the voters and the institutions expressing their judgment as enemies?
Miller’s elevation gives me a plausible reason to worry about the latter.
She was said to be so. . .by the media. . . no such mention 'ever' was heard from Trump.
Steven Miller as Chief of Staff is exactly related to the election. . .as Trump thinks if he can place a hardcase ("Whipper") like Miller over staffing and Jim Jordan ("mentioned as potential house minority leader) to obfuscate and frustrate house democrats (and the Speaker) he can continue his fighting (warring with democrats) and fleecing the public at the same time.
I forgot to put a /s on the end of one of those statements. Take your pick.
I would not expect Trump to do so, seeing as how he was in the room and considers himself to be the greatest, most, best, other ostentatiously aggrandizing superlatives - at everything he claims to do, have done, was thinking about doing or could have done at the time... So I think that raising Miller to Chief of Staff is supposed to signal to the world at large that he will try to accelerate his "time for a change".
the west wing is an ongoing ass kissing contest, and miller won the last round ...
Trump is signaling: Bluffing! Although, he may think it real. . . . My advise will be for democrats to focus on the people and let the White House eat 'sh-t and bark at the moon' as long as 'that' is its thing! To not waste (over)time trying to persuade "Donald and his entourage" of anything: Because it will be STALLING and wasting the days and coming months. . . so it can blame the democrats in the end (2028 presidential contest) of failures.
The GOP as it is today, is NOT going to play nice. . . the plan will be to SQUANDER and PISS AWAY the time and then declare the democrats as unaccomplished at the same things they were! Then. . . the 'wheel' will turn once more. . . and the GOP intends to be standing ATOP it once more. Wake up, democrats!
The GOP (and the Democrats too) have forgotten that it is about the country, not them. Both parties decisions are made with an eye towards advancing the party. They don't stop to think how if their actions hurts or makes it better how that will affect the overall position of the party. There have been poles for years telling both parties that the way that the people in America want to go is to have a continually improving situation. So the people get here from wherever, they work their asses of and are productive members of society. It should follow that their kids have a shot at living even better than them.
This has recently(sorry, gotta view that as meaning the past twenty years) that this outcome was becoming more and more unlikely. That is the problem they have to fix. Culture wars and who you choose to be are to be damned. Just make it so that people can be successful and upwardly mobile. That does not mean filthy rich, it just is doing well enough so you don't have to worry that when someone gets sick that you are going to have to mortgage your house to pay the medical bills.
Medical in this country is a joke. The way that the payment structure flows .. it doesn't flow. It stops at "You Owe Us." Fuck that. I am sick of this fucking perverse payment plan where you need a masters degree in medical billing to allocate your financial distributions in a sensible manner.
That is what the government should be handling.
And... It should be handling immigration (I hate to tell you guys this, but immigrants are fucking awesome for the economy. Really!). What we should be doing on immigration is putting more emphasis on the getting in legally part. More judges. Increase the capacity of the system to incorporate these individuals into our society, our economy, and I promise you we will see steady growth.
That big statue down in New York harbor is a great tool for selling this country as a place to be,as long as the words on its plinth echo through the vision and society of the people.
We seem to have forgotten that when you are living, you are growing. When you stop growing, you're in effect dying.
Better get off before I go full rant. (There are too many typos!)
The "two-party" system has finally met its match/'end.' That is, it has come nearly full-circle where it is consuming itself from the inside. . . meaning that the two systems are so over-used that they can and can neither outwit themselves. They have found the 'solution' to compromise. . . it is to STIFLE each other when in power and continuously loop.
Oddly enough, though the two-party system wants to survive (everything does) it can only find its way back to sanity by stepping backward to a time when compromise was doable or let a THIRD party fully in to the party system ranks at their behest.
Yes, I am suggesting that the two party system has 'bested' itself; they know each other too well. They have evolved into cynics of each Other (the negative connotation). Such that they only see the worst of each Other. And so, the citizens under their authority suffer every two years, four years, and six years set of cycles.
I would say that elements of the parties have taken over.
The reasons for these takeovers may be different, but they amount to the parties portraying each other as the enemy and a foe to be defeated. This is the basic problem of politics today. The parties, out of a perceived need to distinguish themselves from the other, have taken this concept so far beyond reason. The reasons for this behavior are multitude, but the end result is the same: people feeling divided as neighbors, people feeling divided as a community, people feeling divided from the cultural "nation".
And so we have divided ourselves. We are not a nation. We are a collective of different people from different places who do not trust each other. That is not a way to make a nation thrive.
It is not a way to make a nation thrive. We have to come together. . .the intelligent way. . . not the stupid way we are doing it now (hapzardly).
No on 60 minutes he called the opposition Dumbocrats, nothing has changed for the better.
With Trump it never will. It's good PR to talk about trying to work with him, but it's not going to happen.