Judge Trump's Motives, Not Just His Methods

Yahoo26-02-2025

From the G-File on The Dispatch
Hey,
I'm going to try to make a single point in response to what is shaping up to be the standard, smart, defense of a lot of Donald Trump's doings.
That defense usually starts with a series of correct observations about the left's attacks on Trump's actions and/or some correct complaints about Joe Biden's or the Democrats actions.
Let's take the recent firings in the Pentagon, which critics call, not indefensibly, a 'purge.' I won't use that word—even though I think it's defensible—because the people who use it want to make Trump's actions sound as sinister as possible. And that tendency is often the first thing Trump's defenders seize on. The dirty bathwater of exaggerated complaints often offer an opportunity to toss the baby of the core complaint out with it.
The leftwing outrage holds that the military should somehow be independent of civilian control. Sometimes this argument is made with a lot of nuance. Sometimes not. The nuanced position is that Trump's firings are pretextual, unusual, and in violation of all manner of norms. The less nuanced ones cover a broad spectrum, from accusations of excessive politicization to banana republic autocratic shenanigans to 'literally Hitler.'
But what unites these critiques is the insinuation or declaration that somehow the military is out of the purview of the commander-in-chief. The smart defenders of Trump are absolutely correct that this is an unsupportable claim. One of the most important bedrock mechanisms of our constitutional design is that the military answers to civilian leadership. As National Review's Dominic Pino put it on the Editors podcast, 'I think it's completely wrong, the Democrats' argument that somehow the military is this independent thing that politicians don't get any say over, that's not right. As a constitutional matter, the president is the commander-in-chief. So he gets to do this.' Or as Charlie Cooke puts it, 'You know, civil control of the military is one of the important defining features of, separating, normal, healthy democracies from authoritarian countries. And so, I don't have any issue with it, on its face.'
I have no objection to the core of this argument. I do, contra Charlie, have 'issues.' Because looking at this 'on its face' is definitionally superficial.
Charlie goes on to say, 'The case that I keep reading, including in major serious newspapers, seems to imply that the risk of Trump's having switched out staff is that the people he has chosen instead will be unwilling to defy him, will be unwilling to push back, will be unwilling to tell him no. But they shouldn't be telling him no.'
Well, I want generals willing to say 'No.' And I don't think Charlie really disagrees with me. It depends on the what, why and how they tell him no. Military officers don't just take an oath to follow the president's orders, they also take an oath to defend the Constitution and abide by the chain of command as laid out in regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I don't want any generals who will put obedience to the president above obedience to the Constitution. And, again, I am quite positive Charlie doesn't either. So if President Trump orders a general to shoot protesters, an idea he allegedly floated during protests outside the White House during his first term, I want generals who will refuse that order. They should be honest about it and resign rather than carry out an unlawful order.
But even beyond that, I want generals who will say no, or at least forcefully push back, against stupid or immoral orders. Again, it shouldn't take the form of sabotage or secret conspiracies. No one should say 'yes' to the commander-in-chief, then refuse to follow through. But if Trump ordered the Navy to surround Greenland in a show of force to intimidate a NATO ally, I would like it if the generals went to considerable lengths to explain to the president why the order was a bad idea and, ultimately, one they would refuse to carry out. Then face the consequences as a result.
The president both practically and as a matter of law and statecraft is entitled to loyal officers. He's not entitled to unquestioning yes-men.
Here, too, I suspect Charlie agrees.
But my point isn't to argue about civil-military relations, or pick a fight with Charlie, a good friend and someone I admire greatly. Rather, my point is that I think focusing on civil-military relations illustrates my problem with what I've been calling the smart conservative approach generally.
This approach of taking each controversy as a single, isolated argument amounts to debating single trees while ignoring the forest.
To be blunt: This approach's fundamental problem is it treats Trump as a kind of academic abstraction. What can the president do? rather than the more pressing question: Why is this president doing this?
Treating Trump as a depersonalized Constitutional officer can be very clarifying on specific controversies. But it ends up erasing the broader context. The theme of the pudding gets lost in arguments about the ingredients.
Consider the scandal—and it is a scandal—with the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. When Trump's Justice Department told them to drop the corruption charges against Adams because he was getting in line with Trump's preferred immigration policy, prosecutors who put professional ethics ahead of the whims of the president quit—and that's exactly the way Trump wants it. He doesn't want DOJ officials who are loyal to any other commitments.
Or consider the walking scandal that is Ed Martin, a MAGA lawyer who has defended January 6, 2021, defendants and who attended Trump's speech before the riot at the Capitol building that day. He is the new U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Responding to the flap between the Associated Press and the use of Trump's preferred term of the 'Gulf of America,' he posted on X, 'As President Trumps' [sic] lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our President and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.' The lawyers in that office are the 'president's lawyers' only in the narrow, trees-over-forest, analysis I referenced above. But in the broader context, they are not Trump's lawyers. They are the presidency's lawyers, not this president's personal henchmen. But Trump does not recognize a distinction there.
Just last night, Trump ordered that Covington and Burling, a law firm representing Jack Smith, the prosecutor overseeing the federal cases against Trump before Trump's election made them a dead letter, be punished for lending aid and comfort to Smith. The message is not subtle. The federal government is Trump's personal machinery of retribution. Can he do that? Yes. But should he do it is the far more important question.
Paul Ingrassia, Trump's new White House liaison with the Department of Homeland Security, is a social media troll and goon who supported the imposition of martial law to keep Trump in office in 2021. The head of the FBI, Kash Patel, is a red-pilled zealot who wrote children's books about a King Trump and a helpful wizard named 'Kash.' Patel's new deputy director is Dan Bongino. Though he is a former Secret Service officer, he has zero significant or relevant management experience in law enforcement, and no experience within the FBI whatsoever. But he is a loyalist.
Indeed, across a vast swath of government—pretty much all of it—the overriding criteria for appointment aren't professional qualifications, experience, or commitment to the Constitution or even good government, but personal loyalty to the president. The sine qua non of staffing the administration is whether you can be counted upon to follow Trump's orders and ape Trump's obsessions. Candidates for top intelligence jobs, for example, were asked whether January 6 was an 'inside job,' who were 'the real patriots' on that day, and who won the 2020 election.
Oh, and let's not forget his blanket pardons for January 6 rioters, including those found guilty of brutalizing police.
From law enforcement, to national security, to the administration of justice, it's hard to refute the claim that Donald Trump wants enablers, yes-men, and loyalists, who make their top priority Trump's aggrandizement.
Even his foreign policy requires a daily display of loyalty to his lies about simple, but very important, moral truths.
It also seems increasingly clear that he wants a press corps that sees nothing wrong with that, which is why this supposedly 'pro-free speech' administration is going after the AP for refusing to recognize the 'Gulf of America' name change and playing other petty games with the White House press pool.
Now, it's fine to beat up on the press for its stunningly high self-regard, or to point out its excesses. I've been doing that for 30 years. It's also fine to point out that the president can do all of these things (or most of them, pending court approval).
It's also fine to argue, as Rich Lowry does here, that the Biden administration politicized the Pentagon or, as many have argued, that it politicized the Department of Justice.
But not all politicizations are equal. By which I mean, Trump's politicizations are utterly self-serving. They are not connected to a larger ideological or intellectual framework. I've struggled to articulate why this is different from previous presidential projects. One term I've found helpful is personalism. Another, with regard to Trump's foreign policy, is 'sovereigntism.' But those are unsatisfying to me because they lend an air of intellectual rigor to a man who rejects intellectual rigor as a challenge to his will-to-power. So, I went with Trump's mobster worldview.
Jonathan Rauch, borrowing from Max Weber, offers another fancy word that fits quite well: Patrimonialism:
Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones. Based on individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived), it can be found not just in states but also among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.
Whatever framework you apply, I think the underlying truth, the actual fact patterns, are all the same. And that's my problem with the smart defenses of a lot of Trump's actions. They depend on imposing a constitutional vision—a vision I share—on a political actor who, to the extent he thinks about it at all, sees the Constitution as a relic and impediment to his desires and little more. He may adhere to its bright lines, but not out of fidelity to it or out of a commitment to an alternative theory of how it works. He stays within the constitutional guardrails—to the extent he does—solely out of political necessity. And his appointments and actions signal that he will leap over those guardrails whenever he finds it in his interest to do so. He surrounds himself not just in his administration, but in the political and journalistic industrial complex built up around him, with people—including foreign populists and nationalists—who are willing to pretend, or eager to believe, that Trump is, in the words of conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, 'the living embodiment of the Constitution.' This provides a kind of permission structure that rationalizes each step toward some later violence to the Constitution, which will, like Hemingway's definition of bankruptcy, progress slowly until it's sudden.
Again, I am happy to point out (again) that he's not the first president to hold views along these lines. Woodrow Wilson certainly believed the Constitution was a relic holding him back. But pointing out such things should not be a defense of what Trump is so obviously doing—it should be part of the conservative indictment.
I do not think the smart conservatives I have in mind necessarily disagree with me in whole or in part. But the tendency to fall back on those academic—and correct!—arguments about the president's power often hinge on a false assumption about Trump's motives. The motives of a president matter a great deal. His politicization of government institutions is not simply a needed corrective to past politicizations, as sorely deserving those politicizations were in need of correction.
This is not normal. Trump's program isn't really ideological and certainly not 'conservative' in any traditional sense. If Trump were overseeing the imposition of Reaganism, or even some ideological agenda I disagreed with, those arguments would have greater purchase with me. But MAGA at its best is a pretext, and more often it's not even that. This is the faux-ideology of one person, one person's vanity, grievances and personal glory.
That's why I think the 'why' of it all is much more important than debates about 'can.' Sure, he can do a lot of things, because the Founders really didn't envision someone like Trump as president. They envisioned the man who presided over the Constitutional Convention, George Washington. At CPAC last week, Trump noted that Bill O'Reilly said that Trump was a better president than George Washington. To which Trump responded, 'I love beating George Washington.' The audience swooned.
Exactly.

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Live Updates: Israel and Iran Trade New Strikes on 9th Day of War

New York Times

35 minutes ago

New York Times

Live Updates: Israel and Iran Trade New Strikes on 9th Day of War

President Trump was angry. Earlier this month, Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, had posted a three-and-half-minute video to social media describing her visit to Hiroshima, Japan, and outlining the horrors caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon there 80 years ago. Speaking directly to the camera, Ms. Gabbard warned that the threat of nuclear war remained. 'As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,' she said, 'political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers.' Mr. Trump berated Ms. Gabbard for the video, according to two people briefed on the conversation. He said that her discussion of nuclear annihilation would scare people and that officials should not talk about it. Mr. Trump's displeasure with the video laid bare months of his skepticism of Ms. Gabbard and frustrations with her. The president and some administration officials viewed her overseas travel, as the video exemplified, as being as much about self-promotion of her political career as it was about the business of government, multiple officials said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics of the administration. But the tensions surrounding Ms. Gabbard are now in the open, as Mr. Trump considers mounting a military strike on Iran. Ms. Gabbard, a critic of overseas entanglements, has privately raised concerns of a wider war. And on Friday Mr. Trump said 'she's wrong' when he was asked about her testimony in March that Iran had not decided to build a nuclear weapon. After the video was posted, the president also told Ms. Gabbard that he was disappointed in her, and wished she had used better judgment, according to one of the two people briefed on the conversation. He told Ms. Gabbard that he believed she was using her time working for him to set herself up for higher office. Mr. Trump told Ms. Gabbard that if she wanted to run for president, she should not be in the administration, one of the people briefed on the meeting said. Image Ms. Gabbard and her husband, Abraham Williams, at her swearing-in at the White House in February. Credit... Eric Lee/The New York Times While Ms. Gabbard is a former Democrat, her credentials as a critic of America's long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a skeptic of foreign military interventions appeal to Mr. Trump's base, and her views dovetail with those of some of his other advisers. Her supporters are openly advocating that the president keep her. 'The president needs someone who will give him the right intelligence information, whether he likes it or not,' said Daniel L. Davis, an analyst at the think tank Defense Priorities, which advocates a restrained foreign policy. 'If you put someone else in there, they might only tell him what he wants to hear.' Mr. Davis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was Ms. Gabbard's choice for a top intelligence role before criticism from Republicans over his skepticism of Israel's war in Gaza forced her to rescind the appointment. There is no question, officials said, that Ms. Gabbard's standing has been weakened and that she is embattled. But few in the administration want to see her depart. Some say she has people who like her, while others worry about who might replace her. Two officials said that Mr. Trump's anger over the video had faded and that they were back on better terms. Ms. Gabbard continues to brief the president regularly and speaks often to John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, who held Ms. Gabbard's job in the first Trump administration, according to multiple officials. In a statement, the White House press office dismissed any notion she has been sidelined. Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Trump had 'full confidence' in his national security team. 'D.N.I. Gabbard is an important member of the president's team and her work continues to serve him and this country well,' Mr. Cheung said. Ms. Gabbard was an aggressive supporter of Mr. Trump on the 2024 campaign trail. He and his top advisers valued her input, especially when Mr. Trump was preparing to debate Vice President Kamala Harris — whom Ms. Gabbard had memorably attacked in a Democratic primary debate in 2019. After the election, Mr. Trump quickly decided to nominate her for director of national intelligence. But from the beginning he made clear to associates that he harbored some doubts. Mr. Trump, according to associates, saw her as overly interested in her own success. Mr. Trump drew a contrast between Ms. Gabbard and the other former Democrat he named to his cabinet, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 'Bobby's a star,' Mr. Trump told one associate. 'Tulsi? Tulsi wants to be a star.' Mr. Trump's implication was that unlike Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Gabbard did not have what it took to succeed in politics. Image Ms. Gabbard with Mr. Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tucker Carlson during a campaign event in Georgia in October. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times And soon after her swearing-in, he began to complain about her effectiveness. At the same time, Mr. Trump — long mistrustful of the intelligence community — questioned whether there needed to be an Office of the Director of National Intelligence at all. A senior intelligence official said Ms. Gabbard had overseen a 25 percent cut in the size of her office. And Ms. Gabbard has repeatedly told people in the White House that she is willing to be the last director of national intelligence, according to an official. The office, Ms. Gabbard said, could be reabsorbed into the C.I.A., or become something akin to the National Security Council, a bare-bones oversight group. At least for a time, the kind of foreign policy restraint Ms. Gabbard favors appeared to gain traction this spring. In White House discussions about Israel and Iran, Ms. Gabbard raised the range of possible consequences of an Israeli strike against Iran, saying it could trigger a wider conflict that brought in the United States. Vice President JD Vance, at times also a skeptic of military intervention, made similar arguments and was among those who supported Mr. Trump's impulse to initially try to negotiate a deal with Iran. As the C.I.A. delivered intelligence reports that Israel intended to strike Iran regardless, Mr. Trump and senior aides became more publicly supportive of the Israeli campaign. Ms. Gabbard did not attend a key meeting at Camp David, where Mr. Ratcliffe presented assessments about Iran's nuclear program. Ms. Gabbard, according to officials, was on Army Reserve duty. Other people with knowledge of the matter have said she was not invited. (Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Ms. Gabbard had met daily with Mr. Trump and his team.) Then on Tuesday, Mr. Trump contradicted Ms. Gabbard in public. After the Israeli strikes began, a journalist on Air Force One asked Mr. Trump about Ms. Gabbard's testimony in March that Iran had not decided to make a nuclear bomb. 'I don't care what she said,' Mr. Trump said. 'I think they were very close to having it.' He made similar comments on Friday. Image Mr. Trump, aboard Air Force One this week, contradicted Ms. Gabbard's assessment of Iran's nuclear program. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times An official from Ms. Gabbard's office said her position was not at odds with Mr. Trump's. In her testimony, Ms. Gabbard reported the consensus opinion of the intelligence community: that Iran's supreme leader had not authorized the country to build a nuclear weapon. But Ms. Gabbard had also noted Iran's large stocks of enriched uranium and a shift in tone that was 'likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran's decision-making apparatus.' But Mr. Trump's Air Force One remark came off as a rebuke. To a certain extent, some officials said, courting Mr. Trump's displeasure is a hazard of any intelligence job in his administration. Mr. Trump believes the intelligence community undermined him in his first term, and his long-held skepticism that it is part of a disloyal deep state continues. Ms. Gabbard, when briefing Mr. Trump, presents a range of options and assessments. But it is difficult to talk about the findings of spy agencies and not raise Mr. Trump's ire, the official said. Ms. Gabbard's most important job as director of national intelligence is overseeing, and delivering, the president's daily intelligence brief. But the brief is actually produced a few miles from her office at the C.I.A., and many of those working on the document are detailed from the agency. Ms. Gabbard announced internally last month that she would physically move the production of the brief to her headquarters, known as Liberty Crossing. Within the administration, several senior officials saw it as a way to try to enhance her own relevance at a time when Mr. Trump was questioning the relevance of the office. Others said it was an expensive decision that would be logistically difficult to carry out. Ultimately, the White House put the move on pause, according to multiple people briefed on the matter. Ms. Gabbard has influential defenders inside and outside the government. Mr. Vance, seen as the most senior voice for a less hawkish, more restrained foreign policy, issued a long social media post defending the administration's support of Israel's attack on Iran. He added to that a message supporting Ms. Gabbard. He also released a statement calling her a 'patriot.' Her supporters insist that she remains relevant and that, over time, her skepticism of American intervention in Ukraine and caution on military action against Iran will once more prevail. The possible delay of any decision by Mr. Trump to strike Iran represents an opportunity for diplomacy and critics of American military intervention to make the case for restraint, some of Ms. Gabbard's supporters said. Olivia C. Coleman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Gabbard's office, dismissed the reports of dissatisfaction or tensions with the White House as 'lies made up by bored, irrelevant anonymous sources with nothing better to do than sow fake division.' 'The director,' Ms. Coleman said, 'remains focused on her mission: providing accurate and actionable intelligence to the president, cleaning up the deep state and keeping the American people safe, secure and free.'

New York Times

39 minutes ago

New York Times

Israel-Iran ConflictLive Updates: Israel and Iran Trade New Strikes on 9th Day of War

Israel-Iran war stretches into a second week without diplomatic breakthrough

Yahoo

an hour ago

Yahoo

Israel-Iran war stretches into a second week without diplomatic breakthrough

Hours of talks aimed at de-escalating fighting between Israel and Iran failed to produce a diplomatic breakthrough as the war entered its second week with a fresh round of strikes between the two adversaries. European ministers and Iran's top diplomat met for four hours on Friday in Geneva, as President Donald Trump continued to weigh US military involvement and worries rose over potential strikes on nuclear reactors. European officials expressed hope for future negotiations, and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said he was open to further dialogue while emphasising that Tehran had no interest in negotiating with the US while Israel continued attacking. 'Iran is ready to consider diplomacy if aggression ceases and the aggressor is held accountable for its committed crimes,' he told reporters. No date was set for the next round of talks. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's military operation in Iran would continue 'for as long as it takes' to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran's nuclear programme and arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israel's top general echoed the warning, saying the Israeli military was ready 'for a prolonged campaign'. But Mr Netanyahu's goal could be out of reach without US help. Iran's underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility is considered to be out of reach to all but America's 'bunker-buster' bombs. Mr Trump said he would put off deciding whether to join Israel's air campaign against Iran for up to two weeks. The war between Israel and Iran erupted on June 13, with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group. Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates. Most have been shot down by Israel's multi-tiered air defences, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds wounded. Israel's defence minister said on Saturday it killed a commander in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who financed and armed Hamas in preparation for the October 7 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the 20-month long war in Gaza. Israel said Saeed Izadi was commander of the Palestine Corps for the Iranian Quds Force, an elite arm of the Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran, and that he was killed in an apartment in the city of Qom.