Good essay. I think Trump's inability to stay on-Teleprompter is partly due to his other concerns and obsessions, but also due to one of his fundamental character flaws and insecurities: He chafes at being told what he can and can't do. So he can't *not* depart from the written text, to show others (and himself) how no one else is the boss of him.
And while it's true that a cabal of reactionaries are doing the intellectual and organizational heavy lifting for Project 2025, and Trump is too lazy, stupid, and greedy to care, it's also true that he is their only effective public face. JD Vance, let alone Stephen Miller, aren't going to bring home the bacon if something happens to him. So let's make something happen to him. Dems should (and already are, I think) do everything they can, from now til November, to harass Trump intellectually (sic), emotionally, and spiritually (sic). Campaign FOR Kamala Harris, yes. But also campaign AGAINST Trump's mental and emotional state. You never know what might crack. And it'll be fun!
On departing from the written text, there’s more to it than that—I think what started it must have been the reading disability, that it’s just too fatiguing for him to stick to the teleprompter, but at this point, after all the experience he’s had in the last 10 years, it’s the improv that gets the laughs and the other audience reactions. He genuinely is a comic, if at a pretty low level, and of course he loves that, who doesn’t?
It's true. The late Veronica Geng, my main editor at the New Yorker, was the quietest, least histrionic performer in the world. But after she did an event at the 92nd St. Y she told me, "It was great getting laughs."
For some of us, the laughs are (almost) the only reason we're here (on the internet, I mean. This joint is not laugh-free, but I am serious about taking Yas seriously).
You are the only person writing about Trump I can find that grapples with what he says, rather than projecting the fear of what he and his advisors are capable of onto his words. Its a distinction that makes little difference since if he gets back in power the really ugly stuff would be driven by minions while he focuses on revenge and cashing in. His "understanding" and interest in things like voting is limited to finding a way to game the system that puts and keeps him in power, how is a detail for the minions.
Thanks. I think it does make a difference, or ought to, since the intention is to narrow readers' anxieties from all the imaginable evils in the world to the ones that might conceivably happen and something could be done about.
The apostrophe reminded me of how quietist evangelicals were at one time: Trump was appealing to their feeling that interacting with the political system would defile them. However, though he wasn't promising an end to elections, he _was_ promising them a set of changes to our nation that would remake it so exactly and permanently to their liking that there would be no further need for their input, which I (at least) interpret as making future elections as relevant as the old Soviet-bloc and current Russian ones.
That is to say, he was telling them 'Be not in conformance with this world…because I will make it be in conformance with _you_.'.
This is how I read it, yes. Not promising an end to the Republic (at least not formally), just arranging things so that future elections would not actually *matter*.
By promising to 'fix everything', Mr Trump is doing what the late racist reactionary, William Buckley, accused U.S. liberals of attempting, which he expressed (after another writer) as 'immanentising the Eschaton' (bringing-about on Earth the conditions he thought properly attainable only after the End of Days), and thought profoundly un-Christian.
(Then again, if everything _were_ 'fixed' such that the evangelicals and their Catholic allies were satisfied, _my_ only satisfaction, were I left alive, would be watching the evangelicals' suddenly remembering the next day that they thought their Catholic allies profoundly un-Christian, the only question being whether the Pope were the Whore of Babylon or just the Seven-Headed Beast.)
Trump is, as I tried to say, explicit in the speech. All he's talking about is the vote-suppressing legislation (Voter ID, proof of citizenship, no early or absentee voting, no scanning machines), which he claims will give Republicans invincible majorities in future elections, and the quietists can return to their traditional quietism.
Don't know if he means or believes that, and it's bad enough, flagrant (but SCOTuS-backed) disregard of the 15th Amendment and Voting Rights Act of 1965 that does plenty of harm at a local level, but it's not in and of itself an end of the Republic, and that's not what Trump is aiming at (his only clear Project 2025 aims are for taking over Justice Department, which is already part of the executive: protecting himself from legal and financial troubles and punishing his investigators and prosecutors).
The plan for ending the Republic isn't (necessarily) a plan for eliminating elections, either, just a plan to gut congressional power and the independent civil service, and it has many sponsors, some of them very (at least pseudo-) intellectual, and I don't think Trump is especially invested in it, though he no doubt likes the president-for-life concept.
Good essay. I think Trump's inability to stay on-Teleprompter is partly due to his other concerns and obsessions, but also due to one of his fundamental character flaws and insecurities: He chafes at being told what he can and can't do. So he can't *not* depart from the written text, to show others (and himself) how no one else is the boss of him.
And while it's true that a cabal of reactionaries are doing the intellectual and organizational heavy lifting for Project 2025, and Trump is too lazy, stupid, and greedy to care, it's also true that he is their only effective public face. JD Vance, let alone Stephen Miller, aren't going to bring home the bacon if something happens to him. So let's make something happen to him. Dems should (and already are, I think) do everything they can, from now til November, to harass Trump intellectually (sic), emotionally, and spiritually (sic). Campaign FOR Kamala Harris, yes. But also campaign AGAINST Trump's mental and emotional state. You never know what might crack. And it'll be fun!
Thanks!
On departing from the written text, there’s more to it than that—I think what started it must have been the reading disability, that it’s just too fatiguing for him to stick to the teleprompter, but at this point, after all the experience he’s had in the last 10 years, it’s the improv that gets the laughs and the other audience reactions. He genuinely is a comic, if at a pretty low level, and of course he loves that, who doesn’t?
It's true. The late Veronica Geng, my main editor at the New Yorker, was the quietest, least histrionic performer in the world. But after she did an event at the 92nd St. Y she told me, "It was great getting laughs."
For some of us, the laughs are (almost) the only reason we're here (on the internet, I mean. This joint is not laugh-free, but I am serious about taking Yas seriously).
Hes got the rallies, and the audience at Mar-a-Largo. Hes been polishing his act for years.
Also, too – those times he blames the teleprompter for failing, what he means is it failed HIM. His blank-minded moments cannot be his own fault.
You are the only person writing about Trump I can find that grapples with what he says, rather than projecting the fear of what he and his advisors are capable of onto his words. Its a distinction that makes little difference since if he gets back in power the really ugly stuff would be driven by minions while he focuses on revenge and cashing in. His "understanding" and interest in things like voting is limited to finding a way to game the system that puts and keeps him in power, how is a detail for the minions.
Thanks. I think it does make a difference, or ought to, since the intention is to narrow readers' anxieties from all the imaginable evils in the world to the ones that might conceivably happen and something could be done about.
The apostrophe reminded me of how quietist evangelicals were at one time: Trump was appealing to their feeling that interacting with the political system would defile them. However, though he wasn't promising an end to elections, he _was_ promising them a set of changes to our nation that would remake it so exactly and permanently to their liking that there would be no further need for their input, which I (at least) interpret as making future elections as relevant as the old Soviet-bloc and current Russian ones.
That is to say, he was telling them 'Be not in conformance with this world…because I will make it be in conformance with _you_.'.
This is how I read it, yes. Not promising an end to the Republic (at least not formally), just arranging things so that future elections would not actually *matter*.
By promising to 'fix everything', Mr Trump is doing what the late racist reactionary, William Buckley, accused U.S. liberals of attempting, which he expressed (after another writer) as 'immanentising the Eschaton' (bringing-about on Earth the conditions he thought properly attainable only after the End of Days), and thought profoundly un-Christian.
(Then again, if everything _were_ 'fixed' such that the evangelicals and their Catholic allies were satisfied, _my_ only satisfaction, were I left alive, would be watching the evangelicals' suddenly remembering the next day that they thought their Catholic allies profoundly un-Christian, the only question being whether the Pope were the Whore of Babylon or just the Seven-Headed Beast.)
Trump is, as I tried to say, explicit in the speech. All he's talking about is the vote-suppressing legislation (Voter ID, proof of citizenship, no early or absentee voting, no scanning machines), which he claims will give Republicans invincible majorities in future elections, and the quietists can return to their traditional quietism.
Don't know if he means or believes that, and it's bad enough, flagrant (but SCOTuS-backed) disregard of the 15th Amendment and Voting Rights Act of 1965 that does plenty of harm at a local level, but it's not in and of itself an end of the Republic, and that's not what Trump is aiming at (his only clear Project 2025 aims are for taking over Justice Department, which is already part of the executive: protecting himself from legal and financial troubles and punishing his investigators and prosecutors).
The plan for ending the Republic isn't (necessarily) a plan for eliminating elections, either, just a plan to gut congressional power and the independent civil service, and it has many sponsors, some of them very (at least pseudo-) intellectual, and I don't think Trump is especially invested in it, though he no doubt likes the president-for-life concept.