Let the Fissures Widen

The more people turn on Donald the better, but they shouldn’t be rewarded for it

Not buying the re-brand

Even those who were once among his most loyal and sycophantic supporters are starting to question Donald’s fitness. Right-wing commentators with massive followings, including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones, are expressing concerns about Donald’s Iran rhetoric, including last week’s threat to commit genocide. They contend this is a sign of his increasing instability and lack of judgment. That suggests to me that they haven’t been paying very close attention over the last several decades.

Here’s what a few of them have had to say:

Tucker Carlson: People who are in direct contact with the president need to say, “No, I’ll resign. I’ll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And if given the order, I’m not carrying it out.”

Nick Fuentes: The antichrist is president. Okay. The antichrist is president. The red heifer has been born. We are at war with Iran. The strait of Hormuz is closed.

Megyn Kelly: I mean, I don’t know about you, but I am sick of this shit. I’m sick of it. Can’t he just behave like a normal human? I mean, honestly, like the president, 3D chess—just shut up.

Candace Owens: The 25^th amendment needs to be invoked. He is a genocidal lunatic. Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.

The perpetually confused Joe Rogan and Theo Von had the following exchange:

Rogan

I’m confused. I can’t believe we went to this war. When we started bombing Iran, I was like, “This can’t be true.”

Von

And what about Lebanon now?

Rogan

Well, they’re trying to, supposedly, they’re trying to stop the terrorists.

Von

That’s crazy though if you’re the fucking terrorist.

And after calling for the 25^th amendment and calling Donald’s threat of genocide “evil and madness,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said:

The American people have to open their eyes and deal with reality and deal with truth. And the truth is, look, you may have supported [Donald] for 10 years like I did and like you have, but this is not the same man. This is not the same man that we supported.

Where to start? Well, let’s start here: Donald is exactly the same person now as he was five decades ago—he was never fit to lead this country. And every single one of those people helped get us to Donald Trump. Now that Donald’s decline is undeniable and his behavior and rhetoric are increasingly unstable, they see the writing on the wall, they’ve decided that it’s in their best interest to turn against the person they’ve been loyal to for the last decade.

I’m glad that they are speaking out even if for the most self-serving reasons because tens of millions of people are still influenced by the likes of Rogan and Carlson and Owens; if they can open some eyes, that’s a good thing. Having said that, however, we cannot allow any of them to be rehabilitated or given credit for saying the right thing. They are the worst of us—racists, Christian Nationalists, fascists—most of whom have been spreading hatred, bigotry, and propaganda long before Donald won the 2016 election.

Then there’s the reality that Donald has done plenty of evil and mad things since getting into the White House. During his first term, he implemented the child separation policy and the Muslim ban; he mishandled the COVID pandemic so maliciously that over 400,000 Americans died unnecessarily; he spread the Big Lie about the 2020 election; and incited an insurrection against his own government. In the last fourteen months, DOGE, under his watch, pulled funding from USAID which has resulted, thus far, in the unnecessary deaths of 700,000 people, including 400,000 children; ICE and CBP agents have murdered American citizens, immigrants, and undocumented workers in American cities; and he’s illegally ordered the U.S. military to blow up boats in the Caribbean Sea. This is not even close to being an exhaustive list. The high-profile loyalists who cheered Donald on while he was committing all of those horrors can spare me their outrage.

This shift towards directly criticizing Donald and calling for his ouster may be the first domino to fall within the MAGA base. It seems as if Greene’s public challenges to Donald, along with the insistence of a handful of Republicans in the House of Representatives that the Epstein files be released against Donald’s explicit wishes, may embolden other Republicans who’ve been questioning Donald’s judgment behind the scenes for years now.

The whole world is watching as Donald’s threats become increasingly desperate and extreme, but they’re also watching as the American system proves itself to be completely incapable of reining him in. For our allies, Donald is not the problem, in this instance—America is. The stakes could not be higher and to insulate ourselves and the world from further harm, the best thing that could happen is for Donald Trump to be boxed in and weakened to the point of irrelevance.

The increasing chorus of dissenting voices is chipping away at the myth that Donald is forever impervious to negative publicity, invulnerable to criticism, and incapable of being held accountable. The more people on the right that speak out, the closer we get to the tipping point. Just as Mike Campbell, a character in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises went bankrupt “gradually, then suddenly,” Donald may lose his grip on power more quickly if we can reach a critical mass of dissent.