Donald Trump and National Review’s William F Buckley Jr. (Getty Images)
“Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court, ever. You can disagree with it, within the bounds of legal ethics, you can criticize it, you can appeal it, or you can resign,” - Republican Senator John Kennedy, to judicial nominees last Wednesday.
The Tate brothers — an anti-woke online duo of rapey, depraved misogynists — treat women as inferior sex objects, beat them, tape their sexploitations, and brag about it. Andrew Tate recently tweeted: “Fact. Women are sex workers.” Detained by Romanian authorities after charges of sex trafficking, Andrew Tate explained why he held out hope they could soon return to abusing women in the US:
The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever.
I mention this not because I’m shocked. The two most prominent men in the Trump administration, after all, have either regularly “grabbed women by the pussy” or sired 13 kids from four different mothers — and evangelicals love them all the more. So of course, the Tates are beloved by Candace Owens, Benny Johnson, Richard Grenell, among other MAGA luminaries.
I mention it solely because some on the right actually don’t like the Tates at all. Ben Shapiro has fumed: “The right should DUMP Andrew Tate.” Chris Rufo called him “a common pimp with social media following.” Washington Examiner’s Kimberly Ross thundered: “The Left and Right don’t agree on much. But when it comes to a misogynistic predator such as Tate, we can agree on this: We don’t need more like him.” Senator Josh Hawley just said, “I don’t think conservatives should be glorifying this guy at all.” Super-rightist Pedro Gonzalez agreed: “Andrew Tate is a scumbag. Whatever cultural forces propelled his rise, Trumpworld’s embrace of him is disgusting and wrong.” And yesterday, Ron DeSantis told the Tates they weren’t welcome in Florida.
I know this is not exactly a big ask: distancing from alleged rapists and human traffickers. But in the current cult-like climate, as the Trump peeps repeatedly huff their own methane, and the crazies appear to be pushing on countless open doors, it’s something. (I wish there had been similar liberal call-outs of left-extremists under Biden at the very start.) And it’s not the only sign of internal, conservative resistance to a reactionary, lawless populism.
So let us now praise National Review, whose writers Ed Whelan, Andrew McCarthy, Charles CW Cooke, and executive editor Mark Antonio Wright have consistently called out Trump’s rhetorical assaults on core American values. Substacker Richard Hanania has been on a roll as well, decrying the dumbness of the Muskovites: “Coming around to the idea that it’s all just stupidity. I can’t think of any obvious or 4d chess reason why you would stop funding biomedical research.” Me neither.
Among veterans on this lonely path: Jonah Goldberg, George Will, David Brooks, and David French (the latter somewhat defanged by being coopted as the NYT’s darling). And let’s also note Jack Goldsmith’s erudite deconstructions of Trump’s violations of even unitary executive theory, rightly understood. On the president’s refusal to enforce the law in the TikTok case:
Mr Trump’s claimed discretion to not enforce statutes ... turns his constitutional duty to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” on its head and undermines Congress’s core constitutional power.
Goldsmith has also devastated Trump’s attempt to remove all processes ensuring that his actions as president are, you know, legal. No one can call Goldsmith a wuss when it comes to executive power. He’s largely in favor of an expansive view. But: “Trump’s early political and messaging wins on executive orders are signaling a cavalier-about-the-law presidency that will make it hard for Trump to prevail before the unitarians on the Supreme Court for many of his aggressive Article II actions.”
Then there is Danielle Sassoon, a Federalist Society, Scalia-groomed lawyer whose commitment to the rule of law meant she chose to resign rather than dismiss a valid corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams — as a quid pro quo for Adams’ support for Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Let’s list and name some of the other DOJ resisters to this bald-faced corruption of the law: John Keller, Kevin Driscoll, Ryan Crosswell, and Hagan Scotten. From Scotten’s resignation letter:
No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives ... I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion [to dismiss the Adams case]. But it was never going to be me.
Again: Scotten is a former clerk for Kavanaugh and Roberts, and a Special Forces vet with two bronze stars. Not exactly an MSNBC viewer. Other conservative legal voices have also condemned the dirty Adams deal: Ed Whelan, who writes a regular feature for National Review called “This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism,” and Andrew McCarthy, a legendary rightwing legal voice. Whelan has been very impressive. Again: this isn’t a hard case. If Trump wanted to do a quid pro quo with Adams, he could have once again abused his pardon power — which, though gross, would still be constitutional. Instead he and his goons at his DOJ trampled on the integrity of the legal system.
Other conservatives have been decrying the “woke right,” by which they mean those so caught up in their far-right bubble that they risk jeopardizing the entire project of restraining the left. Two honorable mentions: Bari Weiss’ speech at the ARC conference in London, raising alarm about Tate-like excesses; and James Lindsay, a constant wild card, who nonetheless sees the same groupthink, cultish behavior, and intolerance on the right that we saw on the woke left under Biden. Here’s Lindsay, for example, on Bannon’s kinda-Nazi salute:
Either you disapprove and look prudish or Woke, or you let it fly as part of an escalating provocation cycle. We’ve seen this tactic before. It’s not better when “we” do it.
Speaking of Bannon, we also have his rather splendid open-warfare on Musk, calling him a “truly evil person” and, even worse, a “parasitic illegal immigrant.” Do you recall any such open dissent by centrist liberals as the Biden era began its surge to the far left?
The WSJ, the highest quality right-of-center paper, has also been airing dissent on a regular, intelligent basis. Today alone, in a Trump symposium, you’ll find one regular columnist decrying the chaos of Musk’s appointment, another worrying about Trump’s military designs on Panama, another that, “under this administration, for better or worse, it’s not clear there is a script,” and another that the administration is opening “the Overton window in ways good and bad.” The paper openly campaigns against Trump’s tariffs. Its chief political columnist, Kimberley Strassel, wrote this week:
Influential Trump supporters are honing their own methods for stamping out even mild disagreement with the president’s approach rally online supporters to pile on, label the target a member of the “uniparty” or the “establishment,” threaten a primary … It’s a recipe for intellectual stagnation. It’s a departure from the modern conservative movement, which has been defined by its innovative ideas…
This week, the WSJ’s foreign policy columnist also took a serious shot:
MAGA promises a realism-based approach to foreign policy. What Messrs. Musk and Vance delivered in Germany is almost exactly the opposite.
Trump supporter Rod Dreher is against the looming tax and Medicaid cuts: “They will come to regret this.” Pedro Gonzalez is just as concerned about shutting down the CFPB: “Is it ‘America First’ to let corporations scam Americans and engage in predatory practices with impunity? Does that feel like ‘winning’ in the ‘Good Timeline’?”
Last but not entirely least is the Babylon Bee, the right’s attempt to replicate The Onion. Once cringe, it is now serving up headlines like this one on the Tate affair: “Conservatism Saved As Muslim Sex Trafficker Brought Back To U.S.,” and this one on the Trump budget: “Republicans Clarify That Deficit Spending Only A Problem When Democrats Do It.” As the Onion became super lame/woke/unfunny, the BB is actually scoring some hits against its own side. Imagine, say, Stephen Colbert ever doing such a thing with the Biden administration. Unthinkable.
Don’t get me wrong. These exceptions prove the rule of total capitulation to Trump and Musk. The way AG Bondi and her deranged deputy, Emil Bove, bungled the Adams case and their desire to weaponize the DOJ to punish Trump’s enemies, reflects the degenerate reactionism of this era.
But this is the very beginning of the second-term roller-coaster ride, the moment when all doubts are supposed to be set aside by the faithful exulting in the honeymoon. And these small acts of conservative defiance matter. They are putting on record all of Trump’s overreach, in a manner unknown among dissident Democrats when Biden began his woke Kulturkampf. They keep the conservative tradition alive, even as most of the GOP abandons it in favor of strongman, tech-bro authoritarianism. That’s something. And when in the future we begin to undo the madness of this moment, it will, unlike Trump’s derangement, age remarkably well.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my talk with Christopher Caldwell on Trump and Europe; reader dissents over Trump’s turn on Ukraine and NATO; ten notable quotes from the week in news, including two Yglesias Awards; 14 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of Larry David losing it; a soaring view from a window in Zermatt; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
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I have given in, after getting halfway through your great discussion with John Gray and then getting cut off. I remembered what a great interviewer you are and wanted to hear more, so I subscribed. Please keep up the good work!
Back On The Dishcast: Christopher Caldwell
Chris — an old friend and, in my view, one of the sharpest right-of-center writers in journalism — returns to the Dishcast for his third appearance. He’s a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a contributing editor to the Claremont Review of Books, a contributing writer for the NYT, and a member of the editorial committee of the French quarterly Commentaire. We covered his book The Age of Entitlement on the pod in 2021, and in 2023 he came back to talk European politics. This week I wanted to talk to a Trump supporter as we survey the first month. And we hashed a lot out.
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the vandalism of DOGE, and why Chris thinks Trump has been more consequential than Obama on policy. That link also takes you to commentary on our recent episodes with Yoni Appelbaum on zoning, Jon Rauch on Christianism, and Ross Douthat on God and the universe. Plus, Truman in the pod studio.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Nick Denton on China and AI, Francis Collins on faith and science, Michael Lewis on government service, Douglas Murray on Israel and Gaza, Ian Buruma on Spinoza, Michael Joseph Gross on bodybuilding, and the great and powerful Mike White, of White Lotus fame.
Please send any guest recs and pod dissents to dish@andrewsullivan.com. From a happy subscriber:
I appreciate how unlikely it is that this email will reach you personally, but emails are free, so I thought I would try. Starting many years ago, I would occasionally read the Dish. As a conservative person coming up through an Ivy League education, it was refreshing to hear an intelligent person express a perspective lucidly and calmly. Then I came upon your podcast about a year ago, and now I am a regular — and a paid subscriber! I look forward to the pod every Friday, often as my companion on a drive up to New Hampshire. The combination of experience, common sense, decency, humor, and intelligence is hard to fine.
The obvious explanation is that Trump is doing what Trump does when negotiating: starting with maximalist nonsense before haggling down. Zelensky needs to be bargained out of his maximalist insistence on not negotiating peace with someone evil. (Periodic reminder: peace negotiations are always with someone evil.) Putin needs to be buttered up to get him to the table. I still want Putin’s head on a pike outside the Hague, but Vance is right on the need for facing facts on the ground.
Well, we’ll see, won’t we? If all this turns out okay, I’ll be happy to recognize it. But I don’t think Trump is operating on some high level 4D Chess negotiating strategy. I think he’s winging it.
Read five more dissents here, along with my replies. As always, please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. And follow more Dish discussion on my Substack Notes feed.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the policy backlash against Trump, Nazi-like salutes, and measles. Below are a few examples:
The separation of powers is complicated by independent agencies.
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month sub if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the VFYW). Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. From last week’s contest:
This is one of the more exotic locales VFYW has visited since I’ve been sleuthing. We’re looking out from the top floor of the Ubumwe Grande Hotel, and the view is of the Hôtel des Mille Collines — the actual “Hotel Rwanda” of 2004 movie fame. To recap: the hotel became a refuge during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994:
What happened? During the genocide, Hutu extremists massacred an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in just 100 days.
Why is the hotel famous? Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager, sheltered over 1,200 people, using bribes and diplomacy to keep them safe from militias.
The real story vs. the movie? While Hotel Rwanda dramatized events, survivors have mixed opinions about Rusesabagina’s role — some see him as a hero, others as opportunistic.
What happened to Rusesabagina? He later became a government critic and was arrested in 2020 under controversial circumstances but was released in 2023 after international pressure.
Today, Hôtel des Mille Collines is still a functioning luxury hotel in Kigali, known more for its history than its amenities. I tried something new this week, asking AI to create a mural depicting Rwanda’s journey of resilience through the Hotel Rwanda episode and progress since:
Here’s a quick entry from the upcoming contest results:
OMG this looks so much like a condo in Ketchum, Idaho, near Sun Valley. I don’t have time to further sleuth, but I’m going on gut — and a fun trip there last summer :)
