Our Nazi-Agnostic Vice PresidentCan’t the hard-core anitsemites, the Christian Zionists, and the right-wing Jews all get along?
We got some unexpectedly great economic news this morning: Inflation-adjusted GDP grew at a 4.3 percent annualized rate in the third quarter of this year, a much stronger than expected number. (The release of the numbers, like so much economic data recently, was delayed by the government shutdown earlier this year.) This apparent strong growth stands in odd contrast to other, murkier economic indicators we’ve gotten recently, most notably a rise in the unemployment rate. But as they teach in business school: Growing is better than shrinking! A little bookkeeping: No Morning Shots tomorrow or Thursday. A very merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Happy Tuesday.
MAGA Is Becoming a Leaderless Cultby Andrew Egger In recent weeks, right-wing infotainers have spent more and more of their time fighting over an existential question: Are neo-Nazis and hardcore antisemitic conspiracy theorists welcome in the MAGA movement? This weekend, Vice President JD Vance weighed in twice on the matter—once in each direction. On Sunday, Vance spoke at Turning Point USA’s annual conference, AmericaFest, where he scolded attendees to set aside what divides them to focus on fighting the left. “When I say that I’m going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you. Each and every one,” he told the crowd. “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests.”¹ And yet there remain some purity tests Vance seems at least half-heartedly willing to enforce. In an interview with UnHerd released yesterday, Vance finally took aim at one of the leading lights of the right’s burgeoning neo-Nazi faction. “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States. . . . Antisemitism and all forms of ethnic hatred have no place in the conservative movement.” There’s a lot to unpack in Vance’s position, which seems facially unsustainable and self-defeating.² If there’s no place on the right for neo-Nazis, but the neo-Nazis are unwilling to self-deport from the coalition, then the only way to get them out is for the rest of the coalition to enforce a no-Nazis standard—exactly the sort of “self-defeating purity test” Vance loves to denounce. (It’s also worth noting that Vance isn’t exactly walking the walk here: The White House still employs Paul Ingrassia, a raging bigot with a self-described “Nazi streak.”) But the most salient fact about Vance’s stance isn’t that it’s nonsensical. It’s that nobody he’s talking to is paying it much attention. As our colleague Will Sommer reports, other MAGA personalities spent their stage time at AmericaFest escalating the fight rather than making nice. Ben Shapiro fiercely denounced the right’s open antisemites and looniest conspiracy cranks, from Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly. And the woolier faction punched back: Shapiro is “like a cancer” on the movement,” Steve Bannon told the AmericaFest crowd, “and that cancer spreads.” It doesn’t matter how many times Vance and Co. issue mealy-mouthed calls for “unity” against the left. The differences they’re trying to paper over are foundational and ever-present. How are right-wing Jews supposed to share a coalition with people who feel that every political problem can ultimately be traced back to Jewish treachery? There’s one more striking thing to note here. While the various combatants in this MAGA civil war seem happy to ignore JD Vance’s exhortations, there’s someone else who you could imagine them paying a bit more attention to. But Donald Trump has shown himself completely incurious about the fight for the soul of the movement he built. Last month, Trump was asked to weigh in after Carlson’s softball interview of Fuentes—one of the sparks that helped ignite the current flame. But Trump, as usual, seemed incapable of approaching the question except through the usual lens of his own vanity: “Well, I found him to be good,” Trump said of Carlson. “I mean, he said good things about me over the years. . . . I did an interview with him, we were at 300 million hits.” The president’s monomania has helped give him unprecedented control over the present state of his party. Over the last decade, it gradually dawned on Republicans that there were no circumstances in which Trump would tolerate dissent, precisely because there was no standard for Republican policy or practice he cared about beyond “are they with Trump or not?” Quickly or gradually, they all either left or fell in line. But that monomania is a double-edged sword. The exact traits that have given Trump such historic control over the movement’s present are also now leaving Trump superfluous to the movement’s future. He can’t weigh in on questions about what comes after him because it’s not clear he’s even capable of grasping the concept of an “after.” “MAGA was my idea,” Trump said last month. “MAGA was nobody else’s idea.” And what it may turn into later doesn’t seem to be any of his concern. Justice . . . and Schadenfreudeby William Kristol Yesterday, at Mar-a-Lago, in response to a question about the release of the Epstein files, Donald Trump showed annoyance. “I thought this was finished,” he complained. “A lot of people are very angry that this continues.” And, he elaborated, he was particularly upset about the innocent people who are being hurt. “You probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago—many years ago. And they’re highly respected bankers and lawyers and others.” These people, Trump made clear, are allegedly innocent friends of Epstein, bankers and lawyers and the like, whose reputations could be tarnished by documents being released. Not to mention Trump himself, who appears many times in the latest tranche of documents: on Epstein’s plane and at parties each man hosted. I was pleased to see Trump unhappy. Was that wrong of me? In this Christmas season of peace on earth and good will to all men, should one resist being cheered up by the discomfort of another—even if that other is one Donald J. Trump? Nah. Here’s why. Trump went out of his way yesterday to express concern for supposedly innocent big shots who might take a reputational hit from being mentioned in the Epstein files. But Trump expressed not a word of sympathy for Epstein’s victims. Not a word. In fact, through this whole process, has Trump ever shown any concern or empathy for Epstein’s victims, for what they endured and how they have subsequently been treated by the government? Trump can’t bring himself to pretend, even for a minute, to empathize with those who were victimized by this monster, who was his good friend. So I make no apologies for taking some pleasure in Trump’s discomfort. It’s not enough, God knows, to balance the scales of justice, but it’s a start. It also suggests that Trump knows his coverup is not going well. That’s partly because it’s being carried out in such a shambolic way. Yesterday afternoon, for example, a tranche of the Epstein files were briefly posted on the Justice Department’s website. They were at a link that was not immediately visible, but sleuths were able to find it. The URL corresponded to the next set of documents to be released. Then they all disappeared without explanation. So documents are appearing (sort of) and then disappearing. Not exactly a confidence-inspiring process. But beyond that, yesterday’s ghostly documents were a useful reminder of an important fact: Just how much has not been released. As Politico explains:
So these references in yesterday’s documents are yet another indication of just how much is being held back. And this is to say nothing of the fact that we know of many other documents we also haven’t seen, such as the 60-count draft indictment of Epstein from 2008 and a raft of victim statements that the victims want made public. A cover-up that highlights how much important material is still being covered up isn’t an effective coverup at all. Which is a good thing. And if that’s making Trump unhappy? I kind of think that’s a good thing, too. Happy holidays! AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick HitsIT’S THE ‘CLUTTER,’ HONEST: Donald Trump has been citing “national security” as a pretext for doing whatever he already wanted to do since early in his first term. But yesterday, we got perhaps the most egregious example yet of this excuse. The White House announced it would immediately halt all leases for off-shore wind projects, claiming that such installations created unacceptable radar “clutter.” The announcement comes just weeks after a federal judge threw out a Trump executive memo from January ordering a halt to all leasing for wind projects—the same order, in other words, minus the tacked-on national-security fig leaf. We’re sure that’s just a coincidence. Trump has long fumed against wind power for reasons that have nothing to do with national security. They even predate his term as president: He spent the early 2010s locked in an ultimately fruitless court battle to prevent the construction of wind turbines near his coastside Aberdeenshire golf course in Scotland. For years, he has groused that wind power is unreliable: “Darling, I would like to watch the president on television tonight,” he’s often said at campaign rallies. “Honey, I don’t think we’ll be able to—the wind is not blowing.” Funnily enough, he didn’t mention national security issues during these tirades. Wind-power trade groups reacted to the news with unsurprising hostility. National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito told Axios that the national-security ramifications of the offshore projects had already been assessed as part of a “rigorous” regulatory process, and said that “every project under construction has already undergone review by the Department of Defense with no objections.” But the transparent nonsense of Trump’s national-security gambit barely matters, at least in the short term. The courts may catch up eventually or they may not—but in the meantime, Trump has dealt another real blow to America’s renewables industry. THE RENAMINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES: When the White House scheduled a presidential announcement yesterday afternoon that would also feature Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, journalists across D.C. pricked up their ears: Was some news forthcoming about America’s rapidly intensifying hostilities toward Venezuela? No, it turned out. The announcement was for something far more important: Another thing Donald Trump realized he could slap his own name on. Specifically, a new “Trump-class” battleship for the Navy’s new “Golden Fleet.” The Wall Street Journal has more:
To which we say: Hey, shut up, Mark! All the president wants is a little recognition for a job well done in the form of his name on a heap of $5 billion warships, and here you are nit-picking about minutiae like “will these ships actually make our military more lethal and Americans safer.” Of course they’ll make Americans safer! If Trump doesn’t care about national security, what’s he going after those wind farms for? Cheap Shots
1 Fact check: False. 2 It’s remarkable, for one thing, that Vance seems incapable of taking a swing at Fuentes, who regularly calls him a “race traitor” and refers to his wife with ethnic slurs, without adding a spoonful of sugar for his MAGA-addled listeners in the form of a bonus crack at Jen Psaki. You’re a free subscriber to The Bulwark—the largest pro-democracy news and analysis bundle on Substack. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and to access ad-free and member-only shows, become a paying subscriber.We’re going to send you a lot of content—newsletters and alerts for shows so you can read and watch on your schedule. Don’t care for so much email? You can update your personal email preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here. Having trouble with something related to your account? Check out our constantly-updated FAQ, which likely has an answer for you.
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