Comments

Norman Podhoretz on Donald Trump and ex-friends — 62 Comments

1. I think he may have tempered his son’s writing on this subject. JP would have also had to contend with his brother-in-law, who accepted a position in the administration.

   Topical commentary was less a part of Commentary‘s book of business than it was for the other starboard opinion magazines and the odious Jennifer Rubin had decamped elsewhere ‘ere Trump went down the escalator. The Weekly Standard went over the cliff and was shut down by its patron and National Review took to pretenses that fooled fewer and fewer people. Commentary could simply redistribute it’s devotion of attention between its usual array of subjects. (The American Spectator and Human Events are not hostile to Trump).

2. “…It really disgusted me. I just thought it had no objective correlative… They called them dishonorable, or opportunists, or cowards…”

   If anyone is a bit confused (as was I) by the incongruous “them” (in “… They called them…”), which happens to be the quote, together with the confusing ellipses, taken directly from the linked-to Wikipedia article, here’s the original quote that Wikipedia took from the Claremont Review interview with Podhoretz:

   “…It really disgusted me. I just thought it had no objective correlative. You could think that he was unfit for office—I could understand that—but my ex-friends’ revulsion was always accompanied by attacks on the people who supported him. They called them dishonorable, or opportunists, or cowards….” [my emphasis]

   So…”them” is “the people who supported [Trump]”, which would include Podhoretz.

   Nice to see he’s “…still [sane] after all these years…”

3. I always thought that JPod’s rejection of Trump was a tremendous failure on the former’s part.
   It’s as though he was totally oblivious to the 24/7 hatchet job that the corrupt media was perpetrating.
   As though he believed them. (Or at least was persuaded.)

   I kinda took it personally (disclaimer: I grew up reading that mag.): How could ANYONE coming from his background, as intelligent and perceptive as he was and with his credentials DO something like that?
   And so, I perceived an obvious disconnect there. Something just wasn’t clicking.

   (Of course the “disconnect” could well have been my own….)

   OTOH, I don’t believe one would be mistaken were one to believe that he has EXTREME buyer’s remorse…which will become greater still when “Biden”‘s planned shafting of Israel—which should have been apparent/obvious/a no-brainer from the get-go—“materializes”…

4. Norman Podhoretz is a man of insight, honor and intellectual courage.

5. Barry Meislin:

   JPod is the son of Norman P, and Bill Kristol is the son of Irving K. In other words, both are the sons of fathers who were the trailblazers and the changers, and although both sons are very smart both fathers are/were more brilliant. The fathers also have a different personal history than the sons, having come up in a different era as liberals and then becoming changers and trailblazers in some ways. The sons were born into it, which is a whole ‘nother thing. My guess is that the fathers understood the “common man” and therefore Trump’s appeal much better than the sons ever did, because of their different personal history.

   Of course, Irving Kristol died in 2009, long before Trump’s presidency, so I’m just imagining his response would have been more like Norman Podhoretz’s. I don’t really know.

6. Indeed, he’s a fighter, a scrapper, not afraid to state his views and lose friends—good friends—because of it.

   And no doubt this are the qualities he saw in Trump, along with the latter’s love of America…which is one HYUGE reason why Trump is so despised by so many.

   Loving one’s country is so, so uncouth.
   Wanting it destroyed is so, so…sophisticated, clever, intelligent, selfless and compassionate (even if there be many Democratic Party supporters who would deny this is why they loathe him….)

7. I got the impression that JPod was, in 2020, totally browned off at Trump and voted accordingly. Perhaps I’m wrong about that. (If so, I owe him a rather profound apology…)

   Kristol the younger has proven himself to be a total fruitcake, unfortunately so because he did make sense…once upon a time. (OMMV)

   AD referred above (in passing), I believe, to Matthew Continetti, whom I’ve always enjoyed reading and highly respect for his views and his articulate style. (Though whereas I once used to read him regularly, I hardly read him any more…but when I do, I’m not disappointed.)

   (One wonders what the Kristol extended family dinners might be like…assuming these still happen…)

8. IMO, Norman Podhoretz produced an interesting publication and wrote an occasional essay worth reading, but his usual fare was heavily laden with inside-baseball that was somewhat embarrassing to read. Supposedly, his first love was literary criticism, which, for some reason, he gave up to write about politics (as well as autobiographical subjects). IMO, he and his wife should have steered their son to a different career; one thing John Podhoretz can do well is write book reviews, but you cannot earn a living at that. Their daughter Naomi has produced some sensible work in the past, but she gave up writing for publication a generation ago to work for a public relations firm. Their daughter Ruth settled in Israel in 1977 and writes only for Israeli publications. Rachel did some blogging but that’s all.

   Irving Kristol performed well at getting ideas into circulation and was a sensible essayist. His wife was a prominent historian who kept writing past 90. His son elected to eschew an academic career in favor of opinion journalism (punctuated with bouts working for politicians). I think that decision was regrettable.

9. AD referred above (in passing), I believe, to Matthew Continetti

   I was referring to Elliot Abrams, NP’s son-in-law. Matthew Continetti is Wm. Kristol’s son-in-law.

10. Thanks for the correction.
    (It’s beginning to look like European houses of royalty…well, not quite.)

11. An interesting phrase is Podhoretz’ description of Trump as “an unworthy vessel chosen by God”. It seems like a dig at Trump but that is not consistent with his overall admiration for Trump. So I’m thinking it is some kind of literary reference, possibly Biblical. Do you neo or anyone else here have some insight?

12. FOAF:

    I’ve often heard Trump supporters refer to him in much the same way, especially if they are believers. I don’t know whether Podhoretz is a believer, but I think he means that Trump is of course a flawed human being and not a saint and would seem on the surface to be an unlikely such choice, but that the deity works in mysterious ways.

13. @FOAF: In a Ricochet interview I heard, he was explicit that he had in mind King David.

14. “…unworthy vessel…”

    Well, it’s not exactly an uncommon theme. E.g.,
    Moses believed he was unworthy and tried to slip out of his assigned role;
    Ditto Jeremiah;
    Ditto Isaiah.
    And of course Jonah fled from his role, but his reason was he didn’t feel that the Ninevites deserved forgiveness, not because he felt he was unworthy…so he had a few things to learn along the way, as it were.
    There may be others examples

    So Podhoretz is employing a well-worn trope.

    (To be sure, I don’t believe that DJT himself ever believed HE was an unworthy vessel….well, maybe in church on certain occasions…)

    …Actually, the same theme could be applied to the whole nation of Israel, e.g.,
    “Even though we are unworthy, remember our three forefathers and forgive us because of their attributes and your love for them” or…
    “Forgive us not because we deserve to be forgiven but to honor Your holy Name”—which can be expanded to: “…and forgive us so the nations of the world will not question Your power (if You allow our destruction)” and/or “…so that the nations of the world will not mock You with the claim that You took Israel out of Egypt but were not able to save them from destruction later on” (or “…but enabled them to be destroyed later on”).
    Etc.

15. FOAF: “an unworthy vessel chosen by God. It seems like a dig at Trump.”
    It might be a dig at neverTrumpers who are looking for that perfect candidate who won’t embarrass us, won’t be made fun of by our friends on the left. Maybe the neverTrumpers have to reconcile themselves to the fact that God (or the fates) didn’t choose them to lead us. He chose Trump. That seems like an awfully difficult idea for the neverTrumpers to wrap their heads around.

16. One of the problems with deciphering Trump hate is that so much of it is bound up in class ego and anxiety and America has a fairly poor vocabulary for such things. I recently read some NeverTrump doofus on Twitter blast Trump as a “clown” who “never cared about America.”

    “Clown?” Okay. “Never cared about America?’ So he’s spent years of his life, endured an avalanche of abuse and harassment, and lost hundreds of millions of dollars in personal wealth for…what? Did he have a bet with Warren Buffet or something?

    These people look at Donald Trump and see someone who is not like them. The idea that someone who is not like them would be President is too much to handle. That’s why they almost always lash out at Trump supporters with the same or even worse venom.

    Mike

17. Ummm….

    Trump is, basically, America writ to the individual man. He’s a brash, egotistical upstart, who is somewhat justified in his high opinion of himself and his abilities because of his accomplishments. Flawed, imperfect, and capable of stupidity, he still cares more than one might think, and definitely more than most others in his position of comfort and power, and expresses that care in a surprising number of ways. He routinely demonstrates true Noblesse-Oblige, a largely forgotten quality among the Power Elites. He is somewhat self-made, having been given a fairly decent starting point by his father (akin to that which the USA was given by England).

    These people HATE America.. How could they possibly, by any stretch of the imagining, not also hate Trump? Seriously.

18. Does anyone here know any republican never-trumpers? Because I don’t and I know a lot of republicans. Maybe I’m a statistical fluke, but I suspect the liberal press gives a lot of airtime to the few they can and would like you to believe they’re everywhere.

19. Mike Plaiss, I agree. With this caveat – the neverTrumpers are in Congress, and in the opinion business. I don’t recall this being true with Reagan.

20. ObloodyHell as the right of it.

    “Does anyone here know any republican never-trumpers?” Mike Plaiss

    I do not know of any personally. However, given that out of 206 House Republicans, only 57 voted against the $40 Billion in ‘aid’ to Ukraine bill, it seems safe to use those percentages as indicative of the percent of RINOs in the House. Which begs the question; what is the difference between a RINO and a never-Trumper?

    Texas Rep Chip Roy raged against another bill the House must vote on with no time to read the bill…

    Glenn Greenwald; “Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Quickly Raised it to $40B. Who Benefits?”
    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/biden-wanted-33b-more-for-ukraine?s=r

21. Mike Plaiss, yes, I know a fair number of Republicans who disdain Trump and refused to vote for him. One wrote in Carly Fiorino for 2016 general election, and didn’t vote at all in 2020.

    I voted for him both times, but have to confess that I am weary of his constant drama and think his time has passed. He started out working for us, but seems to have drifted into it all being about him, ultimately, and I won’t tolerate that because it results in incompetence. The People must be sovereign. Plus his meddling in my state’s primaries looks like it will result in throwing away two very winnable offices in November, to two very left-wing Democrats.

22. I clicked through and bought both Podhoretz books on kindle (hopefully with a percentage going to this blog). I tried doing the same with Midge Decter – particularly An Old Wife’s Tale and Liberal Parents, Radical Children. Nothing written by her is available on kindle. Such a shame.

23. I was able to buy a book called Midge and Decker (I had misspelled her name) which seems to be a mystery about horse racing. Scott Adams must be right. We are living in a simulation.

24. Does anyone here know any republican never-trumpers? Because I don’t and I know a lot of republicans. Maybe I’m a statistical fluke, but I suspect the liberal press gives a lot of airtime to the few they can and would like you to believe they’re everywhere.

    I think you’re absolutely right. The thing is, there’s an irreducible share of self-identified Republicans dissatisfied with the Republican president of the day. It runs to around 8% of the total, who, presumably, have various reasons for being dissatisfied. It wasn’t any more than that with Trump. How Trump differs is that he offends the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus and much of the conservamedia. They’re not demographically significant, but the politicians and lobbyists have influence and the media types are at least obtrusive.

    I have a cousin who despises Trump and was furious with her son for voting for him. She’s never been someone who was particularly engagé in regard to politics and her attention tends to be concentric so she thinks about local government and the school district before she thinks about anything else. I think she’s generally voted Republican over the years. Her complaint has been that Trump is ‘divisive’. I’m quite fond of her in meatspace, so I’m not critiquing her thinking; I’ll let her son fail to make the case. (She’s 70 years old and a finished product). That’s the closest I’ve been to a NeverTrumper.

25. Eva Marie,

    The press was certainly not pro-Reagan, nor were many Republican congress-critters. However, unlike Trump, Reagan was extremely good at communicating and working with adversaries. Also, Reagan was great at by-passing the Press and getting his message to the people. Trump was certainly good at by-passing the Press, but Reagan had much more finesse.

26. For years I have listened to the GLoP podcast on Ricochet. About once a month Rob Long, Jonah Goldberg and John Podhoretz get together and chat for about 45 minutes. There is a strong emphasis on entertainment, but they do get into politics.

    My impression was Podhoretz voted for Trump in the last election, but not in 2016. As most here undoubtedly know, Goldberg hates Trump and often goes off on rants (hinged and unhinged), but Podhoretz often defended Trump. John Podhoretz definitely recognized that Israel had no greater friend in Washington and would laud praise when it was due.

27. My impression of John Podhoretz is the same as Rufus T. Firefly’s.

28. Mike Plaiss:

    I barely know any Republicans, much less any Republican NeverTrumpers.

    I do think a high percentage of the world’s Republican NeverTrumpers are in the media biz.

29. “I barely know any Republicans” neo

    Personal anomaly or northeastern city norm?

30. Geoffrey:

    Have you paid attention all these years when neo has told us about her family, social setting, extended family, where she grew up? How family ties and deep social ties make changing fundamental political orientation a difficult thing? Much less where she lives and lived.

    “Pay attention, boy!” – Foghorn Leghorn

31. But you understand their philosophy thafs the important thing the problem is that there is malware that prevents many people from seeing reality clearly thaf accepts deranged or demonic notions and rejects ones that have stood the test of time

32. Onr thing that has changed in the crawl on many cable channels lesley stahl to cite one jurassic figure used to complain the dems couldnt lie about reagans record, now they can counter the message in real time and they refuse to take the same angle against their own

33. I haven’t been able to be quite so devoted to this blog as I would like and was for many many yrs., but reading the comments to this post tonight was so enjoyable. It reminded me of the real conversations regular readers always had on Neo’s blog. A true community – in some cases almost family – in which readers got to “know” one another and often looked forward to what each other had to say. Ditto re: Neo w/ whom some of us expanded our conversations… My point is the conversational interaction which I find to be rather rare elsewhere on the Internet. There’s a big difference between a comment in response to some statement, and engaged readers literally writing to one another in conversation as part of a community. I could not resist from the first time I stumbled upon Neo’s blog Neo’s beautiful writing, her breadth of knowledge and great efforts to shake things up and keep interesting by posting on diverse subjects (primarily related to the arts) in addition to the current events of our times about which must of us have something to say.
    (ie Does anyone remember “Jello art” – serious art using Jello as medium- which I know Neo introduced me to? This might be her (artist) though pcs. shown here are not familiar https://www.dogonews.com/2010/12/21/the-amazing-jell-o-sculptor
    or maybe this: (name sounds more familiar)
    https://youtu.be/-jjtk2_QRMw
    Neo?

    Btw, for what it’s worth, one of the things I always did and still do believe is that Donald Trump does indeed love this country! And his support of the military, veterans, police… were all extensions of that deep abiding love. I learned to turn off the “noise” and the volume on his sometimes (frequent?) less than artful (and sometimes cringeworthy) pronouncements, because of this, and, of course, the policies that were indeed right for this country and are sorely missed by many today! Before the pandemic, there seemed to be no argument that Trump was a shoe-in for re-election regardless of which side of the aisle one favored. Perhaps tacit (and reluctant in some quarters) agreement that his policies were indeed benefiting our country? (We will never know if his haters would have dared vote for him in the privacy of the voting booth, sadly, but just the admission that most thought no one else could beat him, despite the DNC’s & their PR henchmen of the MSM best efforts to smear him was some kind of victory. Until the gift of COVID)

    Anyway, thanks to all for taking me back to the community, which still has me coming back whenever I can.
    Special thanks to Neo of course!

34. Rufus T. Firefly, the press may not have been pro Reagan but I don’t remember that there were any Republicans in politics or the conservative press who were neverReaganites. National Review, George Will, TV Guide, William Safire all supported Reagan. I can’t think of a conservative who published anything like that disgraceful issue by NR about Trump. I don’t remember any Republican or conservative who publicly said they would vote for Carter if Reagan was the Presidential nominee.

35. C. Simon is right. Trump’s unabashed patriotism has been his saving grace throughout his political career. I started out Not A Fan in 2016 and voted for neither him nor Hill (voted a straight GOP ticket in 2020), but I could appreciate the love of country that was so completely lacking on the “It was never that great” Left.
    I do hope that his love of country will dissuade him from running in 2024, as he would be making himself, and not the country’s welfare, the issue in the race.

36. Rufus T. Firefly, the press may not have been pro Reagan but I don’t remember that there were any Republicans in politics or the conservative press who were neverReaganites. National Review, George Will, TV Guide, William Safire all supported Reagan. I can’t think of a conservative who published anything like that disgraceful issue by NR about Trump. I don’t remember any Republican or conservative who publicly said they would vote for Carter if Reagan was the Presidential nominee.

    There was in the 1970s a body of Republicans in Congress whose views resembled the median of the Democratic caucus more than they resembled the media of the Democratic caucus. They were not an odd minority and accounted (IIRC) for about 25% of the Republican caucus of the day. Nowadays, they account for about 2% of the Republican caucus and they’re close to equidistant between the two caucuses. (They are Susan Collins, John Katko, Brian FitzPatrick, Ryan Costello, and Jefferson van Drew. Note, the 18 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in January 2021 are all over the map in regard to their voting records. Two are on this list, nine dissent more than the typical Republican but not so often as to make this list, and about seven are mainline Republicans who have idiosyncratic complaints contra Trump).

    You’ll recall about the Reagan era that the residual Rockefeller caucus (and it was residual, receiving very little new blood after 1982) co-operated with the administration to begin with and I think if you reviewed the contemporary press reports you’d find that almost none were in the business of attempting to elect Democrats or working to embarrass the administration even if they disagreed on policy.

    You can give credit to Reagan’s finesse. Please recall that there were in 1981 about 60 Democrats in Congress whose views were closer to the median of the Republican caucus than they were to that of the Democratic caucus and recall also that mainline Democrats of that day (while less civil than their counterparts ten years earlier) were less likely to be fanatics and dirty-pool operators and less likely to be beholden to fanatics. Consider Dianne Feinsten, who was a class act 30 years ago, but was hip deep in Christine Blasey Fraud’s machinations in 2018

    In re the starboard opinion press, the most critical was likely George Will. (Reagan’s the only Republican president of the last 50 years for which Will had any use). You’d have to scrounge to locate a publication or a syndicated columnist who you’d describe as a Rockefeller Republican. That segment of the Republican party tended to be intellectually sterile.

37. Dear Neo,
    (Now I see that C. Simon is ahead of me on this but…) The comments to this post are one more validation of my observation (long ago) that your blog is an unparalleled salon for wide ranging, civil, thought-provoking conversation on a wide array of subjects, from the most serious to the most light-hearted. I have stayed on the fringe over the years. Truth be told, I feel a little like someone who wants to get on the Freeway but finds himself peddling madly down the access ramp on a child’s tricycle. Best to back off and just enjoy the gleaming fast company as they speed along.

38. ArtDeco: there is no comparison to the opposition to Reagan and the opposition to Trump within the conservative movement and within the Republican Party.

39. Personal anomaly or northeastern city norm?

    I think you’ll find about 25% vote Republican in the metropolitan counties of the BosWash corridor, with the Republican vote highest in the exurban zones and low-density suburbs and lowest in core city black neighborhoods and core city hipster neighborhoods. You’ll run into a lot of Republicans. Republicans everywhere tend to be less voluble about their politics.

40. G-d bless Donald Trump and G-d bless Norm. Trump did what GOPe campaigned on for the last 40 years and they hated him for it. GOPe can go sod themselves.

41. neo on May 11, 2022 at 11:29 am said:
    The fathers also have a different personal history than the sons, …The sons were born into it
    Isn’t this almost always the case with folks born into prosperity? They fail to appreciate the work it took their ancestors to achieve their heights, and often squander their legacy in the next generation. Evidently, this applies to intellectual riches as well as mammon. Interesting.

42. On unworthy vessels

    “Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver bowls, but also those of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. So if anyone purifies himself from anything dishonorable, he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.”
    2 Timothy 2:20-21

43. DC is the bizarro world where all words have opposite meanings to what we know and Trump showed up the only truthful man in town. I loved Trump from the first day when he came down the escalator, advertisers dropped him and he stayed in to fight. And then he learned on the job that he LOVES America. President Trump is the best president of my lifetime and it’s reassuring that all the intellectuals are catching up to me!

44. Anyone, who paid attention, knows the roll the press played all along. During the primaries, MSNBC couldn’t give Donald Trump enough time on air. They believed, as did many other liberals, that Trump was the most beatable of all the potential Republican candidates. Once he won the primaries, that’s when media tone changed. From then on, the set-up was coming and it was a never ending battle until 2020. Bill Kristol has always been a liberals conservative so he didn’t really change, he just showed his stripes.

    Donald Trump showed conservatives how to fight, that’s why Democrats are so afraid of him. In fact, Republicans who are turned off by his style, should take a step back and understand war isn’t pretty. When you have the Democrats and Deep State going after you, you have to fight and fight hard. Trump did that, but they got him anyway because conservatives refused to fight the election. Does anyone really believe the group that has taken over the Democrat Party wouldn’t be willing to steal and election in the name of all that is good, in their minds? You’ll do a lot of things when you believe you’re fighting evil, including doing evil yourself.

45. JPod might have voted for Trump in 2020 but he believes that Trump should have been removed from office due to J6.

    I have never understood the visceral hatred toward Goldberg. Unlike people like Kristol, Rubin, and Boot he has never changed any beliefs due to Trump.

    As for Trump, he does fight, but he is poor at selecting his battles

46. Missed by some of the commenters here that refer to Trump and his aggressiveness in not taking any guff from anybody is the turn in the culture, especially the media.

    Comparisons with Reagan need to be weighed against comparisons with GW Bush, in terms of the behavior of the opposition.

    What you will see is a spectrum of declining in civility and decorum. Once the other side hit Bush Derangement Syndrome it was clear that every confrontation would be a cage match with these people. Trumps allure, besides obviously loving America and respecting the regular people is that he was a brawler and wouldn’t take the abuse that Bush did.

47. The only requirement I have for an “intellectual” is that they have rational integrity, that they apply themselves to finding and promoting the truth, wherever it and whatever it is. Being articulate and able to express themselves effectively would also help, but that’s a secondary trait. Being an eloquent promoter of bad ideas and false narratives is all too common, and it’s laying waste to our nation and culture.

    I may not have always agreed with NP, but he, AFAICT, been a truth seeker. I can respect that.

48. I have never understood the visceral hatred toward Goldberg. Unlike people like Kristol, Rubin, and Boot he has never changed any beliefs due to Trump.

    Something Patrick J. Buchanan said a generation ago might help you understand the dislike of the NeverTrump residue. He said, “When the mob is coming to get the old man, you don’t have him sit down and write down a list of his ‘mistakes’. You start firing from the upper floors”.

    These are people who begin by conceding half of the points in dispute, begin with complaints about something Trump said last Tuesday, begin by complaining about Trump’s supporters. Goldberg decayed to the point where what animated him was a dislike of Trump, full stop. Each chump at NR had his own variant of this disposition. Cycle back 10 years, you discover the palaeo / Sailerite types had more hostility for the conventional starboard than they did for their supposed opposition. This is tiresome. And it has no street-level affiliate. It is discourse that does not pass outside the circle of the chatterati.

    There’s another consideration here: most of these chaps are now on the patronage of leftoid media barons and tech barons. They’re shills, quite literally.

49. I was astonished when I woke up to find Trump had won in 2016. I voted for him as a sort of brick through the window of Hillary and the Democrats. I was skeptical, as I think many were, but he quickly became the only president (and politician) to do what he promised when campaigning. The malicious treatment he received convinced me that few, very few, in Media or politics can be trusted. The Democrats, aside from very few, have lost all connection to economics and many have lost connection to reality. The greens, in particular, are hopeless in reality about energy. One former Obama official, Samantha Powers, said recently that it was a good thing that fertilizer was in short supply as farmers could learn to use manure and compost instead. I assume she is unaware of the experience Sri Lanka although she was UN Ambassador.

50. “an unworthy vessel”

    But then, aren’t we all, to varying degrees?

    This thread reminds me of Victor Davis Hanson’s repeated comparisons of Trump to the tragic heroes of so many classic Westerns: The man whose deplorable qualities are the very ones needed to save the good people. But once the villains are defeated, there is no place for that hero because of those same qualities. Shane. The Magnificent Seven. Etc.

51. And then of course the Biblical Yiftah (Jephthah)…shunned, even driven off, by his half-brothers…until they needed him to defend them…
    Judges 11:1-32ff.

52. Good to hear from you again and thanks, C. Simon and Ralph Kinney Bennett.

53. “Unworthy vessel” is mostly an allusion to 2 Cor. 4:7. The ideas Trump expresses, like the virtues Christians display, have a source much greater than the person displaying them.

54. When you’re 92+ you can make broad statements about who should run a world you won’t have to live in. Trump is dangerous because he loves Trump more than he loves America even if it’s true (very well may be) as NPod said that Trump loves America.
    Trump accomplished something that many will be eternally grateful for – he beat Hillary. For that he should be praised. But he’s a bafoon and a boor and shouldn’t be President ever again…Unless Hillary runs.

55. A lot of Republican supporters register as Democrats if they living in overwhelmingly Blue areas because whoever wins the Democratic primary is almost guaranteed to win the general election, so the feeling is that you can at least have a say in the election so pick the least odious Democrat (best of a bad lot) out there. I changed briefly my party registration from Republican to Democrat so I could vote for Eric Adams in the primary and then quickly re-registered as a Republican.

    I agree with Lance, I have had enough of Donald J. Trump and his immature temper tantrums and prefer someone more like DeSantis who fights back but has far more savvy.

56. I’ve visited here a few times at Sarah Hoyt’s Instapundit invitation & have always been impressed both by posts, but especially by community’s comments.

    But with all the depression & current bouts of hopelessness, many of your Reagan posts resonated–he was the 1st president I voted for.

    So many of your Trump posts today also resonated in my heart. Thank you all.

57. Trump was elected in 2016 primarily because he was NOT a politician. Normal Americans were sick of the Clintons, and couldn’t stand Hillary, and sick of a Congress full of people who fail in their Constitutional duty to “REPRESENT” the will of their constituents. And they voted for Trump because he is a fighter. A great part of Trump’s fall was because he didn’t recognize the depth of the Deep State Swamp and he didn’t know how to choose and vet good, dedicated, competent people to his Administration

58. well many were the ones who could get passed the possums, graham mcconnell and co, you see how they are willing to lavish lucre on ukraine, how they voted for austin, mayorkas, garland and choke the life out of every functioning part of the country, leaving it open to marauders, letting the cities crumble, which tentacle is responsible, omidyar, soros steyer it doesn’t really matter,

59. Lance,
    So, if the election was today you would not vote for Trump unless his opponent was Hillary. Thus, your vote would de facto go to Biden, Harris or whomever. Do I have that right?

60. God bless Norman. While I can’t quite call myself a Trumpster, I’m sure to encounter a blast furnace of hatred whenever I try to explain my thoughts on him, i.e., that he is a champion of people to whom attention must be paid and hasn’t. (Mr. Podhoretz will of course recognize the allusion to another Brooklyn boy, Arthur Miller.) I still don’t understand the visceral hatred of Donald, especially in comparison to his absurd successor. (The gods must have both a malicious sense of humor and a delicious sense of irony.)

    Yes, Mr. Podhoretz, as another Brooklyn boy who grew up on those same streets (well before they became posh), I can readily identify with your thoughts. Our children can’t possibly know what it was to like to navigate those tribal neighborhoods and escape them but take with us many valuable lessons and, yes, even some fond memories.

    If this leads anyone to Norman Podhoretz’s writings, I can’t recommend highly enough his “Making It.” “One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan.” As the cowardly lion would say, “ain’t it da truth, ain’t it da truth.”

    I am sorry for your enormous loss, Mr. Podhoretz. May your late wife rest in peace until we all meet again (some of us for the first time).

61. Re Reagan vs Trump and their different receptions by the DC Establishment …. several commenters here are living in a fantasy world in which the typical “Republican” and Democrat” of today are at least roughly comparable to what they were forty years ago.

    The truth id that the typical Democrat of Reagans time would be a conservative Republican in todays world. Tip O’Neill was less left-wing than Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney.

    The opposition to Trump was political and philosophical, not persona;. The “two parties”, as we persist in calling them, have a single uniform world view, and it is one deeply hostile to the American right, and arguable to the American center as well. The modern GOP is far to the left of the GOP of Reagans day, and is in fact well to the left of the Democratic Party of Reagans day,

    Of course admitting that would impose a certain obligation on rank-and-file Republican voters to accept blame for the mess we are in, and start replacing some of the many “RINO’s” n Congress and at the state level across the country. That would be both emotionally painful and a lot of difficult work … hence the attraction of pretending that the GOP is fundamentally fine and that it was merely “Trump’s character” which created the difficulties.

    Republicans voted for Trump in the 206 primary for the very good reason that most of them regarded the typical Republican politician as corrupt and hostile to their interests. They were correct in that assessment and its truth will not change simply by dumping Trump.

62. tip o’neil was fairly left on foreign policy, jim wright was worse, same for foley, but he was generally a new deal democrat, which meant mostly sane on cultural and economic issues, the only house speaker that mattered was newt, and you saw how asiduously they worked to replace him with pederast hastert, he wasn’t perfect and he’d readily admit that, Bob Dole was another who didn’t rock the boat, but after frist, lott and co, well they didn’t get very far either,

    much like the 1980s pro Soviet labour party this crew is stark raving mad, and lets their freak flag fly, in every conceivable direction, here in florida we recognize the difference between a putnam and a desantis, bob graham really was the sanest on the other side of the aisle, his caution about the consequences of the iraq war, should really have been taken more into consideration,

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