Politico seems to be trying out a new stance on Trump
This column sort-of lauding Trump appeared in Politico on the 21st. It was written by Politico’s media editor in chief John F. Harris, and is entitled, “Time to Admit It: Trump Is a Great President. He’s Still Trying To Be a Good One.” Straddling the fence, but it’s an improvement. The idea is similar to the idea of Time’s “Man of the Year” award, which is that “greatness” is measured by impact, whether bad or good.
An excerpt:
But the second occasion of Trump taking the oath of office also put him in an entirely new light. For the first time, he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era.
Let’s quickly exhale: Great in this context is not about a subjective debate over whether he is a singularly righteous leader or a singularly menacing one. It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record.
So that establishes the somewhat neutral tone.
There’s also this:
Opponents have no choice but to acknowledge he and his movement represent a large historical argument — and then rally similarly large arguments to defeat it. Trump in 2020 showed himself ready to undermine democracy for his own purposes. Trump in 2024 showed that he is also a potent expression of democracy.
That second sentence reveals Harris’ bias. Did Trump “undermine democracy” in 2020, and did he try to defend it? And what of things like the Hunter laptop coverup; didn’t that “undermine democracy” tremendously, whether or not there was any meaningful fraud in the actual voting? In other words – what is democracy and how does one defend it? If a person truly believes for a host of reasons that an election is rigged, how does one “defend democracy”? That vital issue is ignored by Harris and so many others.
I like this part, though:
Have you ever known someone who was facing legal hurdles? In many cases, even if people ultimately win the case, they end up being consumed and shrunken by the searing nature of the experience. Imagine running for president amid huge civil suits, criminal prosecutions, and even felony convictions — then emerging from this morass as a larger figure than before. No one needs to admire the achievement to recognize that Trump is possessed by some rare traits of denial, combativeness and resilience.
But was it really “denial”? Or was it righteous anger at the kangaroo court proceedings, and faith that truth would ultimately prevail? Is it denial if Trump wins as he seems to have thought he would? Or was it the left that was in denial?
It should come as no surprise that our MSM is horribly biased in favor of Leftism.
The Left is consistently, historically biased. It achieves control by lying, everywhere its ugly head is raised. No matter where.
But was it really “denial”? Or was it righteous anger at the kangaroo court proceedings, and faith that truth would ultimately prevail? Is it denial if Trump wins as he seems to have thought he would? Or was it the left that was in denial?
All perfectly said. I like to believe some old school, liberal-not-leftist, Democrats are asking themselves precisely those questions. But I confess I’m sometimes guilty of wishful thinking.
Time will tell and all that, but I believe a good many Democrats are relieved to have Daddy and commonsense back in the White House.
They will find ways to justify their relief.
We best not interrupt our enemies while they are not making a mistake.
neo writes, “The idea [that ‘Trump Is a Great President’ (but is ‘Still Trying To Be a Good One’)] is similar to the idea of Time’s ‘Man of the Year’ award, which is that ‘greatness’ is measured by impact, whether bad or good.”
I was instantly reminded of Louis Farrakhan referring to Adolph Hitler as “great” in 1984:
“Here, the Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call him Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He wasn’t great for me as a black person, but he was a great German, and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of Europe and America after the first world war.
“Now, I’m not proud of Hitler’s evils against the Jewish people. But that’s a matter of record. He rose Germany up from nothing. Well, in a sense you could say there’s a similarity in that we’re rising our people up from nothing. But don’t compare me with your wicked killers.”
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/04/12/second-farrakhan-controversy-caused-by-calling-hitler-great/b3b4ed46-8263-4875-a793-5789a29f74ab/
. . . albeit quoting from The Chicago Tribune
(Still quoting from The Washington Post source) “Asked about those comments, Farrakhan said, ‘I don’t think you would be talking about Adolph Hitler 40 years after the fact if he was some minuscule crackpot that jumped up on the European continent. He was indeed a great man, but also wicked. Wickedly great.'”
The Left; a dysfunctional combination of a refusal to acknowledge fundamental realities and a willingness to lie about that refusal.
The article quoted sounds like more filth from Politico.
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I don’t read Politico, but I note that Sundance links to them a lot, and the excerpts he quotes seem like fairly objective reporting.
It’s easy, Trump is one those who likes to fight for the fun of the fight! The Left will never ever understand that!
Related to this change of mind by politico is the move by some in Silicon Valley to the right. The interview of venture capitalist Mark Andreeson by Ross Douthat is getting a lot of attention. Here’s a link to a podcast of the interview
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/matter-of-opinion/id1438024613?i=1000684362806
The Ace discusses it here
https://ace.mu.nu/#413320
And Victor Davis Hanson discussed it on his podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-victor-davis-hanson-show/id1570380458?i=1000685418790
Neo, as a student of political changes, what do you think about the sincerity of people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and their changed attitude towards Trump? Do you buy the rationalization by Andreeson of the reasons for their change?
Re: Tech CEOs and Trump
Bob Wilson:
Scott Pinsker offers his thoughts on the subject:
–“The Billionaire Tech Bros, Their MAGA Conversion, and a Con You Haven’t Considered Yet”
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/01/24/the-billionaire-tech-bros-their-maga-conversion-and-an-angle-you-havent-considered-yet-n4936326
Pinsker’s theory is that the Tech Bros understand AI’s ferocious appetite for energy and water. The Trump administration will support the quest for ASI — Artificial Super Intelligence — to the tune of $500 bil for Project Stargate. So of course the Bros going to make a deal with the Trump administration.
Which is true and astute.
Nonetheless, as a minor tech veteran of Bay Area/Silicon Valley, I will say DEI is just not in our DNA. These CEOs and employees are fiercely competitive. There is plenty of blood on those steel-gray carpeted floors.
Just ask Mark Andreeson about the time Microsoft threatened to cut off his company’s “air supply.” That company, Netscape, is now just a footnote in internet history.
Sure, those CEOs came up in posh, trendy universities. In sentimental moments they may catch those DEI feelings. But they still are sharks.
If getting ahead in the Obama/Biden socialist utopia meant playing the DEI game, they played it.
Now they don’t. And they will be happy not to.
From “Sherlock:” [B]ecause Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and I think one day, if we’re very lucky, he might even be a good one.
Bob Wilson:
I think their change is more pragmatic than political and more shallow than deep; more practical than philosophical.
Excellent analysis of the tech billionaire’s conversion, huxley. IMO, it’s spot on. Money talks and BS walks.
@ Bob Wilson > “The interview of venture capitalist Mark Andreeson by Ross Douthat is getting a lot of attention.”
I read the transcript & commentary at Ace.
Wow. Just wow.
It’s very long, and I wish it was a transcription of the full video, but Andreeson does not pull any punches, takes responsibility for his own actions, and really lays out what was happening. Direct link to the post:
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/413320.php#413320
RTWT or listen to it.
Ace also included this bit, and an excerpt from the source tweet, where Pincus reveals he made the radical decision to actually look at the video instead of just reading about it:
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1880677951920013332
Where have we heard that story before?
Ace also discusses the Politico post.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/413372.php
“Politico wants to be considered objective. LOL.”
Matthew Continetti puts Trump’s potential to change the world in perspective.
https://freebeacon.com/columns/how-to-make-trumps-golden-age-a-reality/
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Aesop:
Good column by Continetti. Thanks for the link.
Marc Andreessen also spoke with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution earlier this month:
https://www.hoover.org/research/marc-andreessen-its-morning-again-america
It’s an hour and fourteen minutes long but well worth watching. Andreessen touches on the “radicalized college kids” phenomenon and his own political journey.
Andreessen grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which is a top public research university but not a feeder for the American ruling class. I saw him demonstrate an early version of NCSA Mosaic–the first widely adopted graphical Web browser–in the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Software Development Group’s auditorium on the UIUC campus in late 1992-early 1993. Larry Smarr and Joe Hardin were the NCSA project managers; Andreessen and Eric Bina did the coding. Andreessen was a long-haired undergraduate then.
What Harris is essentially saying is:
“I’m a punk…AND I LUV wastin’ yer time….cuz I’m in a bit of a hole at the moment….”
Hubert:
“I saw him demonstrate an early version of NCSA Mosaic…”
That is so cool! I first saw Mosaic (I think it was pre-Netscape) circa 1996 and only had a faint inkling of what it portended.
Mike Plaiss:
Definitely. Here’s to hoping that at least some of the old school dems will see things the way they actually are.
Sparkee: I thought it was cool and that it had interesting implications for my then profession, but that was it. I did not know that I was witnessing the birth of a new medium and a world-changing event.
Netscape Navigator was the commercial successor to Mosaic. It was a joint venture between Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Clark and Andreessen, who had just graduated from UIUC and moved to California. Netscape rapidly overtook Mosaic in popularity; we started using it in my office at UIUC in 1994-1995.
Those were heady and hopeful days–just writing about them here makes me remember how it was.
Alas, nothing gold can stay. This 2021 post–“Requiem for an Electric Dream”–from an apparently dormant blog captures the promise of those early years in Silicon Valley and how it all eventually went sour:
https://antidem.wordpress.com/2021/05/31/electric-requiem/
The author–“AntiDem”–made some of the same points Andreessen makes in his interviews with Robinson and Douthat. Among our commenters, I believe Huxley was there (in what AntiDem calls “the old Silicon Valley”) around the same time.
Politico is a work of garbage and John Harris is its steward.
Have not read it in years.
…the old Silicon Valley. This was the Valley of the libertarian-ish techno-hippies who founded it, eccentrics imbued with the do-it-yourself spirit, who fused together both halves of the 1960s that had birthed them – the individualist counterculture of Woodstock, and the hard-charging engineering genius that put men on the moon in the same year. These were the men (yes, invariably, men) who created what will likely be the last great creative outburst of American industry.
https://antidem.wordpress.com/2021/05/31/electric-requiem/
Hubert:
Thanks for the link. I too was there and I do miss that glorious time:
___________________________
Those were the days, my friend
We thought they’d never end
–Mary Hopkins, “Those Were The Days (Remastered)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXc5Oe_kj8k
___________________________
However, as Lee Felsenstein, an original member of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club and the designer of the Osborne 1 (the first barely portable computer) used to say at Odd Sundays, an ad hoc Whole Earth gathering I attended:
________________________
These are the good old days.
________________________
Words I live by.
When Trump says this is the start of a Golden Age, I’m willing to believe him and put my hacker shoulder to the wheel.
I’m working with AI to build my own language learning app.
According to Andreessen:
_________________________________
Andreessen: By 2013, the median newly arrived Harvard kid was like: “[expletive] it. We’re burning the system down. You are all evil. White people are evil. All men are evil. Capitalism is evil. Tech is evil.”
Douthat: But they’re working for you. These are people who are working for you.
Andreessen: Of course. So I had this moment with a senior executive, who I won’t name, but he said to me with a sense of dawning horror, “I think some of these kids are joining the company not with the intent of doing things for us but destroying us.”
They’re professional activists in their own minds, first and foremost. And it just turns out the way to exercise professional activism right now, most effectively, is to go and destroy a company from the inside.
_________________________________
The four years of Biden are not forever. (They just felt like it.)
According to exit polls, young men under 30 supported Donald Trump by a 14-point margin, a substantial change from the 2020 election, where Joe Biden held a 15-point advantage in this demographic.
I suspect the next gen of tech workers won’t be anti-capitalist, woke activists. I don’t believe tech CEOs ever were; they just had to play along.
The times, they are a-changin’.
“I don’t believe tech CEOs ever were; they just had to play along.”
huxley
What a bunch of wusses. Why didn’t they man up and act like the free enterprise believers they claim to be now? Eleven years of letting commie activists work for them? Color me disgusted.
huxley wrote “These are the good old days.”
What, no YouTube link to Carly Simon’s “Anticipation”?? 🙂
Here’s a “funny” one (Politico again):
“White House reporters went from covering an ‘invisible president’ Biden to ‘omnipresent’ Trump…”—
https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-house-reporters-went-from-covering-invisible-president-biden-omnipresent-trump-politico
Key jokes:
‘…Trump’s huge media presence is a change compared to the more muted Biden years…
‘…One reporter referred to Trump’s pressers as a “free-for-all” for journalists after “four years of begging for access to the more cloistered Biden.”…
‘…One downside the article considered, however, was whether constant access to Trump and his thoughts would almost be “too much for the media and public to absorb.”….’
Heh, “muted”, “more cloistered”…and all that “journalistic” concern for “the public”.
To paraphrase, Still jokers after all these months…
Color me nauseated….
@ huxley > “According to exit polls, young men under 30 supported Donald Trump by a 14-point margin, a substantial change from the 2020 election, where Joe Biden held a 15-point advantage in this demographic.”
That’s a prime group for two things: old enough to be getting started on careers and families and having learned during Biden’s term that the Democrats are Not Their Friends; young enough that they don’t have any emotional or electoral connection to the geriatric Old Guard running for office. A big clue to that change is how Obama’s rebuke to the bros for not supporting Harris got zip traction.
The interesting thing about these demographic blocs is that they keep changing their actual membership over time: the young men who were 27-30 in 2020 are now in the “over 30” block, and there are 4 years worth of new young men among the voters.
Sometimes I think there might be some value to a longitudinal poll of the different cohorts. IOW: for the specific voters in that four-year chunk, how many changed their voting from one party to the other? That would measure the change we’re interested in, regarding how many Democrats have gotten the message about their party’s lack of interest in them, as discussed on the Open Thread.