At the center is Trump himself, a lifelong con artist and recently convicted criminal who plainly feels more kinship with foreign strongmen than with the framers of the American experiment. Around him is a motley coterie of tech oligarchs, boorish yes-men, authoritarian ideologues, and preposterous grifters, all jockeying to assert themselves. Beyond that lies a ring of servile Republican mandarins who dislike him and his politics but are too cowardly to do anything but kowtow. And beyond that extends the great mass of MAGA fanatics, ever eager to validate any impulse he might have.
Part mafia, part circus, part cult, part scam: I’ve written more than 400 columns for The Dispatch, most of them on this subject, but I’ll never do justice to how comprehensively grotesque Trump and his movement are. At noon today he smarmily swore an oath of office to defend the Constitution in the same building that his goons attacked four years ago, to his delight, in hopes of installing him in power unlawfully. If you watched it and your stomach didn’t lurch then you’re well and truly boiled.
These four years are going to be worse than even I expected. And that’s not just the usual pessimism talking.