I think that there is a much simpler reason why intelligent people who support Trump on the issues often rush to defend his character flaws.
It is “my side bias.” My side bias is a powerful psychological bias towards supporting your side that intelligence does not seem to counter. While most cognitive biases detected by psychological research are lower among intelligent people, the my side bias is consistent across all levels of intelligence.
Most political commentators lean into this bias hard to keep their audience and maintain a steady stream of revenue from a reliable group of followers.
This cognitive bias is a fundamental driver of our partisan divide, and it can make smart people look stupid.
Worth emphasizing that political commentators are not just leaning into this bias for fame and money, but because of what you said in the previous sentence: “my side bias” is at least as strong among people of higher intelligence. I have also heard it suggested that smart people do a worse job of correcting for their own biases, because they consider themselves informed enough not to worry about them very much.
Not only are political commentators substantially smarter than the typical person, they go into the profession in the first place because they have strong my side bias. They are blind to their side’s flaws long before they start making any money from it.
Smart people are also excellent at rationalizing what they want to believe, which is why some of their failures can be so spectacular. A dummy sees Marxism or postmodernism as gibberish, but a smart person is intrigued.
Yes, I think a healthy dose of common sense is important for intelligent people. Unfortunately, intelligent people tend to overestimate their intellectual power to understand a very complex world.
Regular people just shrug their shoulders and go with common sense.
The combination of strong ideologies, my side psychology, and the profit-motive can turn people into the opposite of what intelligent rational people should be.
I often say that "ideology tends to bring out the worst in people."
"They are blind to their side’s flaws long before they start making any money from it." I think Hanania is not blind, rather the contrary, but as a blogger he also has to take care of his tribe. So he might be a good example for studying how tribalism interacts with economic incentives. (Apologies, Richard, for taking this to a meta-level!)
There is a paper out there where they found as study participants were given more details about the Iraq War they were pretty adept at rapidly making the new info fit into their existing arguments and beliefs. As in, we’re good at making the facts fit our feelings.
It is also interesting to think about how our current economic system (media ownership, alternative media, blogosphere, etc) reinforces the "my side bias". Does the book you link address this issue?
“Most political commentators lean into this bias hard to keep their audience and maintain a steady stream of revenue from a reliable group of followers.”
Richard has of course leaned into this himself in his quest to mine the TDS vein.
So much so that he seems to have swallowed most of the Kool-Aid…
I think a lot of it is a lingering reaction to Trumps first term. The main stream media did really just medaciously lie about him incessantly, not even including the russiagate debacle which has a 4 part 20000 word review from the Columbia school of journalism post mortem because the media systemically got it wrong.
Over time I think this basically trained a lot of the smarter trump supporters treat the media as liars by default. Combined with the social ostracism they probably faced for pointing clear and present lies by the media. I know I did in Trumps first term and I didn't even vote for the man.
I agree he's much harder to defend this time around. Even pre election I rationalized as a vote for judges/preserve the SC court majority, 2a, not wanting what dems put on offer, and to punish the dems for their behavior in 2024 related to keep Biden in the race. The dems did deserve to lose that election.
And I am more or less getting what I voted, in a monkeys paw sort of way.
This may be true, but I don't think this necessarily applies to Mike Solana. As far as I know, he's part of the "tech right' and his rightward turn started with the disorder in Bay Area cities (like San Francisco and Oakland) due to failed progressive governance, and culminated with the heavy-headed COVID policies. That's my read on it at least - admittedly I'm not a frequent Solana reader, but I'm a long time Bay Area resident and software engineer, so my world overlaps at least a little bit with his.
So I don't think anger at the mistreatment of Trump in his first term is what's driving the current need to defend his every stupid, illiberal move like directing the FCC to put pressure on ABC to fire Kimmel. I think RH actually nails it - it stems from a something more akin to a "guilty conscience", a gnawing feeling that they knew all along that Trump's presidency could (and probably would) go off the rails, veering into low-brow authoritarianism where even the dumbest conspiracy theories require executive action.
Now, less than 1 year in, as the failures mount - slowing job growth, humiliation at the hands of Vladimir Putin, a tax and budget bill that might as well have been written by Grover Norquist , and now outdoing the Biden admin on using state power to silence speech- people like Solana don't want to admit that they were duped. More importantly, they don't want to admit that they were duped even though they knew all along this was a possible outcome of electing Trump. Remember, these are Silicon Valley people. They don't like being wrong. So instead, we're now getting sophistry and motivated reasoning not so much so that they can convince others that they are right, but so that they can convince themselves they weren't duped.
Oh for sure there is not just there was not just one reason to for trump or to vote against the dems.
Also, like i expected tariffs it was tent pole of his platform i didn't think it would be nearly as retarded as it turn out to me. At best hes doing a lot of A/B testing in areas that we really dont want A/B testign to happening.
As far as authortarinism is concern the courts are riegning hime in and he is abiding by those order if grumply or in maliscious complaince sort of way.
As per recession we are long over due for one and yeah its gonna be brutal. we would have had one in 2025 or 2026 regardless. the real down side case for trump isnt nazi germany its argentinia.
As a liberal, it’s been fascinating to read RH’s comment section in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s tragic death.
From what I can tell, *none* of the rw commenters knew that the man who assassinated the Minnesota lawmakers was a rightwing ideologue. *None* of them knew that Trump regularly calls his opponents fascists and worse. This is particular blows my mind. It’s like not knowing that water is wet. None of them knew that the vast majority of political violence is perpetrated by rightwing ideologues (the left is more into property damage).
If anyone is tempted to challenge me on those facts, please use ChatGPT, as it will explain much better than I can, and you can argue with it for as long as you like.
This isn’t to say that the left doesn’t get into its own bubbles, but the asymmetry shocks me. I asked this repeatedly on another thread: where are people getting their news? In particular, how can you not know how divisive and hateful Trump’s speech is? He’s been everywhere for ten years.
>If anyone is tempted to challenge me on those facts, please use ChatGPT, as it will explain much better than I can, and you can argue with it for as long as you like.
This is profoundly obnoxious and lacking in self-awareness.
There’s only so many times you can correct the same error without it turning into spam. And people who demand sources don’t actually want you to be right, so they keep making up other falsehoods, which you then also have to correct. It’s much easier for everyone to use ChatGPT on basic questions of fact.
From ChatGPT on comparative violence "One-sentence summary: contemporary U.S. data and official assessments show that far-right actors have been responsible for a disproportionate share of lethal ideologically motivated political violence in recent decades, while left-wing actors have more often (but far from exclusively) been associated with protests that occasionally include property destruction — meaning the broad claim is directionally correct for lethal attacks but too simplistic if stated as an absolute rule across all forms of political violence."
From Chat GPT on the MN shooter to save others the time: "One-sentence summary: investigators have strong, concrete evidence (target lists of Democratic lawmakers and abortion providers, premeditated tactics, and his reported anti-abortion conservatism) that point to a right-wing/political motive, but the absence of a full, explicit ideological manifesto and some contradictory/ambiguous statements and personal-context factors mean motive is highly likely but not yet exhaustively proven in every legal or psychological detail."
ChstGPT might aggregate primarily leftist news sources that lead one to believe Vance was a right-wing extremist but his communications with the FBI would indicate more complex motivations verging on insanity. In a letter to the FBI he claims he was trained by US Military off the books and that Tim Walz instructed him to kill certain Democrat officials:
Many years ago, I realized that there's a substantial fraction of the US population that sees interpersonal violence as an acceptable way to settle disputes. I suspect it considerably overlaps with the "Jacksonian" cultural thread (per Fischer's "Albion's Seed") and the current MAGA movement.
Within that context, I note that Nate Silver said recently "What's maybe different about Trumpism, though, is that there's almost nothing high-minded about it, no attempt to appeal to people's better angels. In fact, that's part of what attracts people to it." And certainly, "politics as street brawl" is far easier to understand (by our ape brains) than all the intricacies of the formal government system and its adhering lobbying/commentary/activist wrappings. I mean, how many people can accurately describe how a bill gets through Congress?
I seem to remember that "Albion's Seed" has been "debunked" on methodological problems, I will try to dig this out. But your main argument can be supported in other ways?
I understand your point about Jacksonian honor culture, but reducing it to “violence is acceptable” misses the loyalty and sense of duty that came with it. And while Trump’s style is raw, many of his supporters see themselves as defending free speech, faith, and constitutional order... principles we view as higher than just a “street brawl.” In truth, simplified, emotional appeals aren’t unique to MAGA; all mass movements lean on them because they connect more easily than the details of legislation.
This reminds me of a Wayne Burkett tweet I just saw where he said basically "Trayvon is the one BLM martyr who I feel sympathy for. I'd never do fentanyl, so fuck George Floyd. But I get why you would get pissed off at someone following you and kick the guy's ass. That's what I would do myself."
Solana's a pretty good thinker, Richard. You may disagree with him this time, and you maybe right, but he's out there trying to engage reasonably. His shitposting - like yours - is for fun and engagement, and your "this is why I do it" bit towards the end comes off as special pleading. I could find several ridiculous posts of yours with little difficulty (the one where you used Taylor Lorenz as an example of rational thought by the left in contrast to the stupidity of the right comes most quickly to mind).
I agree Trump and his minions have been especially bad around the topic of censorship of late, and I would guess there's a certain amount of cope in anyone's explanation of "why it's ok this time," but it is also true that (1) Kimmel was almost certainly on his way out, (2) this silliness presented an opportunity for ABC, and (3) Kimmel's long descent into clapter-pandering and straight-up advocacy was wearing thin on all but an increasingly small number of people. This is also why your divorce example doesn't work. Actual vs proximate cause, Richard. Is that cope? Yeah. Is Trump a jackass? Hell, yeah. But Kimmel getting canned isn't a big deal, any more than Colbert getting canned was.
Solana is one of the worst Trump defenders on X. He's constantly looking for any reason to "both sides" the issue or, failing that, redirect to some other thing. He's like Chris Rufo in that he's smart enough to know he can't directly defend Trump's actions, so instead he finds some version of the left doing something bad (usually an entirely different thing), then ignores everyone pointing out the flaws in his arguments.
100%. It's why on the stupidest things Trump does (tariffs, RFK) he won't say anything, either explicitly -- when Trump's tariffs were crashing markets back in April, Solana refused to weigh in, saying it was unclear to him whether tariffs were good or bad and how he couldn't see how anyone could be so sure about it. Or implicitly, like with RFK/vaccines -- e.g. googling micsolana rfk x bring up basically nothing critical past when he endorsed Trump.
I'm not sure why I find him particularly annoying vs all the other hacks out there. Maybe because it seems like he should know better. I used to like his stuff back when he was just fighting with Taylor Lorenz and dunking on random SF politicians. Now it might as well be Pravda Wires.
I think this tweet on Kimmel is probably his most overt and pathetic Trump defense yet, and he seems to be getting an unusual amount of blowback on it, so hopefully it causes him to reflect on how he got here and reevaluate a few things, but I doubt it.
That's not an unreasonable take, but I think Solana, like Matt Taibbi and many others, simply feels that the Left has been far more destructive than Trump is, or is likely to be. And - true - they are likely to overlook the excesses of the current regime and concentrate on the reversals of fortune for the former regime. Whether because of schadenfreude or revenge or legitimately feeling like a given event is an example of moving back in the right direction, I don't know, but I do think it is understandable, and, with the Heather Cox Richardsons and Kimmels of the world still out there with megaphones, that sort of thing is sadly still worth putting out there. Some tweets or arguments might not cut it rationally, but again, the mote in one's eye.
Not a big deal, you say, but Trump can lay claim to destroying half the practitioners of the late night talk show genre — not coincidentally, the TV genre most predisposed to (shallow, but sometimes pointed) political critique. When Meyers is gone, and all we’re left with is the apolitical Fallon, will that also be not a big deal?
Were those shows on their way out? Maybe, but all network tv is on its way out. Does that make the fact that Trump can pick them off one-by-one any less terrifying? Or unconstitutional?
Because if you were to claim that there’s a show “too popular” for Trump to kill, a show that’s somehow beyond his reach, at this point I’m not sure I’d believe you.
>The man just goes around announcing that he wants to behave like a dictator and suspend the Constitution, and there is still a massive audience out there for content that puts forth justifications for his behavior that he wouldn’t bother to make himself.
Sanewashing in a nutshell. See also the hordes of people announcing "no we literally want to abolish the police" and the liberals speaking on their behalf helpfully explaining "no they don't LITERALLY want to abolish the police, they're just demanding accountability".
The number of times I’ve now read on social media that “Disney actually wanted to fire Kimmel and this has nothing to do with Trump” feels like maybe I’m the crazy one. It’s wild.
Oren Cass may win the award for the most sophistry-laden take on this. While he doesn't address the specifics of the Kimmel firing, he compares the U.S to the UK/Europe on the free speech issue. His conclusion is that its best to have a "bend but don't break" system in the US, where free speech abuses strain the system but don't break it.
This is pure sophistry. First, the comparison to Europe or the UK makes no sense at all, since it was a US regulator - the FCC - that is causing the "chilling effect" on free speech in the U.S in this instance. I strongly suspect he made the comparison to Europe because one of the first diplomatic trips his buddy JD Vance made as VP was to lecture the Europeans on their lack of commitment to free speech. Whoops. That doesn't look so principled now. Second, anybody with a functioning brain can immediately recognize that nobody on the right was celebrating the "bend but don't break" resiliency of free speech in America when Biden was supposedly abusing his powers. This, like every standard the right-wing claims to have, is a double standard that only applies when they need it to.
I have known a lot of the more intelligent, educated-type Trump supporters, who don't fall into the dumbass stuff or Q-Anon or whatnot, but still always seem to defend him no matter what. And I really think it just comes down to a few things:
1. They really honestly just think liberals are worse. After all liberals "murder babies" so Trump doing some little illegal thing is just not a big deal.
2. They are heirarchical. Trump is the Leader of Conservative America. The Leader is not someone to be questioned. Overwhelming evidence is required. And even if this evidence exists, any small amount of doubt disqualifies it all. It's bascially impossible for them to denounce Trump without also rejecting their hierarchical understanding of the world.
3. They fear being cast out. Look at Adam Kinzinger or David French. They are persona non grata even in their own churches and family gatherings. That is the cost of going against the Trump Machine. Is it really worth it?
4. Sunk Cost Fallacy - I've already debased myself by defending this vile person, I might as well keep doing it (this is similar to what RH argues).
It's what Howard Stern learned about himself. He did stuff to please his audience, until he went off the deep end. An expert interviewer, he kept going too far to get the feedback he was addicted to. Until he changed. I suspect most influencers start leading, then are lead by their followers.
I think that there is a much simpler reason why intelligent people who support Trump on the issues often rush to defend his character flaws.
It is “my side bias.” My side bias is a powerful psychological bias towards supporting your side that intelligence does not seem to counter. While most cognitive biases detected by psychological research are lower among intelligent people, the my side bias is consistent across all levels of intelligence.
Most political commentators lean into this bias hard to keep their audience and maintain a steady stream of revenue from a reliable group of followers.
This cognitive bias is a fundamental driver of our partisan divide, and it can make smart people look stupid.
A book was written about it recently:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045759/the-bias-that-divides-us/
Worth emphasizing that political commentators are not just leaning into this bias for fame and money, but because of what you said in the previous sentence: “my side bias” is at least as strong among people of higher intelligence. I have also heard it suggested that smart people do a worse job of correcting for their own biases, because they consider themselves informed enough not to worry about them very much.
Not only are political commentators substantially smarter than the typical person, they go into the profession in the first place because they have strong my side bias. They are blind to their side’s flaws long before they start making any money from it.
Smart people are also excellent at rationalizing what they want to believe, which is why some of their failures can be so spectacular. A dummy sees Marxism or postmodernism as gibberish, but a smart person is intrigued.
Yes, I think a healthy dose of common sense is important for intelligent people. Unfortunately, intelligent people tend to overestimate their intellectual power to understand a very complex world.
Regular people just shrug their shoulders and go with common sense.
Good points.
The combination of strong ideologies, my side psychology, and the profit-motive can turn people into the opposite of what intelligent rational people should be.
I often say that "ideology tends to bring out the worst in people."
"They are blind to their side’s flaws long before they start making any money from it." I think Hanania is not blind, rather the contrary, but as a blogger he also has to take care of his tribe. So he might be a good example for studying how tribalism interacts with economic incentives. (Apologies, Richard, for taking this to a meta-level!)
There is a paper out there where they found as study participants were given more details about the Iraq War they were pretty adept at rapidly making the new info fit into their existing arguments and beliefs. As in, we’re good at making the facts fit our feelings.
It is also interesting to think about how our current economic system (media ownership, alternative media, blogosphere, etc) reinforces the "my side bias". Does the book you link address this issue?
No it’s because both sides are squaring up for a fight and for that loyalty matters far more than truth
Reality always wins. Truth is our collective means to understand it.
Anyone who "squares up for a fight" will get their ass kicked by reality.
“Most political commentators lean into this bias hard to keep their audience and maintain a steady stream of revenue from a reliable group of followers.”
Richard has of course leaned into this himself in his quest to mine the TDS vein.
So much so that he seems to have swallowed most of the Kool-Aid…
I think a lot of it is a lingering reaction to Trumps first term. The main stream media did really just medaciously lie about him incessantly, not even including the russiagate debacle which has a 4 part 20000 word review from the Columbia school of journalism post mortem because the media systemically got it wrong.
Over time I think this basically trained a lot of the smarter trump supporters treat the media as liars by default. Combined with the social ostracism they probably faced for pointing clear and present lies by the media. I know I did in Trumps first term and I didn't even vote for the man.
I agree he's much harder to defend this time around. Even pre election I rationalized as a vote for judges/preserve the SC court majority, 2a, not wanting what dems put on offer, and to punish the dems for their behavior in 2024 related to keep Biden in the race. The dems did deserve to lose that election.
And I am more or less getting what I voted, in a monkeys paw sort of way.
This may be true, but I don't think this necessarily applies to Mike Solana. As far as I know, he's part of the "tech right' and his rightward turn started with the disorder in Bay Area cities (like San Francisco and Oakland) due to failed progressive governance, and culminated with the heavy-headed COVID policies. That's my read on it at least - admittedly I'm not a frequent Solana reader, but I'm a long time Bay Area resident and software engineer, so my world overlaps at least a little bit with his.
So I don't think anger at the mistreatment of Trump in his first term is what's driving the current need to defend his every stupid, illiberal move like directing the FCC to put pressure on ABC to fire Kimmel. I think RH actually nails it - it stems from a something more akin to a "guilty conscience", a gnawing feeling that they knew all along that Trump's presidency could (and probably would) go off the rails, veering into low-brow authoritarianism where even the dumbest conspiracy theories require executive action.
Now, less than 1 year in, as the failures mount - slowing job growth, humiliation at the hands of Vladimir Putin, a tax and budget bill that might as well have been written by Grover Norquist , and now outdoing the Biden admin on using state power to silence speech- people like Solana don't want to admit that they were duped. More importantly, they don't want to admit that they were duped even though they knew all along this was a possible outcome of electing Trump. Remember, these are Silicon Valley people. They don't like being wrong. So instead, we're now getting sophistry and motivated reasoning not so much so that they can convince others that they are right, but so that they can convince themselves they weren't duped.
Oh for sure there is not just there was not just one reason to for trump or to vote against the dems.
Also, like i expected tariffs it was tent pole of his platform i didn't think it would be nearly as retarded as it turn out to me. At best hes doing a lot of A/B testing in areas that we really dont want A/B testign to happening.
As far as authortarinism is concern the courts are riegning hime in and he is abiding by those order if grumply or in maliscious complaince sort of way.
As per recession we are long over due for one and yeah its gonna be brutal. we would have had one in 2025 or 2026 regardless. the real down side case for trump isnt nazi germany its argentinia.
As a liberal, it’s been fascinating to read RH’s comment section in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s tragic death.
From what I can tell, *none* of the rw commenters knew that the man who assassinated the Minnesota lawmakers was a rightwing ideologue. *None* of them knew that Trump regularly calls his opponents fascists and worse. This is particular blows my mind. It’s like not knowing that water is wet. None of them knew that the vast majority of political violence is perpetrated by rightwing ideologues (the left is more into property damage).
If anyone is tempted to challenge me on those facts, please use ChatGPT, as it will explain much better than I can, and you can argue with it for as long as you like.
This isn’t to say that the left doesn’t get into its own bubbles, but the asymmetry shocks me. I asked this repeatedly on another thread: where are people getting their news? In particular, how can you not know how divisive and hateful Trump’s speech is? He’s been everywhere for ten years.
>If anyone is tempted to challenge me on those facts, please use ChatGPT, as it will explain much better than I can, and you can argue with it for as long as you like.
This is profoundly obnoxious and lacking in self-awareness.
There’s only so many times you can correct the same error without it turning into spam. And people who demand sources don’t actually want you to be right, so they keep making up other falsehoods, which you then also have to correct. It’s much easier for everyone to use ChatGPT on basic questions of fact.
From ChatGPT on comparative violence "One-sentence summary: contemporary U.S. data and official assessments show that far-right actors have been responsible for a disproportionate share of lethal ideologically motivated political violence in recent decades, while left-wing actors have more often (but far from exclusively) been associated with protests that occasionally include property destruction — meaning the broad claim is directionally correct for lethal attacks but too simplistic if stated as an absolute rule across all forms of political violence."
From Chat GPT on the MN shooter to save others the time: "One-sentence summary: investigators have strong, concrete evidence (target lists of Democratic lawmakers and abortion providers, premeditated tactics, and his reported anti-abortion conservatism) that point to a right-wing/political motive, but the absence of a full, explicit ideological manifesto and some contradictory/ambiguous statements and personal-context factors mean motive is highly likely but not yet exhaustively proven in every legal or psychological detail."
ChstGPT might aggregate primarily leftist news sources that lead one to believe Vance was a right-wing extremist but his communications with the FBI would indicate more complex motivations verging on insanity. In a letter to the FBI he claims he was trained by US Military off the books and that Tim Walz instructed him to kill certain Democrat officials:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25999675-vance-boelter-letter-to-fbi-director-kash-patel/
This is not to imply Vance was a left-wing terrorist, but does indicate an individual with major mental issues.
Many years ago, I realized that there's a substantial fraction of the US population that sees interpersonal violence as an acceptable way to settle disputes. I suspect it considerably overlaps with the "Jacksonian" cultural thread (per Fischer's "Albion's Seed") and the current MAGA movement.
Within that context, I note that Nate Silver said recently "What's maybe different about Trumpism, though, is that there's almost nothing high-minded about it, no attempt to appeal to people's better angels. In fact, that's part of what attracts people to it." And certainly, "politics as street brawl" is far easier to understand (by our ape brains) than all the intricacies of the formal government system and its adhering lobbying/commentary/activist wrappings. I mean, how many people can accurately describe how a bill gets through Congress?
I seem to remember that "Albion's Seed" has been "debunked" on methodological problems, I will try to dig this out. But your main argument can be supported in other ways?
I understand your point about Jacksonian honor culture, but reducing it to “violence is acceptable” misses the loyalty and sense of duty that came with it. And while Trump’s style is raw, many of his supporters see themselves as defending free speech, faith, and constitutional order... principles we view as higher than just a “street brawl.” In truth, simplified, emotional appeals aren’t unique to MAGA; all mass movements lean on them because they connect more easily than the details of legislation.
This reminds me of a Wayne Burkett tweet I just saw where he said basically "Trayvon is the one BLM martyr who I feel sympathy for. I'd never do fentanyl, so fuck George Floyd. But I get why you would get pissed off at someone following you and kick the guy's ass. That's what I would do myself."
Pretty disgusting sentiment I thought.
Solana's a pretty good thinker, Richard. You may disagree with him this time, and you maybe right, but he's out there trying to engage reasonably. His shitposting - like yours - is for fun and engagement, and your "this is why I do it" bit towards the end comes off as special pleading. I could find several ridiculous posts of yours with little difficulty (the one where you used Taylor Lorenz as an example of rational thought by the left in contrast to the stupidity of the right comes most quickly to mind).
I agree Trump and his minions have been especially bad around the topic of censorship of late, and I would guess there's a certain amount of cope in anyone's explanation of "why it's ok this time," but it is also true that (1) Kimmel was almost certainly on his way out, (2) this silliness presented an opportunity for ABC, and (3) Kimmel's long descent into clapter-pandering and straight-up advocacy was wearing thin on all but an increasingly small number of people. This is also why your divorce example doesn't work. Actual vs proximate cause, Richard. Is that cope? Yeah. Is Trump a jackass? Hell, yeah. But Kimmel getting canned isn't a big deal, any more than Colbert getting canned was.
I’m not picking out one tweet, I see Solana’s stuff regularly, and I don’t agree he’s shown signs of being a good thinker.
Solana is one of the worst Trump defenders on X. He's constantly looking for any reason to "both sides" the issue or, failing that, redirect to some other thing. He's like Chris Rufo in that he's smart enough to know he can't directly defend Trump's actions, so instead he finds some version of the left doing something bad (usually an entirely different thing), then ignores everyone pointing out the flaws in his arguments.
100%. It's why on the stupidest things Trump does (tariffs, RFK) he won't say anything, either explicitly -- when Trump's tariffs were crashing markets back in April, Solana refused to weigh in, saying it was unclear to him whether tariffs were good or bad and how he couldn't see how anyone could be so sure about it. Or implicitly, like with RFK/vaccines -- e.g. googling micsolana rfk x bring up basically nothing critical past when he endorsed Trump.
I'm not sure why I find him particularly annoying vs all the other hacks out there. Maybe because it seems like he should know better. I used to like his stuff back when he was just fighting with Taylor Lorenz and dunking on random SF politicians. Now it might as well be Pravda Wires.
I think this tweet on Kimmel is probably his most overt and pathetic Trump defense yet, and he seems to be getting an unusual amount of blowback on it, so hopefully it causes him to reflect on how he got here and reevaluate a few things, but I doubt it.
he does "know better" but he doesn't care because not caring is the superpower that gets him all the "pwn the libs" juice.
That's not an unreasonable take, but I think Solana, like Matt Taibbi and many others, simply feels that the Left has been far more destructive than Trump is, or is likely to be. And - true - they are likely to overlook the excesses of the current regime and concentrate on the reversals of fortune for the former regime. Whether because of schadenfreude or revenge or legitimately feeling like a given event is an example of moving back in the right direction, I don't know, but I do think it is understandable, and, with the Heather Cox Richardsons and Kimmels of the world still out there with megaphones, that sort of thing is sadly still worth putting out there. Some tweets or arguments might not cut it rationally, but again, the mote in one's eye.
Not a big deal, you say, but Trump can lay claim to destroying half the practitioners of the late night talk show genre — not coincidentally, the TV genre most predisposed to (shallow, but sometimes pointed) political critique. When Meyers is gone, and all we’re left with is the apolitical Fallon, will that also be not a big deal?
Were those shows on their way out? Maybe, but all network tv is on its way out. Does that make the fact that Trump can pick them off one-by-one any less terrifying? Or unconstitutional?
Because if you were to claim that there’s a show “too popular” for Trump to kill, a show that’s somehow beyond his reach, at this point I’m not sure I’d believe you.
If Kimmel's show was on the way out ABC would have just declined to renew his contract, like CBS did with Colbert.
Solana is a good writer, not a good thinker.
The two attributes have overlap but are far from coterminous.
>The man just goes around announcing that he wants to behave like a dictator and suspend the Constitution, and there is still a massive audience out there for content that puts forth justifications for his behavior that he wouldn’t bother to make himself.
Sanewashing in a nutshell. See also the hordes of people announcing "no we literally want to abolish the police" and the liberals speaking on their behalf helpfully explaining "no they don't LITERALLY want to abolish the police, they're just demanding accountability".
The number of times I’ve now read on social media that “Disney actually wanted to fire Kimmel and this has nothing to do with Trump” feels like maybe I’m the crazy one. It’s wild.
The US is best when it has two functioning parties in opposition.
Right now, only one side has shown up, and they’re not great, but they’re in reality with us.
The Dems are not here. At all. Please, please help them to show up.
Oren Cass may win the award for the most sophistry-laden take on this. While he doesn't address the specifics of the Kimmel firing, he compares the U.S to the UK/Europe on the free speech issue. His conclusion is that its best to have a "bend but don't break" system in the US, where free speech abuses strain the system but don't break it.
This is pure sophistry. First, the comparison to Europe or the UK makes no sense at all, since it was a US regulator - the FCC - that is causing the "chilling effect" on free speech in the U.S in this instance. I strongly suspect he made the comparison to Europe because one of the first diplomatic trips his buddy JD Vance made as VP was to lecture the Europeans on their lack of commitment to free speech. Whoops. That doesn't look so principled now. Second, anybody with a functioning brain can immediately recognize that nobody on the right was celebrating the "bend but don't break" resiliency of free speech in America when Biden was supposedly abusing his powers. This, like every standard the right-wing claims to have, is a double standard that only applies when they need it to.
Are there any less stupid ways? It seems to me this is all that is left.
Great essay. This article goes into a little more detail on some striking examples of fairness doctrine era censorship, so I think you’d enjoy it.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-04-op-32909-story.html
I agree with quite a lot in this article, but for counterbalance I was looking for a left-wing framing on the same topic ... https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/first-amendment-math
FYI typo in the "Michael Shelle[n]berger problem" link
Thanks
I have known a lot of the more intelligent, educated-type Trump supporters, who don't fall into the dumbass stuff or Q-Anon or whatnot, but still always seem to defend him no matter what. And I really think it just comes down to a few things:
1. They really honestly just think liberals are worse. After all liberals "murder babies" so Trump doing some little illegal thing is just not a big deal.
2. They are heirarchical. Trump is the Leader of Conservative America. The Leader is not someone to be questioned. Overwhelming evidence is required. And even if this evidence exists, any small amount of doubt disqualifies it all. It's bascially impossible for them to denounce Trump without also rejecting their hierarchical understanding of the world.
3. They fear being cast out. Look at Adam Kinzinger or David French. They are persona non grata even in their own churches and family gatherings. That is the cost of going against the Trump Machine. Is it really worth it?
4. Sunk Cost Fallacy - I've already debased myself by defending this vile person, I might as well keep doing it (this is similar to what RH argues).
It's what Howard Stern learned about himself. He did stuff to please his audience, until he went off the deep end. An expert interviewer, he kept going too far to get the feedback he was addicted to. Until he changed. I suspect most influencers start leading, then are lead by their followers.
> Practically every person who defends Trump needs to believe that he is actually a good guy, or least not as bad as his critics say
He could be the worst person who ever lived, and still not as bad as at least some critic says. Do enough nutpicking and you can find a nut.