[Editor’s note: After this episode was recorded, The New York Times confirmed the CNN report we discussed here, reporting that a classified internal assessment shows Trump’s bombing set back Iran’s nuclear program only a few months, a major blow to his ham-handed efforts to take a “victory lap.” Both reports triggered a furious response from Trump and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.]
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got into a major online battle over Trump’s bombing of Iran. AOC said Trump had committed impeachable offenses. Trump responded with a wild angry rant, daring Democrats to impeach him. And then AOC responded to that by reiterating that the bombing is illegal. What struck us about this, however, is that Trump let himself get triggered so spectacularly at exactly the moment when all his propagandists are blaring forth the message that Trump’s handling of all this has turned him into a statesman of world historical stature. This also seems like something Democrats can do more of: baiting Trump into stepping on his own message at key strategic moments. Salon’s Amanda Marcotte is one of our go-to experts on the pathologies of Trump and MAGA, so we’re talking to Amanda about all this today. Thanks for coming on as always.
Sargent: So let’s start with Trump’s crazy eruption. He tweeted, “Stupid AOC, one of the “dumbest” people in Congress, is now calling for my Impeachment … The Democrats aren’t used to WINNING, and she can’t stand the concept of our Country being successful again.” Then Trump said a lot of stuff about AOC’s IQ, rambled about fake scandals involving Joe Biden, and talked about how he supposedly aced a recent cognitive test. Then he said, “Go ahead and try Impeaching me, MAKE MY DAY!” Amanda, what’s your interpretation of all that?
Sargent: Yeah. And by the way, a woman of color, too, really tends to trigger him more than I think even white women do.
Sargent: Yes, he constantly applies that to women of color. By the way, to your point about AOC being calm and measured, that’s exactly how she responded. She tweeted in response to Trump, saying, “Mr. President, don’t take your anger out on me - I’m just a silly girl. Take it out on whoever convinced you to betray the American people and our Constitution by illegally bombing Iran and dragging us into war. It only took you 5 months to break almost every promise you made.” Now, Amanda, there will be some out there who claim that Trump is cleverly attacking AOC because his base will love it and blah, blah, blah, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think he’s genuinely set off by hearing her in particular say these things. He’s still sensitive about the two impeachments from the first term. What do you make of this?
I think that a lot of the people that pressured him into this bombing are not going to be satiated by that. I don’t think Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be satiated. I don’t think the evangelical right that really wants an Armageddon war with Iran or Ted Cruz or Lindsey Graham who want regime change in Iran—I think that they’re not going to be satiated. And he’s probably starting to feel the heat because there is no way to please those people while also not eroding his base of power even more.
Marcotte: It’s funny, he can’t help but show that he is that spoiled rich kid in these moments. He talks to her like she’s the help because he just can’t help but think of her that way, because she’s beneath him in his mind in every way: female, Latina, had this working-class job. She is college-educated but she did have a working-class job. And yeah, she’s from the part of Queens he only really witnessed from inside his limousine going to and from school when he was a kid.
Marcotte: Yes. If I may pimp my own stuff for a minute, My YouTube show Standing Room Only—our last episode was very much about Trump’s narcissism and how it really predicts his behavior in these kinds of situations. And this is a classic example of how narcissists defeat themselves, right? They try to act tough. They try to impress people, but they don’t have the goods. They can’t actually accomplish what they’re trying to do, especially someone like Trump who’s lazy, stupid, and cowardly. He has no skills to achieve the things he wants to do. And so they end up failing and then they’re humiliated. They’ve made it worse for themselves. And he really has with the situation. I think a lot of people, especially Netanyahu, got in his ear. And you could tell from the way he was talking about this before the bombing that he was operating under this assumption that Iran was laughing at him, and the way to get his ego back would be to throw bombs at them. And now he failed to do what he said he was going to do.
Marcotte: No. None. I think everybody that is praising him right now is trying to get something out of him. It’s clear that a lot of the people that are lavishing praise and calling him this world historical figure, [like] that text that he got from Mike Huckabee that he published where Mike Huckabee implied that he’s a prophet of God and that’s why he was saved by an assassin’s bullet, are trying to convince Trump to escalate the war with Iran, which he knows in his gut is a bad idea, I think. [He knows] that it’s going to hurt him for the reasons that you say; these polls show that it’s a wildly unpopular thing.
Sargent: Right. Well, let’s talk about the Democratic side of this because I thought AOC raised a bunch of interesting questions about this. You had a piece recently on California Governor Gavin Newsom who’s taking on Trump over his sending of troops into L.A. Newsom, who has played footsie with Trumpism a little bit, has suddenly discovered that waging a major political war against MAGA is popular not just with the base but with a fair amount of people in the middle of the electorate as well. I wonder whether more Democrats could pick up on this. Maybe not do it exactly the way AOC does, but each Democrat could find their own way to do it. What might that look like?
There’s also this rising hunger for authenticity, and somebody like AOC is really well-liked across the Democratic Party. I think a lot of people in power are confused about this because they’re like, Well, she’s far to the left and voters say they’re more moderate than she is, so why do they like her so much? And it’s because they don’t think she’s BS-ing them and they trust that she is who she says she is and that she’s a good person. And I think that that goes a long way.
Marcotte: Yeah, I think so. Especially with Gavin Newsom when he was playing footsie with MAGA, I think a lot of it was due to this belief that there was a low-propensity swing voter that was young and male and some working-class, a lot of them actually college-educated who swung hard to the right in this election, and that they need to be won back. And you listen to the podcasts that these guys listen to and there’s obsessions with trans people. They’re mad at women. There’s a lot of genuinely gross stuff. And I think that there was this perception like, If we can be a little more gross, then that will win these guys over. But in reality, I think that what a lot of them like is the perception of honesty—especially the ones you can win back. Because if they really are obsessed with hating women and hating trans people, I think you’re not getting those guys back. But I think that the ones who were drawn a little to that, what they really like about the Joe Rogans and Theo Vons and podcasters like that is the sense that they’re real and they’re having an authentic conversation. I think that’s BS. I don’t think that’s true. I think that’s an illusion of authenticity, but I do think that’s what people are seeking. And if you just try it, maybe you will actually start to be able to get those guys into a conversation and talk to them about things like why women’s rights are important.
Marcotte: Yeah, and I think a lot of them are.… Or trans rights—I want to be very clear, I’m saying all across the board, I think that a lot of people hold those opinions more softly than a lot of Democrats fear. And it’s just a matter of who’s talking to them in a space where they are persuadable.
Marcotte: Yeah, Gavin Newsom’s an interesting character because, as I say in my piece, before this year, when I was out in the wild just talking to normal people—the normal Democrats, moderate Democrats, people who are not crazy political junkies like us—his name came up a lot. And it wasn’t about his politics; it wasn’t about his views, of which they almost knew nothing. It was very much the perception that he’s willing to take the fight to Trump and that he was a fighter. And the fact that he was selling away the very thing that was making him appealing to normal people was surprising to me, but he’s seems like he’s getting it back.
Marcotte: Yeah, I think that part of it is when you see Democrats being hedgy or obviously using focus group–tested language, there’s a sense that normal people have that they’re hiding something. So it actually almost makes it seem like they have some secret socialist views that are so scary they can’t be said in public because they’re too bad, right?
Marcotte: Yeah, whereas AOC says what she believes and when she does, it becomes a little bit more real and normal and harder to argue with—or at least if you’re going to engage, you can engage like a normal person. She says, for instance, that women’s rights are important to her. I love the fact that she is a very outspoken feminist. I think that a lot of the people who hate her can’t really argue against her point because she’s making it very clearly and plainly and inarguable. So have a little faith that your values are good and that people will believe them if you just defend them. She does, and people like her for that. And I wish that more Democrats stopped acting ashamed of what they believe.
Marcotte: Thanks for having me.
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