The Iran War Is What Trumpism Looks Like

And it is with a mixture of schadenfreude and annoyance I come to the issue of Donald Trump’s supposed betrayal of MAGA by launching a war against Iran. 

But let’s start from the beginning.  

“Meet the Harvard whiz kid who wants to explain Trumpism.”

That was the headline for a 2017 profile of Julius Krein written by my friend Eliana Johnson for Politico. It began: “A 30-year-old conservative wunderkind is out to intellectualize Trumpism, the amorphous ideology that lifted its namesake to the presidency in November.” 

In pursuit of the effort to create an ideologically serious thing called “Trumpism,” Krein was launching the journal American Affairs. Given what I thought then—and now—about Trump, Trumpslaining, and other forms of Trump apologia, it would be reasonable to assume that I heaped scorn on Krein’s project. I didn’t. I welcomed it. But as I told Eliana for her reporting, he had his work cut out for him:

I’ve been making versions of this argument for a decade. Trump has no “ideology.” He does have a few ideas. Off the top of my head: take the oil, tariffs are economic Viagra, strength good, never apologize, women won’t resist celebrities when they grab them by their privates, “good genes” matter a lot, allies are whiny bitches, a bunch of romantic convictions about the supremacy of his instincts, and some Norman Vincent Peale-inspired nonsense about willing the reality you want into existence. 

Taken together, these ideas, gut impulses, sentiments, and irritable mental gestures do not amount to an ideology. They could be the foundation of an ideology. But constructing an actual ideology requires thinking about how your various commitments might conflict, where the trade-offs are, what the edge cases might be, etc. That’s why I’ve been writing, over and over again, that Trumpism isn’t an ideology, it’s a psychology. When he attacks critics or even loyalists who defy him, it’s almost never because of the arguments or reasons offered by the critics and defiers. It is the mere fact that they don’t defer to him. If you say “no” to something he really wants, it’s because you must “hate Trump.” 

But Trumpism is not just about Trump’s psychology, it’s the psychology of many of his supporters. If Trump is for it, it must be right. 

Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign conducted focus groups to ask Republican voters about issues like COVID lockdowns. Seventy percent of participants said they opposed them. But then, when they were asked about Trump’s COVID lockdowns, 70 percent supported them. Simply “attaching Trump’s name to an otherwise effective message had a tendency to invert the results.”

What is true of random voters in poorly lit hotel conference rooms is also true of a great many pundits, politicians, economists, and intellectuals. The motives may be more cynical and mercenary, but the effect is the same. 

If you could do a comprehensive search of every form of media and interaction, I bet you’d find I have been accused of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” more than a million times. If you want to understand my occasional political dyspepsia, please consider that the vast majority of people who level that charge at me are people who literally change what they believe (or say they believe) based on whether Trump believes it—at any given moment. 

Seriously, think about that. Trump changes his positions constantly, and hordes of his supposedly principled intellectual defenders change their positions with him—and I’m supposed to be the deranged one for not doing likewise? When the Trumpists said that merely carrying a legal weapon was proof of criminal—even terroristic—intent, how many longtime, dogmatic, Second Amendment boosters aped the talking points? 

I have some grace for normal voters when it comes to this kind of thing. Most Americans aren’t politicians, ideologues, or intellectuals. They trust Trump—foolishly, I think—but often understandably. But it’s difficult for me to hide my contempt for self-styled intellectuals and ideologues who routinely jettison their convictions based on what Trump does or says on any given day. If you thought Bill Clinton’s sybaritic and priapistic tendencies were appalling but simply laugh off objections to Trump’s even more sordid behavior, you don’t have a principled objection to adultery. You have a “principled” objection to objecting to immoral behavior by politicians you like. That is the single unspoken standard behind every double-standard regarding Trump and his most committed opponents. They are making Trump the standard for their views.

Swap out sexual licentiousness for industrial policy, protectionism, corruption, mental incoherence, arrogance, and replace Clinton with Joe Biden or Barack Obama and the argument doesn’t change.

Oh, and now you can add to that list “Middle East wars.”

Which brings me to the revolt of some Trump “intellectuals” over the Iran war. Tucker Carlson, Sohrab Ahmari, Christopher Caldwell, Mollie Hemingway, and numerous others are stunned, shocked, appalled by Trump’s “betrayal” of MAGA. And it’s schadenfreudtastically hilarious. 

It pains me to include Caldwell in that list, because there are few writers and intellectuals I have respected more over the last 30 years, regardless of my disagreements with him. Caldwell is probably best in class of a group of intellectuals who have tried to argue for a serious intellectual consistency to Trumpism. 

He has declared the Iran war “The End of Trumpism.” He writes:

There is more wisdom in this than some knee-jerk Trump-haters will allow for. That wisdom accounts for a large portion of why I have grace for generic Trump voters. It’s also why I said they were foolish for putting their faith in Trump. Because the high-minded versions of Trumpism were always ridiculous when applied to Trump himself. 

Let’s give Trump the maximum benefit of the doubt and assume he saw what Caldwell sees about how America got off course. The guy who took a plane from Qatar never held this “democratic restoration” of American government as his goal. The guy who is turning the Department of Justice into a score-settling and self-aggrandizement machine and who sees personal loyalty as the only non-negotiable criterion for government employment didn’t care about “The Deep State” as a threat to democratic government. 

And, just to check the box, the guy who tried to steal an election doesn’t care about actual nuts-and-bolts democracy. Caldwell has talked himself into a strange corner. He sees Trump as a paladin for the informal, atmospheric, poetic, abstract concept of “democracy” while yada-yadaing over the slap-to-the-face reality that Trump has nothing but contempt for the formal, non-poetic, practice of actual democracy.

Simply put, Trump got into politics for himself. To the extent Trump saw and understood the zeitgeist that Caldwell identifies, he considered it an opportunity, not a cause. 

The idea that Trump’s war on Iran is a betrayal of “True Trumpism” is the last gasp of people who told themselves that Trumpism was an ideology. And it’s embarrassing. 

I don’t agree with Trump on much, but he is incandescently, blazingly, irrefutably correct when he says “I think that MAGA is Trump.” Or as he told The Atlantic, “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that.” 

Now, just to be clear, Trump did not invent the term “America First.” Because he doesn’t know anything about American history, he didn’t know what “America First” meant until a reporter used the phrase with him in an interview. 

But on his larger point, Trump is right. Whether you call it MAGA or America First or Trumpism, he determines what it is. And that has been true from the beginning. If you sincerely thought otherwise, the joke is on you.

Now, ascribing sincerity to Trump’s intellectual defenders is not a concession I am willing to grant wholesale. I think some intellectuals, Caldwell among them, came to their positions in good faith (you can tell from his “End of Trumpism” piece that he saw Trump the man with fairly clear eyes). But Tucker Carlson and many of the others were always liars. They knew the beast they were hitching themselves to. For instance, Carlson once texted a friend “I hate [Trump] passionately” but publicly insisted “I love Trump.”

One reason I find this moment so deliciously hilarious is that some of the people turning on him are discovering that I was right all along. They were fine with all of the terrible, ugly, cruel, and stupid things Trump did so long as they thought Trumpism meant what they wanted it to mean. It’s like they cheered Godzilla smashing one building or another, crafting ornate theories for why he crushed that school or why he melted that radio tower. But when Godzilla turns his gaze toward something they love, they shout “Betrayal!”

Others knew all along what Godzilla was all about, but they benefited from pretending otherwise for money, fame, or influence. Or they reasoned that after Godzilla retreated to the sea to go live on Mar-a-Monster Island, they would be able to rule the rubble he left behind. 

Regardless, the war on Iran isn’t a betrayal of Trumpism, this is Trumpism on full display. 

That people are calling it a betrayal is what economists call a “revealed preference.” Godzilla smashing things is wise, defensible, and worthy of celebrating. But smashing things allegedly in service to Israel is an outrage.

As I wrote earlier this week, there are many defensible arguments against this war and for it. I do not believe America is doing it for Israel. Yes, it benefits Israel. And haters of Israel, like haters of Jews (not necessarily the same thing), tend to operate from a conspiratorial—cui bono?—theory of causation. If Israel benefits from something—or can even be perceived as benefiting—then Israel must be the author of it. That’s the gist of Joe Kent’s preposterous, ahistorical, and delusional letter of resignation from the National Counterterrorism Center. None of these people resigned or denounced Trump because of Trump’s tariffs, or his seizure of Nicolás Maduro, January 6, or any of the other ridiculous or heinous things Trump has done. They defended it. They polished the turds until they could see their own reflection in them. But helping the jooos? Stop the Trump train. I want to get off. 

The invasion of Iran reveals nothing new about Trump or Trumpism. The reaction to it reveals a great deal about a lot of people.

I had to leave again, and the girls were pissed. They refused to even look at me when I left yesterday morning. Good thing they didn’t see the luggage until after the morning rituals and negotiations. Reports from home are good (the Dingo was not, in fact, incarcerated). They appreciated the return of warm weather. I apologize for the short canine update, but I am now writing this from the New Orleans airport after having given my little talk and driving back from Baton Rouge. I have plenty of time to kill because my flight has been severely delayed, but I’m keeping the team back at The Dispatch from getting on with their weekends. If I can get a good welcoming committee video I will, but it now looks like I will be home so late, I’ll probably have to wake them up. That said, here’s rare archival footage of one of the first games of Hand vs. Dingo. 

Your Name: Lisa Moellering

Why You’re a Dispatch Member: My dad was a reader of Jonah’s books and I followed suit. I continued to read the columns. When The Dispatch came into being it was a natural progression, and I always enjoy the read. And of course the canine updates. I suppose I think of The Dispatch as rational and that is a good thing.

Anything Else You’d Like to Share About Yourself: I am a wife and mother and have been a librarian/archivist—and now a school psychologist. I feel very lucky to have all this.

Your Pet’s Breed: Beagle

The Story of How You Got Your Pet: My son, who was 12 at the time, wanted a puppy. We had always rescued older dogs through a beagle rescue group. So I found Emma in a nearby city, brought her home, and surprised my son after his baseball practice. It was love at first sight (for him and all of us)! She has been with us 12 years now—was diagnosed with cancer over two years ago,  so not only is she a wonderful dog, but a medical miracle.

Your Pet’s Likes: Food (she is a Beagle), barking at the neighbor’s dogs, and anyone’s bed.

Your Pet’s Dislikes: Thunder—any loud noise really—and the vet.

Your Pet’s Proudest Moment: She brought in a dead mouse and dropped it in front of me—twice! I guess there were no rabbits around thank goodness!

A Moment Someone (Wrongly) Said Your Pet Was a Bad Boy or Girl: She loves walks on “trash day” and can be pretty aggressive with others’ trash bags, which has been pointed out to us. We do our best to keep her away.