It’s insidious.

That guy started genuflecting to Trump and MAGA as soon as he won in November. He’s an oaf.

Punching yourself in response to the preferences of others, explicit or imagined, is like submissiveness embedded.

Being Vance and Rubio is enough of a punishment for those two. Even if Vance were to luck his way into the Oval Office, he’ll live long enough to have to live with himself for way more time.

I want Trump to live long enough to rot in jail until he’s forgotten, or safely out from the center of attention.

I empathize but feel like this is Trump’s trick. Without Trump there is no Vance.

Ben Shapiro is an extremely weak person, to the point of evil himself. Which is ironic since the cardinal virtue of the right is strength to ward off evil. There’s a small percentage of right wingers who actually lived that virtue but that’s another thing.

No, he’s really dumb. He injured his hand earlier this season in something involving a knife at a team dinner out at a restaurant, without any other details that I’m aware of and was out for a long chunk of time.

The more time it buys him, though. All he ever wants is time.

But this is just a feeling. I don’t want to give the impression that I have any illusion about my competence to judge these things. Whatever happens, I won’t know until after it’s written about by someone smarter.

Funny my first thought was the Supreme Court bailed Trump out.

Amazing how it rises to the level of panic with these people once it actually becomes aired. It seems to me that people are fairly complacent considering what’s coming out.

Piers is the same, but I guess his seems more ambitious and deliberate. She always seems to be reaching.

I feel like this must come off like just an attempt to insult her, probably because I do want to insult her. Because she is so offensive. But I think it’s accurate. She appears vapid.

Yeah, but I think these don’t conflict. She seems to be devoid of substance, which would deprive her of any morality that a human gets to feel. It’s pitiful.

My take is she doesn’t have a real personality at all and every one she attempts is fake.

And the shame we feel from cowardice or the fear of our own cowardice I expect is also rooted in a desire for more assurance of our own safety.

The two are linked on some level of depth. Violence reverberates.

I also don’t really buy the claim that the whole Republican Party is falling in line because they are afraid of MAGA violence, but I would buy that they all would claim this to be so at one point or another when it’s the most convenient.

The threat of violence has real influence and more force but less reach I think to explain what I see as the extent of pandering. So, I wouldn’t dismiss it. I just think it’s not nearly sufficient to explain the whole phenomenon.

That’s absolutely it. But I think it works more on shame than genuine fear of physical pain. We imagine a confrontation, feel our fear and become hyper conscious of our weaknesses, leading to shame and dejection, then resignation.

He’s not much of an artist. “Jeffrey Epstein was a monster…[but]…”

Why does this guy always seem to need to present such mundane thoughts when making transitions in his work? It’s lazy in speech, much less writing. It’s aggravated to read because it feels like a lot of wasteful exposition.

I hate the way that guy writes.

Doing it with Usha Vance now.

Exactly right. They’re dead inside.

I’m wondering if one of them felt it when they pushed him from behind, and if that started the whole pile on.

I think he’s more cynical than that. I think he’s purely chasing clout. I think conservatism has always carried this sheen of…a bunch of desirable qualities. Intelligence. Class. Seriousness. But also the foil that makes it easier to stand out, being the unpopular orientation. He seems unprincipled.

He’s a pure clout chaser. He’s the JD Vance of punditry.

Any idea if he’s reflected publicly on his positions and arguments pre-2025? To say it’s aggravating watching these types of populists get it so wrong, then just shift to the present, like analysis doesn’t matter or isn’t what they are paid to give, would be an understatement.

Hopefully it was streamed somewhere and not just on his phone.

I saw that. That’s someone who’s rotted down to the core by hatred.