For more than a year, journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan had been trying — and largely failing — to raise awareness about the very strange story of Donald Trump and his aide Natalie Harp. Shortly after the 2024 election, the New York Times journalists published a profile of the lithe blonde in her early 30s, complete with photos of her gazing at Trump adoringly, explaining how she left him love letters with language like, “You are all that matters to me.” On Aug. 16, Haberman was still trying to raise the issue during an appearance on MS NOW, describing Harp as Trump’s “human binky.”
But in the end, it was Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., who woke up much of the public to this disturbing relationship by mentioning Harp on the campaign trail. “He doesn’t want to do the job,” the senator said of Trump, the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
The defensive reaction from the White House was so over-the-top that it backfired, drawing more attention to the relationship.
But a mystery remained. Haberman, Swan and many others had been talking about Harp, but it wasn’t until Ossoff said something that the White House truly lost their minds.
The reaction likely had little to do with Ossoff’s comments, as elegantly as they were constructed. No, this recoil was more about the messenger than the message. At 39, Ossoff isn’t just young. He is strikingly handsome. The boyish good looks of his early career have matured into something closer to the old-fashioned allure of a 1960s-era movie star, such as Gregory Peck or Warren Beatty. Broad-chested, with great hair and a winning smile, Ossoff has a cool demeanor, good sense of humor and moral seriousness in a proportion that’s rare in politics — and that hasn’t really been seen since Barack Obama. Ossoff, in other words, can get it.
I’m talking about votes.
Put another way, Ossoff is everything the 80-year-old president wishes he were, but isn’t. Harp’s presence is a touchy, daily reminder to both Trump and his staff of the president’s thick catalog failings as a human being. Having a young, handsome, talented man mock Trump for his emotional support aide had to have stung with a special precision. No one needs to tell the president or his staff that Ossoff feels just fine about himself — and doesn’t need a full-time emotional support aide to follow him around, praising his every move.
Considering how much the White House communications staff is extremely online, they are also likely to know that Ossoff has become quite the thirst trap, even among young women and gay men who otherwise aren’t especially political on social media. As Grace Panetta of The 19th recently explained, the senator is a reliable, if unwitting, model for light-hearted crush content, much like what creators generate in tribute to movie stars like Timothée Chalamet or Tom Holland.
“Take a scroll through Instagram and TikTok, and you’ll see fan edit-style videos of Ossoff at campaign rallies and in Senate hearings,” Panetta wrote. Women jokingly call out Ossoff’s “slutty Atticus Finch cosplay” or predict that Ossoff will be “a hot president in my lifetime.” It’s reached the point where a reporter from TMZ asked Ossoff if he has “BDE,” which is not short for Big Dictionary Energy, despite the senator very much seeming like he’d be a fan of Oxford’s quintessential publication.
Ossoff’s sex appeal doesn’t just offer a striking contrast with Trump’s oversized suits and comical combover. He’s also very different than men in the Republican ranks who are closer to his own age and, like himself, are widely seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates. At 42, Vice President JD Vance is also the subject a lot of online content. But most of it portrays him in a comically unflattering manner, with tiny dead eyes, oversized cheeks and a maniacal grin. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 55, isn’t mocked for his looks, but he is often portrayed as a sad sack, a man too slow-witted and spineless to be much use beyond his role as Trump’s patsy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, 46, is blessed with good looks that even three breakfast gin-and-tonics can’t take away. But with the help of Colin Jost on “Saturday Night Live,” he is mostly viewed like an overgrown frat boy crushing beer cans on his forehead. None come even close to the dreamboat treatment Ossoff receives.
This disparate treatment is especially amusing because the MAGA movement has insisted for years that they are bringing back a more virile masculinity — supposedly to cure all the allegedly poisonous feminism inflicted upon America by those WNBA-loving Democrats. No doubt there are some people impressed by all the workout videos posted by MAGA leaders, though that audience probably doesn’t have much crossover with people who get second dates. But what all the chest-thumping and push-up contests of the right really communicates is overcompensation rather than reclaiming some “lost” masculinity.
Beneath the right’s meltdown over Ossoff’s relatively tame comment about Harp was a molten layer of male insecurity. Steven Cheung, the volatile White House communications director, tweeted, “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics.” White House spokesman David Ingle called the senator a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid.” Both unwisely lobbed these insults from X accounts featuring photos of themselves. The handy comparison left the observer to contemplate how, with MAGA, it’s typically true that every accusation is itself a confession. Similarly, Trump compared Ossoff to Pee-wee Herman, a reference to a film that is older than the senator and only served to underscore how old and out of touch the president is.
MAGA’s belief that masculinity is on the decline is more a reflection of their personal fears and resentments than an accurate picture of the world. Men who can just act normal continue to do fine, or as much as one can in this economy. As with many of the thirst-trap Democrats that are rising stars, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a large part of Ossoff’s charm is that he possesses an easy masculinity, one comfortable with women’s equality. MAGA influencers may deny it, but men who actually like and respect women tend to be more attractive to women and gay men.
Being chill with women’s power projects confidence. Insecure men are the ones who demand that women are forced into subservient roles, just so men can feel bigger. It speaks to an internal belief that they can’t win without cheating. That’s loser energy, not the Big Dictionary Energy being given off by Ossoff and this new crop of young, vigorous Democratic men.
Jane Doe, a former Cornell University student who has filed a civil lawsuit alleging gang rape at the hands of seven Chi Phi fraternity members, has struggled since she first reported the incident to the police in November 2024, a few weeks after night a frat party turned ugly. “Her life has been destroyed,” her attorney Thomas Giuffra told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Unlike most of the alleged assailants, Doe left college after what Giuffra has described as a “horrifying” semester in which she had to attend classes “where she saw these guys on a fairly regular basis.”
She was not from “a wealthy family,” he said. “This was her dream and it was taken away from her at a young age in just a horrific fashion.”
But according to some on the right, Doe has not suffered enough for reporting her alleged assault to the police and then later suing the accused, the university and the fraternity. It’s not enough that she saw no charges filed, or that reportedly only two of the accused were expelled from campus. On top of her existing pain, therefore, many of the MAGA faithful are punishing her further by calling her a liar, implying she’s a slut and even threatening to out her, which would put her personal safety at risk. Whatever their intent, by doing this, they are sending a strong message to any victim of rape who might feel tempted to seek justice: Stay silent, or you’ll be next.
In 2017, the #MeToo movement took the nation by storm. A veritable flood of women, and some men, spoke out about their own experiences with sexual abuse, leading to a slew of firings, lawsuits, arrests and social opprobrium of the accused, especially since so many accusers produced compelling evidence. Despite this, it was barely weeks before the backlash began, with countless articles about how #MeToo had gone “too far,” despite scant evidence that innocent men were getting entangled. That response swelled until it overcame #MeToo, which has largely faded into the background.
Much — if not most — of the time, alleged victims still face far more serious consequences than their accused assailants, and for many people and institutions, it still feels much easier to make the issue go away by suppressing accusations than dealing with these cases which are, admittedly, often complex.
The Cornell case shows, though, that far from going too far, the #MeToo movement didn’t go far enough. Much — if not most — of the time, alleged victims still face far more serious consequences than their accused assailants, and for many people and institutions, it still feels much easier to make the issue go away by suppressing accusations than dealing with these cases which are, admittedly, often complex.
There is no doubt that the Cornell case is messy. By her own account, the victim was initially consenting, though perhaps not enthusiastically, to a threesome with two fraternity members. But the situation apparently took a turn when she took ketamine during the encounter and more fraternity members joined in, even communicating about “free p—y” on Snapchat. She describes hiding and swatting the new men away, but being too incapacitated to fight back.
“I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” she told police during a November 2024 interview.
It took time for the alleged victim to get to the point where she was ready to file a report, which right-wing pundits have seized on as evidence that she was not really raped. The New York Times, using campus police documents and witness statements, laid out the timeline showing that she initially reacted with confusion and shame. While she didn’t call it “rape,” she was clearly unhappy about what had happened. Over the course of a few weeks, she came around to first texting one of the accused that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” and then filing a police report.
“After rape, it’s common that victims don’t realize what happened was rape,” explained Anne DePrince, a psychology professor at the University of Denver and author of “Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence Against Women.”
Victims “feel some shame about reporting it,” especially if they initially “liked the boy or they wanted to go to an event,” Sharon Gandarilla-Javier, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told me. She noted that it’s also common for someone to initially consent to one activity that then becomes “totally different than what they expected.”
Journalists and feminist writers have been cautious in addressing this case, making it clear that the claims haven’t been tested in court and that New York’s rape laws may not be enough to secure an indictment, much less a conviction. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has reopened the case, arguing that this new lawsuit presents evidence he didn’t have when he initially made the decision to not charge the accused. New reporting also shows that Van Houten was given a condensed version of Doe’s report to Cornell police, one that omitted her use of the word “raped.”
But on the right, there appears to be no similar care when lobbing unproven — and unevidenced — accusations that Doe is lying.
“Her account has radically changed,” The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro said on Tuesday’s episode of his podcast, insisting “it turned out that the details of the police report did not amount to anything like rape.”
While he may be proven right if prosecutors can’t secure an indictment, this is not the same thing as saying that all Doe reported was “bad things happening with consent,” as Shapiro claimed. She herself said she was “raped,” and as many have pointed out, the very fact that she filed a police report is relevant. Calling the police suggests that a person believes they are reporting a crime.
Matt Walsh, also of the Daily Wire, accused feminists of “rushing into the next Duke lacrosse/UVA-style hoax” and argued on X that the situation was nothing more than “a disgusting drug and alcohol fueled orgy,” where “the drunk men have just as valid a claim to being raped.” This, of course, ignores the fact that the alleged victim did not get on Snapchat to advertise “free p—y” to strangers, as well as her own testimony that she pushed them away and tried to hide.
The story “gets transformed from a night of regrets that the young woman is ashamed of into a night in which she’s a victim,” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said on her podcast, where she also threatened to release the accuser’s name.
Feminists and journalists are wise to use words like “alleged” and to be clear that the evidence has not been fully evaluated in a court of law, and it is true that there remains much about this case that is unknown. Still, there are the Snapchats and text messages, including one where the alleged victim uses the word “nonconsensual” and another where the accused wrote “I just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night.” This alone makes it hard to believe the accusations are a “hoax,” as Walsh suggested, even if there are outstanding legal questions about whether a consensual encounter turned into something illegal.
For people who insist on the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” many on the right have proven themselves quick to make claims about the alleged victim’s motives. It’s worth remembering that E. Jean Carroll won a defamation civil suit against Donald Trump after he accused her of lying when she claimed he sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. There is a demonstrable psychological and reputational toll on alleged victims when they face public accusations that they are lying, especially when they come from high-profile people who also insinuate that the victim is an immoral person because of their sexual history.
In this case, no one is required to have an opinion about the accuser’s character. They don’t know her history or her life or why she was even at the party, beyond her stated desire to have some fun . . . Shutting up is free.
In this case, no one is required to have an opinion about the accuser’s character. They don’t know her history or her life or why she was even at the party, beyond her stated desire to have some fun. They could, like most decent people, consider the allegations and assume that, even if there is not a crime here, what is described should never happen to anyone. Shutting up is free.
But the past decade of Trumpism has largely been built on stirring up male anger at women’s growing equality. Paranoid and unsupported claims that women have immense power to ruin men with false accusations have been the bread-and-butter of a MAGA media industry designed to exploit men’s resentment for profit. Their audiences yearn to hear that Jane Doe is the real bad guy here, and so attacking her without a single shred of real evidence against her is an opportunity that many right-wing pundits can’t seem to pass up.
Despite the hysterical claims of its critics, #MeToo was never about ruining the lives of innocent men. In a very real sense, the movement was about leveling the playing field, which is so dramatically tilted against victims that it makes justice nearly impossible to achieve. No one truly disputes the importance of due process to handle accusations of sexual violence. That’s why Jane Doe is going through the court system. It’s also why it’s good that, in light of new information, the district attorney is re-opening the case.
But due process is endangered if victims can’t report allegations without facing public abuse and threats of being falsely accused themselves that it becomes psychologically impossible to live their lives. As its name suggested, that was the whole point of #MeToo: to create enough solidarity between victims and allies to make it safe for victims to speak out without their lives being destroyed. If the right really believes in the value of due process, then they would let it play out, instead of dogpiling and harassing accusers so that future victims are too scared to report crimes.
Before it became reality, the biggest fear around a second Donald Trump administration was an increased level of competence. The candidate and his team displayed shocking measures of discipline and consistent messaging throughout the 2024 race, with much of the credit going to campaign manager Susie Wiles, who became his White House chief of staff. As a result, some feared that the shambling jankiness of his first term would be replaced by an efficient, experienced administration that would carry out a ruthless, quasi-fascist platform with few hiccups.
That hasn’t happened. Once in office, Trump replaced the GOP’s establishment scolds who curtailed his worst impulses in his first term with loyalists who were just as green as him. The result has been constant outrage over blatant graft and executive overreach, as Trump is unable to stop blabbing about his — possibly illegal — dealmaking and unconstitutional policy goals. But look to the Republican Party’s backbenchers: You’ll see what MAGA could do with a figurehead who can keep their trap shut.
A loyal Trump acolyte, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has happily deployed bored-looking National Guard troops to New Orleans and the U.S.-Mexico border for little more reason than pleasing the president. He has successfully pushed a law to require the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and he rarely shies away from red meat conflicts with his state’s few Democratic strongholds. Little surprise, then, that Landry was hailed as MAGA’s next-generation hero by Rolling Stone in 2024.
Unlike Trump’s premature crowing over his massive ballroom or countless would-be Iran ceasefires, the governor has a tendency to let his work speak for itself.
But when the time comes to pass Republican policies he truly cares about, or to hand out contracts and favors to his preferred businesses, Landry goes eerily quiet. Unlike Trump’s premature crowing over his massive ballroom or countless would-be Iran ceasefires, the governor has a tendency to let his work speak for itself.
When it was published, Landry’s profile in Rolling Stone made hay out of his ability to go dark. Lately, though, when he gets quiet, it’s out of legal necessity. His administration has proven remarkably open to signing non-disclosure agreements while working out public deals with megacorporations.
According to a report from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Landry administration has signed nearly 300 NDAs since he took office in 2024. The Gulf States Newsroom uncovered a further 100 NDAs between the governor’s office and its employees, restricting what they can share about their time on the job. Reporter Drew Hawkins, who spoke to employees of former Louisiana gubernatorial administrations, said the broad gag orders on public employees was unprecedented.
“[T]hey’ve never seen anything like this,” Hawkins told New Orleans television station WWL. “They don’t know about anybody else signing them. They never signed them, and then you know one of them reviewed it and went through it point by point and talked about just how wild this would be to enforce.”
The result of all these hush-hush agreements is most noticeable in recent headline deals with SpaceX and Meta. The former was given the OK to build a massive spaceport in coastal Louisiana in between two wildlife refuges. While the under-wraps deal was being worked out, Landry signed laws exempting aerospace operations from property taxes, nuisance liabilities and public records requests. The final deal, approved in a public meeting of a new development board announced just 24 hours before, granted SpaceX more than $24 billion in tax breaks to build a rocket-launching facility no locals had even heard about.
A similarly tight-lipped dealmaking process led to Meta’s announcement of its largest data center to date in rural Northeast Louisiana. The project, dubbed Hyperion, will cover six square miles of Richland Parish. The tax breaks granted to Meta, again without public input, total more than $3 billion.
For his part, Landry kept quiet about the agreements until the last possible moment. But once the ink was dry, he was downright boastful about them. “I have no problem letting the people in the state of Louisiana decide whether what we put together was worth it,” he said, telling the Times-Picayune that he was motivated by pragmatism and a desire to drag his economically underperforming state into the future. “You don’t do these deals in the public,. At some point, you have to give the people elected to lead this state the opportunity to lead.”
Since Louisiana’s have a habit of ending up in prison, some level of backroom chicanery is to be expected in the Bayou State. At the moment, Landry’s NDA-heavy approach is largely a Louisiana phenomenon. But the ethically dubious practice of burying public-private deals under NDAs could be put to use elsewhere.
Landry’s down-low dealmaking offers a blueprint for post-Trump Republicans looking to push through potentially unpopular agreements and policies, including those involving data centers and artificial intelligence. While the president may no longer be able to harness the support he enjoyed by virtue of being loud-mouthed himself, his followers can work quietly to carry on his project under a blanket of keep-quiet agreements — springing them on the public when the deals have already been made.
Andy Beshear has a favorite song: “Universal Sound” by Tyler Childers, the Grammy-winning country artist with a special place in the Kentucky governor’s heart. That title is something of a metaphor, about connecting to a deep, abiding spirituality accessible to us all. It’s meant to be an ecumenical message — just like the one Beshear hopes to deliver.
“Universal Sound” carried him through a “nasty” reelection campaign in 2023, which ended with a comfortable victory over his GOP opponent, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who had been hand-picked for the race by Sen. Mitch McConnell. Amid mounting speculation that Beshear could become a leading contender in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, “Universal Sound” may well become familiar to more voters.
Beshear’s newly published book, which is de rigueur for potential candidates seeking to raise their political profile and lay out a vision, is also stoking talk of 2028. With its title taken from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country” explores how President Donald Trump and his administration have, in Beshear’s words, “hijacked” Christianity, and how the governor’s brand of inclusive faith underpins his political life, offering readers a blueprint for governing with compassion.
I interviewed Beshear last week on the sidelines of Bourbon & Beyond, the music festival held annually in Louisville, Kentucky. He spoke about a reinvigorated religious left, addressed the tricky question of whether Trump should be considered a Christian, discussed his willingness to take unpopular stands in a red state, hinted at his plans for 2028 and explained why, as a politician often compared to Mr. Rogers, his kindness shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness. (Full disclosure: My husband, the novelist Silas House, served as Kentucky poet laureate under Beshear, and I once briefly assisted the governor on a writing project.)
This conversation, which took place in a backstage trailer vibrating from the country and hip-hop tunes emanating from nearby stages, has been edited for length and clarity.
Governor, thank you for taking the time to talk. “Go and Do Likewise” is centered around the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible. What do you think that story has to tell us and teach us today?
Well, it’s a perfect story for a moment of division. So the parable of the Good Samaritan is about a man lying bloodied and naked on the side of the road, and everybody that looks like him and thinks like him and votes like him and prays like him and loves like him goes to the other side of the road, ignores him and walks on. But Jesus chooses someone who’s raised to hate that man on the side of the road — the man on the side of the road was raised to hate the Samaritan — and that’s the person he has come over, not kick the man while he’s down, but lift him up, carry him to safety and, if you read it carefully, pay for his healthcare moving forward.
But the parable of the Good Samaritan is more than just a story to emulate; it’s an instruction, because Jesus then looks at the crowd and says, “Now go and do likewise” . . . This is one of the fundamental — not teachings but instructions of the Bible. It’s for us to be good, especially when it’s hard. For us not to judge people, and at people’s worst moments, to just be good to each other.
Faith is obviously so important to you, and I’ve heard you many times refer to it as your “authentic why.” What do you mean by that?
“In an age of authenticity — when your Instagram video is important and your TikTok video is important — people want to know you, what drives you. They don’t have to agree with what drives you. They just want to see that it drives you to do good. And for me, that is my faith.”
Well, first, I would never impose my faith on anyone. I’m not somebody who thinks that my faith needs to be written directly into law. That’s Christian nationalism, and I’m against that. But I do think in an age of authenticity — when your Instagram video is important and your TikTok video is important — people want to know you, what drives you. They don’t have to agree with what drives you. They just want to see that it drives you to do good. And for me, that is my faith.
It tells me I’m supposed to leave this world a little better than I found it, and that’s one of the reasons I’m still [here]. You know, I thought that two terms as governor would be enough, and they still may be. But I see a world now that’s moving backward and not forward. And doesn’t faith call you to stand up and to speak out at that moment?
What do you think being in that position — I imagine you sitting there in Frankfort at night, weighing this [calculus] — has taught you?
First, I believe in any job that I’ve taken on. I am fully dedicated to the people of Kentucky, and when I fight with the president, it’s not because I’m a Democratic governor and he’s a Republican president. It’s because he’s doing something that hurts the people of Kentucky, and whether it’s popular or not, that was the job I took on to do my very best to move us not right, not left, but forward.
But you know, [the COVID pandemic] taught me a lot of lessons. I did what I thought was the right thing, that might not be the popular thing, the thing that would save the most lives. And you know what I found? As long as you’re willing to respect people enough to explain your why and not just your what, doing the right thing is oftentimes the politically popular thing, even if it wasn’t beforehand. People respect conviction, even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. And when you’re willing to explain why you did something, people can disagree with you but still believe you’re coming from a good place.
One thing I’ve been thinking about as I read your book is that the religious left used to be such a strong force in American politics. You know, Bobby Kennedy, all of his work —
All of the War on Poverty, even if notcouched in those terms —
Yes. Bobby Kennedy’s work for social justice was rooted in his Catholicism. Jimmy Carter, famously a Sunday school teacher, spoke about his faith a lot. Even Hillary Clinton, in her husband’s 1992 presidential campaign and administration, talked about her faith and took a lot of flak from establishment media. What happened to the religious left? Why do you think it declined, or kind of went underground?
Well, what I think we’re seeing now, when you see the James Talaricos of the world, our Kansas Senate candidate [Democrat Adam Hamilton] who’s a Methodist minister and others . . . you know, the media will always try to take something as a tactic. They’re like, “Why are Democrats talking more about faith right now?” instead of “Why are people of faith running as Democrats right now?” And I think it’s because there is such a manipulation and a hijacking of faith going on, in such a transparent manner, that people of faith are saying, “I’ve had enough.”
When you see Donald Trump hold a Bible in a way that you’re pretty sure he’s never held it, much less never read it; when he says he doesn’t think there’s any way he’s going to heaven, he doesn’t seem to be worried about it; when he walks out after Erika Kirk gives voice to the Golden Rule in such a beautiful way, and says, No, no, I believe in the exact opposite; when you see JD Vance using faith to kick people while they’re down instead of lift them up, and to judge as many people as possible — then I think people of real faith want to stand up and take that back. Or at least to provide the counterexample. I think people are tired of seeing faith used for bad in public life instead of for good, and that’s the core of why I wrote the book.
You don’t shy away from going after President Trump. You write that he “makes people feel good about themselves by telling them it’s okay to be the worst version of themselves.” At another point you say, “Trump may occasionally talk about Jesus (or ‘Two Corinthians’), but he has missed the point. Jesus lifted up the very people this Republican administration pushes down . . . Trump throws Gatsby parties with his billionaire friends, while Jesus hung out with the exact opposite. Trump clears the very people out of city parks that Jesus would minister to.”
That’s a powerful indictment. You’re saying that the president doesn’t love his neighbor as himself.
No, he calls his neighbor “the enemy from within.” It is the most stark contrast. I think about “love your neighbor as yourself” versus the president [characterizing] your neighbor as the enemy from within. I also think about Erika Kirk saying, I forgive my enemies, and Donald Trump saying, no, I hate my enemies . . . It’s just the exact opposite of what the Bible is supposed to teach us.
At one point, you question if he even knows the story of the Good Samaritan.
I’m not sure he does.
Christ said, “You will know them by their fruits,” right? Do you think President Trump is a Christian?
I try not to question people’s faith, because I admit that that is judging. But he is not living and he is not governing like a Christian. Now, when you think about the miracle of the fishes and the loaves in each of the four first books of the New Testament, it’s that important. Jesus, in a time of scarcity, makes sure everybody has enough. Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to take food off kids and seniors’ table [and] was willing to use starving Americans as leverage during a government shutdown. That is not living or governing like a Christian, and I doubt they ever run out of food at the White House.
“Jesus, in a time of scarcity, makes sure everybody has enough. Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to take food off kids’ and seniors’ tables [and] was willing to use starving Americans as leverage during a government shutdown. That is not living or governing like a Christian.”
I think about the “Big Ugly Bill,” and it’s causing kids to lose having enough food, but it’s also taking doctors away from the sick. And while I think he was talking about spirituality, the actual words of the Bible — which many people believe is the direct word of God — is that Jesus said a doctor is for the sick. Yet there’s a lot of sick [people] that aren’t going to have a doctor. So Donald Trump certainly isn’t living out faith. And for those that preach that he is a person of faith, my granddad, a lay Baptist minister, always said, you know, faith without action —
Yeah, is “dead.” In the book you call for a “Great American Reset.” What do you mean by that? How would you define that?
I did not live through McCarthyism, but we have read about McCarthyism — about attacking and othering people, throwing them in jail — and Donald Trump’s doing it right now. He’s so desperate, he’s calling people communists. I mean, just blatantly ripping off Joseph McCarthy. But the president himself is doing it. But we reached a point where people said enough, and they took a breath, and we came back together and did not repeat it — at least until now.
I don’t want to leave a broken country to my kids or to anyone else’s. I don’t want to leave this divided of a country to anyone else. I don’t want to leave a country where we are told it’s OK to hate each other and that your neighbor is the enemy. And so while I judge MAGA politicians, I don’t judge MAGA voters — and I don’t even use that phrase. Why? Because I want them to take a breath and to say, “OK, you know, let’s do something better. You know, this went too far. Let’s repair the wounds that we have,” so that we don’t move from retribution from one side to retribution to another side, and back and forth and back and forth, but that we get something more like what we had growing up.
When you were talking, I thought of another scripture — “the repairer of the breach” from the Book of Isaiah, which Bill Clinton used quite a bit. That’s kind of what you’re talking about, bringing people back together, healing divides.
I feel like we’ve done that better in Kentucky than most places. I still don’t always agree with the way people vote, but if you look at where we were with [my predecessor as governor] Matt Bevin, [who was] going after everybody who is different, othering anyone and everyone, judging everyone . . . Look at where we are now. That last [presidential] election, you didn’t see nearly the signs or the flags or anything else. You saw people who, in the very least, wanted to genuinely respect their neighbors.
You talk about that happening here in Kentucky. How do you think that can begin nationally, though, when a lot of MAGA Republicans out there think, as you write in the book, that “Democrats are Satan in the flesh”?
Well, Republicans right now are costing them about $4,500 extra a year in tariffs, about $800 extra a year in gas. If they need diesel, it’s even worse. So they might think that Democrats are Satan in the flesh, but Republicans are bankrupting them. If you want to eat, to be able to afford groceries for yourself or your kid, if you want to be able to see a pediatrician for your child in your own community, you’re going to think about things a little bit different. Democrats have the chance to grab that lane. And we should be. That’s where we should want to be. That’s certainly where I’ve always governed.
Think about a soybean farmer, and you and I both know we got a lot in Kentucky, and I’m not sure if any of them voted for Kamala Harris. But look at what’s happened to them. First, the USAID program’s eliminated. That’s one of their major clients, because if you feed starving nations, people like the United States better. Then [Education Secretary] Linda McMahon comes in, using her wrestling knowledge, to end the farm-to-cafeteria program. Then Donald Trump — and he alone decides on tariffs — throws them on China, and they stop buying our soybeans. They’re the largest purchaser in the world. They move to Brazil and Argentina.
Then he decides to get in a war with Iran that he doesn’t even explain to the American people a couple days before in his State of the Union. And now the price of diesel, which runs all farm equipment, is at an all-time high. If that’s not enough, a third of the world’s fertilizer runs through the Strait of Hormuz. So, a soybean farmer that voted for Donald Trump, who believed that was their guy, is totally betrayed, trying to decide if they’re going to plant crops at all, or if Donald Trump has bankrupted their family farm.
You’re the most popular Democratic governor in the country, according to the polls, and this book is introducing you and your beliefs to a whole other set of people, of potential voters. What are your plans for 2028?
Well, I haven’t made any final decisions, but I will say when I walked off the stage in 2023 . . . I looked at [my wife] Britainy, and I said, “Hoo, I’ll never have to run for anything ever again.” As I’m here today, I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. And I’ll make that decision later.
But I think about two core tenets of my faith. Number one, that I am made by a loving God that calls me to love other people, and that ought to be the baseline. And number two, I ought to leave things better than I found them.
Listen: When you’re governor of a place you love, it’s enough. It’s special. What we’ve done in Kentucky together, all of us, people of all different parties over the last seven years, [has] been transformational, and I couldn’t be more proud — and I was willing to go out on top . . . But I can’t watch a country slide back. I can’t see progress that folks in Selma marched for 60 years ago, undone by a rogue Supreme Court. So I don’t know exactly what my role will be in the future, but I just will not leave a broken country to my kids or anyone else’s. I will not.
I want to ask you sort of a different question. Let’s say that a popular Democratic governor, who has been elected twice to that job in what many see as one of the reddest states in the country, decides to run for president. What would they offer the American people?
Well, a vision of both reviving the American dream, of proving to people [who] believe the economy is broken that it can work again. That if you work hard and play by the rules that you can get ahead — that you can take your kids on the same vacation that you went on, that you can leave your family better off. That we can fix the darn government that people look at as corrupt right now, and we can heal this divide that is such a threat to our future as Americans. And none of us enjoy — none of us wants to be mad at the person that lives across from us. I think we can get back to being, yes, an imperfect nation, but one that’s stable, [where] at least we are moving toward progress each and every day.
“Don’t mistake kindness for weakness. If I’m Kentucky’s ‘Mister Rogers’ — he went up against Trump before Trump. He went up against a Republican incumbent governor that attacked him every day for four years, and the ‘Mister Rogers’ is the one still standing.”
Right now, polls are showing that Democratic voters want fighters, leaders who are unafraid of punching back against corrupt and MAGA politicians. Some Democratic politicians are resorting to using strong language, dropping F-bombs to get their point across. You, by contrast, have built your political identity on leading with kindness. “Kentucky’s Mister Rogers” is how many people see you. One of your book’s chapters is titled “Be the Adult in the Room.” So I wonder if you think there’s room for that kind of politics in the party and America today, coming in the wake of Donald Trump.
Don’t mistake kindness for weakness. If I’m Kentucky’s “Mister Rogers” — he went up against Trump before Trump. He went up against a Republican incumbent governor that attacked him every day for four years, and the “Mister Rogers” is the one still standing. A lot of people can claim they’re fighting in different ways from the bluest of states. How many people have sued [Trump] 30-plus times from the reddest of states? How many people speak out against him when it could negatively impact their approval rating instead of positively impact their approval rating?
You know, every day that I stand up for Kentuckians and Americans, every day that I fight back against this administration, I have more to lose than anybody else. But what’s an approval rating worth if you’re not going to use it for something? So there are different ways to fight, and here’s what I’d say to a lot of people: If somebody’s yelling, and you yell back, then nobody can hear a thing. There’s effective ways to defeat that person to fight and win. But shouldn’t we want one that will actually win in the end? And so I think that when people look at who’s fighting in the hardest of places, they see this governor.
The midterms are about six weeks away. What do you think the Democratic Party is getting right, and where do you think it’s falling short?
“What’s an approval rating worth if you’re not going to use it for something? There are different ways to fight, and here’s what I’d say to a lot of people: If somebody’s yelling, and you yell back, then nobody can hear a thing. There’s effective ways to defeat that person, to fight and win.”
I think that they are getting right how hard the world is on American families right now. I hate to use the “affordability” word, because I believe it’s becoming like a political science term. What it really [means] is that your medical bills cost too much. That’s why we forgave $250 million in medical debt here in Kentucky [via executive order]. It’s that your utility bill is going up. It’s that groceries are too much, and my goodness, gas is through the roof. We need to make sure that we’re communicating in terms that the American people communicate in.
You said something at a recent book event that caught my ear, that the Democrats have gone too far on a few things. I’m wondering what those might be.
We went too far on overregulation. We’ve got to protect our environment, we’ve got to protect our workers. But if we make things so onerous, then it takes a long time to accomplish anything. If you believe we need more housing, and it takes that much longer to build housing, then people lose out. If it takes too long to build a factory, you don’t have those jobs that pay the good wages. So we’ve got to have a sense of urgency . . . Democrats have to design our policies in a way to get results, and if we believe truly in something, even if we’re only 80% right on what the policy looks like, understanding if we get it done faster, it benefits more people.
You come from what many observers would call the party’s more traditional wing. Right now, there’s a lot of energy behind progressives like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, and democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. Do you think there’s room in the party for this wide range of political identities?
I think — and you’re not doing it — but I think that the media tries to put everybody in a box to have a narrative. How many people in a Trump plus-30 state that have vetoed every anti-LGBTQ+ bill that [has reached] their desk would suddenly be lumped in as a moderate? And that’s not to suggest I view myself as a progressive. I just — I don’t view myself as either. I view myself as pragmatic.
My job is to stand up for my people and all their rights, live out my faith and to see everyone as a child of God, but [also] to solve problems. And that’s where Democratic governors are. You know, I think that this debate can play out in the House and in the U.S. Senate, where they might have different caucuses. But governors aren’t one of 50 or one of 24 in a party. You’re one of one, and your job, if you’re doing it right, is to get things done, to actually improve people’s lives. So, I can’t be as ideological as someone who votes on the amendment to the rule, right? My job has to be to figure out how to get the best results for our people on each and every day.
Are you worried that Republican attempts to deploy terms like “communist” across the board will hurt the Democratic brand overall?
Oh, I think what the president’s doing is so hyperbolic and so transparent that people see right through it. There is only one elected official in the entire country actively engaged in socialism, and his name is Donald J. Trump.
The definition of socialism is government ownership of the means of production, and he is the only person negotiating a U.S. government interest in a private company. But, you know, what you do is you call people the name that you’re worrying that you are, and so he’s calling people “communist.” So now that he’s engaged in socialism, which he is, what is the difference between that and communism? It is the people in charge enriching themselves, which he and his family are doing. It’s turning the police and the justice system into your own personal force, which is what he’s doing. You see in each and every one of these that the things that Trump is calling people is what he’s actively engaged in.
Donald Trump has never been one for subtlety, so it follows that his taxpayer-funded “public service announcement” instructing Americans to love him would literally feature a gospel choir singing the words “Love Me.” Along with many of his closest allies, the president is a fan of pseudo-science, so perhaps he believes the repetition will have a hypnotic effect on viewers, reversing through pop psychology trickery the free-fall that has beset his approval ratings.
This is just one of three separate ads, totaling $1.5 million so far, that feel less like a sincere effort to persuade voters and more like an expensive effort by the White House to soothe the temperamental 80-year-old. Either way, what’s indisputable is that Trump is becoming increasingly frustrated that the chicanery he has used throughout his life no longer seems to be working.
The president has perhaps the most staggering track record of defrauding Americans of any hustler in the country’s 250-year history. His glib assertions of being the greatest genius who knows more than any other person about any subject under the sun have served him well for decades, and his 34 felony fraud convictions and civil fraud cases paint a picture of a man who always seems to find marks who will believe his transparent, self-aggrandizing lies.
Before he won the White House in 2016, “The Apprentice” managed to convince millions of viewers that a man who managed to lose nearly a billion dollars was some great businessman. Even when Trump argued that he, unlike medical experts, understood the salutary effects of household cleaners to treat Covid-19 patients, his followers stayed by his side, some of them putting their trust in MAGA quackery over science-based healthcare like vaccines. The cult of personality built around his persona of presidential greatness remains a puzzling swindle.
But on Monday in the Oval Office, Trump did what he usually does these days when presented with a microphone: He whined at length at how he isn’t getting the love he believes he deserves.
“Nobody talks about all the incredible things,” the president complained, saying America has “the best economy we’ve ever had.” He added, laughably, that people are “twice as wealthy” as they were as two years ago under the Biden administration. Then he repeated his false promise that, if Republicans win the November midterms, the government would issue a “dividend” check of $5,000 to every adult American.
Polls, however, suggest that Americans are finally waking up. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found his approval rating at a dismal 32% — hitting, in other words, the very bedrock of his MAGA base.
It may be easy to laugh at this stuff, but it’s worth taking a moment to remember that Trump has always been this way. Polls, however, suggest that Americans are finally waking up. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found his approval rating at a dismal 32% — hitting, in other words, the very bedrock of his MAGA base. Worse for him, only 13% of Americans, according to an analysis by G. Elliott Morris, are willing to tell a pollster they buy the president’s $5,000 check lie, showing that even people who claim to approve of him can’t be bothered to trust him any longer.
People could be learning from experience. As Catherine Rampell of the Bulwark detailed, the $5,000 check promise is only the latest in a long list of false second-term promises that Americans would be receiving fat checks from the government. Her “partial list” includes these examples:
$5,000 stimulus checks via a “DOGE dividend” (February 2025)
$2,000 stimulus checks via a “rebate” or tariff “dividend” (July 2025, August 2025, November 2025, December 2025, February 2026)
Checks of indeterminate value that would redirect money that would have been spent on Affordable Care Act subsidies (November 2025)
$500 Obamacare “rebate” checks (September 2026)
$5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win the midterms (yesterday)
Thankfully, there now appears to be a limit to the number of times a fraudster can promise the check is in mail before even some MAGA voters start to wonder if they’re being had. Most clung to two big reasons to justify their vote in 2024: the president’s promises to lower prices and end foreign wars. Trump broke both in a dramatic fashion, starting a war with Iran and a trade war with, well, much of the world, both of which have escalated inflation, particularly of fuel prices. Even his most ardent followers are reminded of his lies every time they buy groceries or gas. Running ads that repeat his failed promises only serve to remind people of the broken trust.
Beyond bigger propaganda, Trump has no other ideas for how to change the situation. On top of the ads, last week the White House launched “Trump TV,” which was billed as an alternative to cable news but mostly runs pro-Trump content so poorly produced that it makes AI slop seem compelling. As Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye chronicled, the viewership started at a paltry 8,000 people and, by the next day, had faded to fewer than 1,000. It would have likely been even lower if it weren’t for journalists watching it to report on the emptiness of the enterprise.
Perhaps the surest sign that these efforts are more about placating Trump than persuading voters is the his travel schedule. The president is avoiding visiting states with close congressional races, where he risks being shunned by Republican candidates trying to distance themselves from his unpopularity. Instead, he is mostly sticking to deep red states like Alabama and Oklahoma, where they can still scare up enough MAGA diehards to fill stadiums and, crucially, give Trump hours of reassurance that he’s still got fans. On Tuesday, he spoke at an event heralding our era as a “golden age” due to AI. As a political maneuver, his words were baffling, as most Americans deplore the economy and loathe AI. But being surrounded by billionaires while applauding himself with gold-related talk is Trump’s happy zone, and keeping the president there appears to be all that matters to his West Wing staff.
For the worrywarts of the left, there remains plenty to be concerned about. Ahead of the midterms, Democrats are facing intense gerrymandering and voter suppression, which could blunt the wins currently projected by the polls. Even if the party were to take both the Senate and the House, Trump will still occupy the Oval Office for two more years. Armed with the criminal immunity granted him by the Supreme Court, he has no reason to stop blatantly flouting the law in a myriad of ways, ranging from his attacks on the Kennedy Center and prosecuting the Iran war without congressional approval to his own mysterious swelling wealth.
Still, even though it’s almost certainly illegal, there is an upside to Trump using taxpayer money for ego-gratifying TV ads and propaganda. The more time he spends on his futile efforts to restore the glory days when only half of Americans opposed him, the less energy he has for the work of actually governing. Everything he’s done in that arena has been an unmitigated disaster. Keeping Trump distracted from making serious decisions is a good thing for us all.
It wasn’t long after Braden Peters, better known as “Clavicular,” was arrested on suspicion of raping a 17-year-old girl at his family’s home in Massachusetts that his fellow MAGA influencers started complaining that he was the real victim.
“Now we live in a climate where a 19-year-old can’t even sleep with a 16-year-old with a little alcohol involved. Absolutely insane,” said Nick Fuentes, the popular white nationalist podcaster, ignoring the fact that it has long been considered rape to have sex with someone unconscious and unable to consent, as alleged by the criminal complaint against Peters.
Others floated conspiracy theories accusing the mysterious “they” of trying to “control” Clavicular, or claiming he is besieged with “women trying to ruin his life with rumors.” Brian Atlas of the “Whatever” podcast posted a video of the alleged victim drinking with Peters, as if it were exonerating evidence instead of bolstering the criminal case against him. Clavicular himself has been accusing the girl of fabricating her claims to get revenge for being rejected by him, an accusation echoed online by many of his fans. Right-wing commentator Richard Hanania, whose claims of reforming his racist views have drawn laudatory profiles in Vox and The Atlantic, struck out against the accuser, apparently because she didn’t cut off immediate contact with Peters after the alleged rape. (Research shows that victims often maintain contact with their assailants, especially if they’re still in denial or processing the trauma.)
MAGA hysteria over “cancel culture” has long provided an excuse to recast bigots as free speech martyrs on the specious grounds that being criticized for saying ugly things is a violation of their First Amendment rights.
Such reactions are entirely predictable. MAGA hysteria over “cancel culture” has long provided an excuse to recast bigots as free speech martyrs on the specious grounds that being criticized for saying ugly things is a violation of their First Amendment rights. This was always pretzel logic, but the halos granted to the canceled by right-wingers has expanded beyond those who are mad because people yelled at them on social media. Actual crimes, especially violence against women, are now being excused and justified by redefining perpetrators as victims of cancel culture. As long as what you do makes progressives and feminists angry, it appears, there is no limit to how some on the right will protect and even canonize you.
“MAGA and the right-wing have really lost the thread when it comes to their anger at cancel culture and are now just angrily fighting on the side of anyone who does like a crime,” Cody Johnston of “Some More News” noted in a recent episode. “Especially, it seems a crime against women.”
The Daily Wire, a right-wing production company founded by Ben Shapiro, openly brags how it hires actors and other talent shunned by mainstream Hollywood studios. “Thank you to the purple hairs. Please ‘cancel’ more creative geniuses,” a representative for the company said in a May 2025 press release that touted the hiring of former “Jeopardy!” producer Mike Richards as the new CEO. Richards had been slated to take over as host of “Jeopardy!” in 2021 — until The Ringer published an exposé containing accusations that he had been abusive toward female employees and “repeatedly used offensive language and disparaged women’s bodies” on his short-lived podcast. His hiring by The Daily Wire followed other prominent contracts between the outlet and canceled actors such as Gina Carano, who was fired from Disney after she equated liberals mocking her right-wing views to Nazis murdering Jews.
The Daily Wire’s glorification of the canceled quickly expanded beyond those who had experienced consequences for hate speech, however. After coming aboard, Richards soon hired Jonathan Majors, who had been fired from the Marvel franchise years earlier, to star in an action film called “Run Hide Fight: Infidels,” a movie reportedly so terrible that even critics struggled to take its vicious Islamophobia seriously. Unlike previous high-profile hires of canceled celebrities, though, Majors wasn’t just guilty of saying terrible things. He was convicted of domestic violence in 2024.
As Johnston notes, MAGA leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk have also been championing “Citizen Vigilante,” an independently produced and intensely racist film starring Armie Hammer as a former Army officer on a killing spree against immigrants. Hammer has been accused by multiple women of sexual and emotional abuse, with at least one woman claiming he raped her. Although he has consistently denied the charges, he did admit in an interview with Air Mail in 2023 to having “used people.”
“They could have been happy to just be with me and would have said yes to things that maybe they wouldn’t have said yes to on their own,” he said. Hammer was dropped by his agency and lost acting jobs, and he now contends he had no idea “Citizen Vigilante” would be so “disgusting.”
Even the right-wing influencer Andrew Tate, who has twice been arrested on charges of rape and sex trafficking, has long benefited from the glow-up one gets in MAGA circles after claiming status as a victim of cancel culture. The laundry list of allegations against him grew so long that the Trump administration, after seeming to help him escape justice in Romania, finally acceded to the United Kingdom’s request to extradite him and his brother Tristan. Still, it took years before powerful people on the right finally started to inch away from the Tates. Their close relationship with MAGA influencers — and with Trump’s son Barron — have reportedly left the brothers with hope that the administration will intervene on their behalf.
In retrospect, the shift from exalting those canceled for words to championing those canceled for alleged criminal behavior was inevitable. The First Amendment prevents government censorship, but one reason there are social penalties, including criticism, shunning and firing for hateful rhetoric, is that it is not, in fact, harmless. The discourse around so-called cancel culture has itself been warped, coming to imply that the problem is not bigoted language but liberal reactions to it. The insinuation is that such statements are “just words,” and to have any strong reaction to them is hysterical and overblown.
In fact, there is a direct line between misogynist rhetoric and violence against women. Men who listen to and repeat the idea that women exist to serve them — and should be punished if they reject that duty — are often likely to attempt to enforce that belief with violence. Degrading language aimed at women online often becomes the justification for vile behavior toward them in the real world. Creating social accountability for men who say misogynist things isn’t about feminists being overly sensitive; it’s about preventing those words from turning to action.
Clavicular’s arrest is a perfect example of this issue. He rose to fame as a “looksmaxxer,” which is a spin-off of the larger incel community. Incels believe that men are entitled to women’s sexual attention, and that feminism is an aberration because it allows women to live independently of men, instead of having to trade sex for survival. Looksmaxxers like Clavicular take it a step further, trying to game out strategies to reassert sexual dominance over women. Like Andrew Tate, a lot of the looksmaxxer discourse skirts the law by focusing on manipulating and tricking women into sex. But the implication of overt coercion is always bubbling beneath the surface. After all, if you feel that you are owed sex by women, rape becomes less like a crime and more like recompense.
To be fair, conservatives aren’t the only ones who have fueled years of panic over “cancel culture.” The hysteria has normalized and promoted by centrist pundits in publications like The Atlantic and The New York Times, helping to obscure what should have been obvious: that bad words lead to bad actions.
Bigoted chatter online isn’t just trolling or trying to get a rise out of liberals. It’s dehumanizing actual people, and it makes violence against them easier to justify. By all accounts, Clavicular was enjoying his rising fame, engaging in laudatory interviews in popular venues like Barstool Sports and the “All In” podcast, outlet that treated his misogyny as mere theatrics. The rape charges against him should be a reminder to us all: Sometimes people actually act on their beliefs.
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