Articles like this are useful to remind us of the bubble that our educated class lords inhabit.
Thank goodness Rasmussen came out with an analysis of The Elite 1% — with graduate degrees, living in gentrified inner cities, earning $150,000 and up — all educated the same, think the same, live the same, and vote the same.
Bless their hearts.

“my initial assumptions didn’t pan out, but it wasn’t because I was wrong. It was because my concerns were so serious” (a summarizing quote I made up)

I kid. But seriously, the hundreds of executive orders at the start of his term, the 80+ extralegal (that’s generous) actions taken by Biden to encourage illegal in immigration, and the TV narcissist is the threat to the rule of law? Wait, wait, I forgot to mention how thoroughly criminals have been protected and victims punished across major (D) cities.

All that being said, he’s got a very important perspective seeing the Forest from the Trees. An ounce of self awareness would just be appreciated.

Summing up: Trump talks like a dictator, but he is too lazy to actually become one. He does not really want power, he just wants to gratify his ego. And he might do anything to get that – he does not care about the law or the country’s future or the consequences for anyone but himself, as long as he can feel like a big man. Sounds fair enough – but it is the description of a toddler.

So, all you fans: Is that really the man you want in charge of your future?

The Republican base is a strange beast. They believe that the American system, it’s institutions and constitution will make everything turn out OK in the end. They aren’t out on the streets burning buildings down when things don’t go their way. Even J6, they brought no weapons and observed the guide ropes. When the Democrats play lawfare, the Republicans just go to court and expect the legal system to work out. Even when judges attempt to be prosecutors or impose ludicrously punatittive sentences, they still think the answer is appeals, or take the punishment despite how unfair it appears. This is a group that will die for the constitution and the American way.
If anything, it’s modern Democrats who are demeaning and diminishing the constitution. DEI is a tool against equality under the law, against free speech and for big intrusive government and political officers in every organisation. Legal standards are being diminished as AGs pick and choose what and who to prosecute, and judges act politically. From where we are now, Trump’s impeachment was to protect Biden because money moves to politicians in mysterious ways – dark money that is anti-constitutional or via insider trading and pork barrel kickbacks. The Twitter files show federal agencies involved in censoring speech for political purposes (lab leak and Hunter laptop). And now we have the prospect of war by presidential decree. If you think Trump is a threat to the US constitution you are ignoring what is happening right under your nose.

Don’t know Sullivan so I went into this piece a blank slate. But the way he’s described seems kind of weird:

“a conservative who supported Obama, was a leader of the gay marriage movement, and has since argued forcefully against Donald Trump”

“unlike in 2016, he won’t be bamboozled by people like Paul Ryan into thinking that the most important thing is a tax cut for the super-wealthy”

Waitaminute, how is this a description of a ‘conservative’? It sounds exactly like a description of a generic left wing liberal journalist to me. He is opposed to tax cuts, voted for the Democrats, supported gay marriage, and hates Trump.
This is a very strange form of cosplay that obviously doesn’t apply in the other direction: I have never seen someone who supported Trump, wants to cut taxes and who opposed the gay marriage movement be described as a liberal.

He will seek to be re-elected to overturn the rule of law with respect to himself. In other words, we will have an election in which he will say: it’s me, or it’s the rule of law.

The USA has always allowed Presidents to pardon people unilaterally! You could argue that the President is intentionally a Constitutional exception to the rule of law, and he has the power to do many illegal things by universal agreement, like murder American citizens (using Federal equipment, no less).
Anyway, the rule of law argument just seems really dubious to me and many other people especially since the rape case against him. How can anyone take US justice seriously after that? It’s pretty clear that when it comes to Trump the courts won’t even pretend to uphold impartiality, so for a lot of voters it will make sense to just remove him from their jurisdiction entirely.
Sadly I don’t see any way to resolve what’s happening in the USA short of civil war. The left will attempt to imprison Trump forever to send a signal to anyone who might try to defy them democratically. Regardless of whether they succeed or fail they’ll claim he’s a criminal and if he wins the election, they’ll claim his very existence undermines the “rule of law” (that they have captured). The right will correctly perceive this as meaning the end of American democracy and descent into a banana republic, and the result will be violence. Unfortunately that’s a war the left might actually win, as they have often done throughout history, simply due to their willingness to violate any norm or rule to do so.

The funny thing is that this interview has made me move from apathy to viewing another Trump term as a net positive.

“What is in doubt is whether we should fast-track children for sexual transition” <– It is not in doubt, because it is non-existent by actual policy.

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating….
Its no surprise that the right wing sheep would choose to dedicate themselves to a personality cult, someone who tells you what to say, what to think, who you should fear and hate – none of this is at all shocking.
But that you should choose an utter buffoon like Trump to be your fuhrer is so incredibly dumb that even I am surprised at how low you have sunk. I always knew you were stupid but that you would choose a moronic clown as your leader is really nuts.
Amazing!

Sullivan still has not got Trump in perspective. Trump is a lot of bad things but he hasn’t launched spurious legal suits against his political opponents, falsely invoked the spectre of facism against his opponent, made false accusations about Russian interference in elections, supported mass rioting and destruction or suppressed his sons dodgy laptop to save his own skin. By the abysmal standards of the day, and the actual evidence, Trump is a relative saint.

It’s astonishing to hear this guy railing about constitutionality when the other side have been pursuing corrupt law fare on multiple fronts for years – against Trump, against Catholics, against covid dissenters….Just bizarre. Truly deranged….

Trump may be everything he says he is, but what makes his selfish narcissism any worse than any of the rest of them. Good grief, Hillary is far worse than Trump ever was and yet there is no mention of the horrors she helped perpetrate .
Good grief talk about projection. Wake up famous man; they are all like that.
Calling Andrew Sullivan a conservative is like calling Rishi Sunak one.

The rather obvious point is that, this time, Trump won’t be appointing a good team.
He soon realized after 2016 that his cabinet was blocking his every move, in favour of the nation’s larger good. That almost all of them turned against him after 2020 means he is arguably paranoid about anyone with greater intelligence than him–what he calls “The Swamp.”
So this time around, he will only hire sycophants. Most will have their own selfish agendas. The country’s welfare will come last.
So get set for chaos at home, and chaos overseas.
Russia, China, and now the US are all declining.
It’s going to be every man–and every woman–for themselves…

Andrew’s psychoanalytic take on Trump describes just about every politician I’ve ever seen. Some of them quite successful. He sounds like a man now embarrassed by his former support.

Sure, what’s not to like about Donald Trump (apart from him being a daft, useless, charlatan, who will wear the mantle of America’s worst and most abhorrent President for the rest of his uncomprehending life). But sure, he has an admirable flair for folksy rhetoric and confected outrage at a political system that he has taken advantage of to extract oversized financial rewards his entire life. And sure, he is speaking to a very real frustration, and sense of bewilderment and alienation that ordinary people feel in the face of forces they are powerless against.
However, those forces aren’t the current Biden administration. Take away the rise of wokeness and the Inflation Reduction Act, and you still have to contend with the multiple decades of long damage wrought on small towns and small businesses and communities by deregulation, globalization, the primacy of corporations, and the general political & economic sentiment that every aspect of human endeavour is ripe for commodification.
As far as I am aware, and please correct me if I’m wrong assorted lunatics of UnHinged, the Republican party that Donald Trump intends to lead – funded and dominated by globally oriented free market capitalists – have zero intention to take on those forces.
Another four years of Trump as President will continue to disappoint those poor saps who seek retribution through him. All they are doing is enabling a well practised con-artist. That much has been made clear during his interminably stupid administration, and in the years since his loss. A smart person would have just taken the bath, but now these same saps are enthusing about soaking in a longer, slower acid bath as a result of their inability to recognise the abject absurdity of this man and realise they are being played for fools.
But no sympathy should be forthcoming for the knowing fools among them. Dig a deep and wide hole, big enough to contain the unimaginable mass of their stupidity, and fill it with the bodies of every one of Trump’s lunatic acolytes in the Republican Party that sought to suspend America in their futile orbit. Cover this deformed pile of political stupidity with America’s dirtiest coal, and let it burn through a hundred seering summers. Let one and all come to piss on the smouldering bed of ashes, and then let the wind carry their weightless and insignificant remains of dust and scatter them at sea, dispersed by the tides and into the mouths of unsuspecting fish, and into oblivion.

This is just basically a guy who was really wrong about a lot of things right in the middle of the process of coming to terms with how wrong he was. He still has the same fears and appears to be just hedging in every area. He’s also loath to admit how wrong he was and also afraid of what people will say or do to him for shifting his positions. All of which is totally understandable.

Constitutional government is only as good as the parchment it’s written on. Andrew rails that Donald wants to ignore the Constitution and rule as Dictator Trump. That’s laughable. Not a single word about 535+1+9 smart people who pass and interpret ‘the law’, by lying to “We, The People” about what the document intended. One massive example (there are others)…..”Citizens United” is pure craziness in terms of the Constitution because it continues to empower real election-rigging by the Super PAC’s. Millions upon millions of DT’s supporters want him to END or at least reverse congressional career corruption, the federal government’s “uber-power”, the unconscionable, continual debt creation and the huge bribery industry, all of which are centered in DC. And there is much more…..it is why, we the people, have had enough.

Journalists, “political observers” pah! Why do I think observations on Biden, who is run by some unelected back office, wouldn’t get a fair appraisal? Biden, spectacularly incapable of even running his own bath. Who spent his campaign drooling in his basement, incontinence pants at close hand..
It reminds me of comedian Bill Burr on the topic of Michelle Obama. Just because you go to bed with a person doesn’t mean you take on Presidential qualities by osmosis. Marrying a top footballer doesn’t get you picked for the team.
The world needs Trump if only to stop WW3. Putin and the mullahs of Iran can never second guess him. Like he says ‘they’re coming for you but I’m in the way.’