Ezra Klein, Donald Trump Fanboi

Ezra Klein used to be a blogger. I didn’t read him much back in the day. We traveled in different circles. He’s made it, by some standards, with a steady job at the New York Times. Paul has already summarized the piece as though it presents a rational argument, but I would like to look at the less rational side.

We’ve all wondered why the Times covers Donald Trump the way they do, and today Ezra tells us.

There is this fury among many Democrats about the pass they feel Trump has been given. And I’ve struggled with this myself. It’s not that Trump’s age is unknown or that in the media it is uncovered. But even when we do write about it, I can tell you, it doesn’t connect in the same. The media doesn’t actually set the agenda the way people sometimes pretend that it does. The audience knows what it believes. If you are describing something they don’t really feel is true, they read it, and they move on. Or they don’t read it at all. And I don’t think people believe — to be honest, I don’t believe — that the core problem with Trump is his age.

It’s a long article, the transcript of his podcast. Gift link. It’s difficult to choose which paragraphs to highlight here. Each one is its own story of Ezra’s being struck blind by the magnificence of this con, er, man.

But Donald Trump, at 78, is nearly as old as Joe Biden. He exhibits his own cognitive irregularities. He rambles, and he lies and makes things up and seems to get strangely lost in these digressions. His speech is associative and circular. It can read like gibberish on the page. And he goes on bizarre riffs, like this one, which is somehow about the dangers of electric boats:

And, of course, you know the quote.

The history of pathologizing political leaders we do not like is not an admirable one. So I am not a psychiatrist, and I am saying something simpler and, I think, more neutral here: Trump moves through the world without the behavioral inhibition most of us labor under.

And when I say that, I am describing both what is wrong with Donald Trump and what is right with him.

Something I have learned as I’ve gotten older is that every person’s strengths are also their weaknesses. Disinhibition is the engine of Trump’s success. It is a strength. It is what makes him magnetic and compelling on a stage. It is what allows him to say things others would not say, to make arguments they would not make, to try strategies they would not try.

After a discussion of how many people really feel inside the things that Trump is saying – the fear of immigrants, the desire of many millionaires and billionaires to be president, he marvels:

And so when I say this, I mean it: What Donald Trump has done is remarkable. It is historic. It is unique in the entire history of American politics. To run as an outsider to a political party and capture that political party totally. Break its fundamental consensus. Slander its previous standard-bearers. To then become president having never held elective office or served in the military, while saying things and doing things that, until you, everybody believed you could not do or say in politics. To achieve something unique, you must yourself be unique. Donald Trump is unique.

During Trump’s presidency, Ezra tells us, Trump was surrounded by external inhibitors. At this point, Ezra has inserted markers to tell us that the wonderfulness of Trump’s disinhibition might be the flip side of a danger. But the tone is still one of wonder and, yes, love.

After Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he refused to admit that loss, perhaps refused to even believe that loss. I’m personally persuaded by the reporting that he’d come to believe very weird theories both of fraud and that he could be reinstated as president. And yes, there is a part of all of us that resists believing our own defeat. How many politicians who’ve been voted out of office would’ve preferred to ignore those results, to claim fraud and cling to power? Not all of them, certainly. Most of the people who serve in politics are patriots. They understand that the peaceful transition of power is sacred and that their ambition is profane. But even the politicians who are not patriots recognize the likely outcome of fighting the results of a fair election: dishonor, defeat and possible prosecution.

And on to January 6. And more of what might be criticism, except for all the love larded in. Ezra would like a life of disinhibition for himself. He explicitly says so in this piece. I don’t even want to think of the longing, the love in his voice on the podcast. I consider this post a content warning. Go to the link and read the full thing, or listen to the podcast at your own risk.

Here is one difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The people who work most closely with Joe Biden, his top staff, have always said he is up to the job of the presidency. Fit cognitively. Fit morally. The people who worked most closely with Donald Trump, many of his cabinet secretaries, many of them now say he is not.

But to admit the obvious is to be excommunicated, to go from one of Trump’s amazing hires — he only brings on the best people — to one of his deranged enemies, a loser, someone he fired. And so he is now surrounded by yes-men and enablers, by opportunists and scam artists, by ideologues and foot soldiers.

What we saw on that stage in Pennsylvania, as Trump D.J.’d, was not Donald Trump frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. It was the people around him frozen, paralyzed, uncertain. He knew exactly where he was. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. But there was no one there, or no one left, who could stop him.