"Trump is following a playbook written for him by Christian White Nationalists."

[Geronimo]

What? You don't appreciate strawman replies to your posts? Shocker!

Also, Harris got over six million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. Trump got 3 million more votes than he did in 2020 (still fewer than Biden did in 2020). The greatest differences between both elections were among men, particularly non-college-educated, Latino and black men. And you claim that "it's possible" that she gained more votes for being a woman than she lost (either to not voting or to trump)? Just based on a hypothetical scenario?

yes. because ever since Trump's original nomination and since Brexit and especially since Trump's first election as president I don't trust any assumptions about voters made from that crude level of data. The electorate seems to be a black box. None of your observations require that people voting against Harris for being female or for her race would outnumber those who would vote for her for those reasons. At best they suggest the relative numbers would be expected to be less favorable in that regard in 2024 than in 2020. The outcome is compatible with anything from a large net liability to a large net benefit depending on literally almost any number of unseen additional factors which appear to be prone to shifting wildly from one election to the next.

[Geronimo]

What's literally keeping me awake now is simply trying to find reasonable explanations for these grossly stupid own goals, especially in foreign policy and trade. Own goals that don't seem to have any relation to the rhetoric that's lazily getting dumped on the public along with them. The level of cynicism of the rhetoric would definitely make Putin proud.

Putin had decades to slowly lock down the Russian apathy and political feebleness. The crown shouldn't rest so easily on Trump. I think for the lies and harm to foreign policy alone Trump should be impeached again but obviously that might never even start. What can be done now to limit Trump's success in using force as a last resort? What is already thoroughly compromised? Will US soldiers fire on peaceful allies? Will they fire on congress? On civilians? It seems inconceivable.

[Dauphin]

What's literally keeping me awake now is simply trying to find reasonable explanations for these grossly stupid own goals, especially in foreign policy and trade. Own goals that don't seem to have any relation to the rhetoric that's lazily getting dumped on the public along with them. The level of cynicism of the rhetoric would definitely make Putin proud.
.

In the absence of anything more concrete, I would say:

Narcissism, envy, hubris and indifference.

Narcissism - he wants adoration, he wants to promise greatness and be loved for it. Talking tough on trade deficits, and bringing back manufacturing, etc is to gain love of the people.
Envy - he sees authoritarian leaders and equates the subservience of the populations as a state he wants to achieve to feed his narcissism.
Hubris - he thinks he is right and won't readily listen to why what he is actually doing won't achieve the outcomes he promises.
Indifference - he doesn't actually care if what he promises for the people actually comes to pass, he is revelling in the promise and the adoration it brings. Actually doing it is too much effort.

Case in point, Ukraine. I can see it playing like this:
Trump thinks: Only I can save Ukraine. I will be remembered and loved for bringing peace
Envy: He wants to be seen as a strong leader who can force his peace. He wants Zelensky to kiss the ring to feed his narcissism
Hubris: He believes he is the chosen one to bring peace, even though he is clearly not helping bring it about it he carries on with his policies because he can't comprehend he may be wrong - everyone else is wrong.
Indifference - he doesn't actually care what happens to Ukraine. He is revelling in the adoration of his rhetoric

Trade wars
Trump thinks: Only I can save American jobs. I will be remembered for making American industry great again.
Envy: He wants to be seen as a strong leader who can force his will on the economics of trade. He wants foreign countries to kiss the ring to feed his narcissism
Hubris; He believes he is the chosen one to make American industry great, even though he is clearly not helping bring it about it he carries with his policies because he can't comprehend he may be wrong - everyone else is wrong.
Indifference - He doesn't actually care if his policies benefit the American people. He is revelling in the adoration of his rhetoric.

It's not a perfect fit, but a possible playbook for why Trump does what he does. There are other factors at play - and his entourage may have ulterior motives that manipulate these factors to get what they want.

[Dauphin]

Tell Trump he will be loved for [X] and remembered as a great leader, and find a way to make a great TV announcement that will be watched by everyone / crowd eating out of his hand, and he will probably sign off on it. After the announcement he will not care if it happens or not, but will keep talking about it coming and being great.

[Geronimo]

I would give your explanation a thumbs up for helping me make sense of this but refrained only because it is so depressing. If a model like you suggest is at work in this man's head, how could he be manipulated away from the abyssal depths of his own careless stupidity?

[Geronimo]

I think I may redouble my efforts to convert MAGA republicans. I wonder if they have any idea as to how deeply he's harming so many for no pay off at all? it's important that people look at what the man is doing. I note that Fox News is increasingly devoting discussion to crap filler like trans participation in women's sport, do its consumers who rely on its coverage of events have any clue how badly Trump is dropping the ball? Is Fox afraid to show them?

If Trump's base could be disillusioned would the relative drying up of adoration give him pause?

[Geronimo]

If anything like the sad description of Trump's motives that Dauphin described is accurate then I also have to wonder is Trump actually another Biden in the sense that he thinks he is in charge but is actually being casually manipulated into everything because he's far too shallow to realize it? If perhaps he's being played like a fiddle who might the fiddler be? Surely someone close to maintain their agenda? I wouldn't think it would easily be Putin himself unless through a close loyal agent. I never figured out who was likely exerting the most influence over Biden. Maybe Trump's constellation of toadies works to coordinate the manipulation among themselves?

[Dauphin]

Not a single fiddler, a discordant orchestra of fiddlers. I would estimate multiple agendas are being pushed by different groups and individuals, some complement and some compete. Hence the erratic and inconsistent approaches.

[Geronimo]

Not a single fiddler, a discordant orchestra of fiddlers. I would estimate multiple agendas are being pushed by different groups and individuals, some complement and some compete. Hence the erratic and inconsistent approaches.

Silver lining to that model of manipulation is that we might have a highly perturbable system rather than an evil mastermind executing a deep chess match of Machiavellian ascension of power. Time to find some resonances and start pushing...

[-Jrabbit]

Having gone through similar things in the corporate world, it looks to me like we're seeing a blend of Trump's normal vengeance/grievance power politics combined with the agenda of "whoever spoke with him last" -- leavened with the personal agendas of willful a-holes like Musk.

[Broken_Erika]

They're Fabricating Criminal Prosecutions Now

[Elok]

Just an update on this important issue, a bit late since I was off the internet for Advent: Tucker Carlson gave a softball interview Nick Fuentes, the most (if not only) famous White Christian Nationalist in the US who freely owns the title White Christian Nationalist. People said WTF, and the head of the Heritage Foundation (the Christian White Nationalist organization referenced in the post title) defended Tucker's right to give softball interviews, because Tucker is a personal friend etc. In response, most of the staff of the Heritage Foundation quit, many of them jumping ship to a group run by Mike Pence, because they refuse to be associated with somebody who doesn't openly condemn somebody who doesn't question White Christian Nationalists harshly enough. That is how committed the people at the Heritage Foundation are to White Christian Nationalism.

Also somewhere along the way we found out that Nick Fuentes is "famous" and "prominent" from a combination of a few dedicated nuts spamming twitter and various foreign nationals retweeting all his crap to farm outrage clicks now that Musk lets them make money for doing so. He's not actually that much better liked than any other random social media hatefest jerkoff, he just has better marketing courtesy of the modern version of Nigerian prince scammers.

[Aeson]

Of course they don't want to openly associate themselves with White Nationalists. But then they go ahead and cheer sending brown people to foreign prisons, countries they've never been to, revoking work permits, turning legal immigrants into illegal, ignoring court orders and the Constitution to do it, trying to evict every undocumented immigrant who happened to be brought into the country as a child, try to revoke citizenship for every child with an undocumented parent.

All to preserve a White majority.

They'll say they're all for immigration if it's done the "right way", but their actions show clearly that by "the right way" they mean "the white way".

Also, now ICE has more funding than any other law enforcement agency. They're wearing masks, not showing ID when asked by citizens, and misusing administrative warrants. Trump is trying to send the military into every blue city he can.

[Aeson]

On the plus side, unlike last year when racist xenophobes and their "right way" were able to keep me and my family apart for the holidays (and 11 months), I got to spend the holidays with my wife and 4yo son.

Sadly, my father's health is waning and he likely will never get to meet his grandson because of aforementioned racist xenophobes.

And of course let's not forget about the millions of other families in similar or worse situations because of said racist xenophobes.

[Elok]

Of course they don't want to openly associate themselves with White Nationalists..

Why? Whose bad opinion are they afraid of? Surely not yours, or anyone else on the Left's. You'll always despise them regardless. I don't believe American moderates follow politics that closely (let alone watch Tucker Carlson) or that most of them would recognize the name of THF offhand. So, do you believe there's a broad coalition of sensible right-wingers who don't believe in rabid antisemitism, misogyny, etc. like Fuentes does, and THF et al are "openly" pretending to comply with their wishes while chatting on the Groyper Discord in secret? Is that how it is? I don't think so, but in the broad strokes you make it sound like the American Right is not a monolithic group. If that's what you're saying, you are correct--if "White Christian Nationalism" means anything these days, it means people like Fuentes, who has been shown to be nowhere near as popular as once claimed, and a lot of the scholars at THF (surely including a number of the authors of Project 2025) have quit in protest at being even indirectly linked with him. Because they were disgusted with him and did not want to associate with him (specifically over his antisemitism IIUC), which means this thread title is a lie.

The fact that their policies cause suffering for immigrants, including legal immigrants, is not some kind of smoking gun. Most of our public policies are stupid and riddled with perverse incentives and unreasonable restrictions that frequently make them work not just in excess of, but often contrary to, their stated purpose. The costs of healthcare have surged immensely since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, our generosity with student loans has made a college education monstrously expensive, anti-prostitution laws claimed to fight sex trafficking are making it much easier, anti-drug laws vastly increase the lethality and spread of drug abuse, the people speaking loudest against climate change are adamantly opposed to the most efficient carbon-free energy source, tough-on-crime laws breed criminality, the people who supported our troops supported policies that got way more of them shot and blown up, and dumping endless sums of money on public schools has had a middling effect, at best, on student performance.

These people are hostile to all immigration because you and yours are in favor of immigration and they therefore view any pro-immigration policy as a sneaky maneuver by people like you to undermine America, democracy, freedom, apple pie, etc. Whatever nasty trick you're up to, they oppose it. They are viewing the world through much the same Manichaean lens you are, just from the other direction. They view the harm done to people like you--or the veteran in my town who shut down his Mexican restaurant after they locked up his law-abiding mother--as an unfortunate side effect, or possibly a lie concocted by woke propagandists, if they are even aware of them. All of this, like American politics writ large, is simply a metastasizing ball of frightened idiocy grown into tragedy.

[Aeson]

Why? Whose bad opinion are they afraid of?

As you say, these specific resignations were more to do with antisemitism. So probably AIPAC.

Surely not yours, or anyone else on the Left's. You'll always despise them regardless.

Not regardless. They could stop ruining other people's lives and I would stop calling them out for ruining other people's lives.

If you support tearing families apart for no good reason then of course I will oppose you.

I don't believe American moderates follow politics that closely (let alone watch Tucker Carlson) or that most of them would recognize the name of THF offhand.

Non-voters aren't necessarily moderate. Many just don't see a good option, or know their vote makes no difference.

That's why the uniparty has to keep a balance between the two sides of the false dichotomy. Because if one side becomes clearly better to non-voters the whole race to the bottom collapses.

So, do you believe there's a broad coalition of sensible right-wingers who don't believe in rabid antisemitism, misogyny, etc. like Fuentes does, and THF et al are "openly" pretending to comply with their wishes while chatting on the Groyper Discord in secret? Is that how it is?

No. There are plenty of people who are racist and xenophobic though, who don't like being associated with being racist and xenophobic. Very few (like Fuentes) wear it like a badge of honor. But they'll still support the same policies/wars.

I was once xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynist myself. Growing up in small American towns it's pretty much the default state. Thankfully I had life experiences (painful at the time) that lead me out of such bigotry. I understand how strong the urge to deny and justify is, rather than face the ugly truth of who you (and your family/friends/community) really are.

I don't think so, but in the broad strokes you make it sound like the American Right is not a monolithic group. If that's what you're saying, you are correct--if "White Christian Nationalism" means anything these days, it means people like Fuentes, who has been shown to be nowhere near as popular as once claimed, and a lot of the scholars at THF (surely including a number of the authors of Project 2025) have quit in protest at being even indirectly linked with him. Because they were disgusted with him and did not want to associate with him (specifically over his antisemitism IIUC), which means this thread title is a lie.

As you say these specific resignations are more centered around antisemitism, which means they don't really have any bearing on this thread. (Outside of how at least some Christians view Zionism and instability in the region as a harbinger of Armageddon and the second coming.)

The fact that their policies cause suffering for immigrants, including legal immigrants, is not some kind of smoking gun.

Yes it is. If you support destroying innocent people's lives you support destroying innocent people's lives, and deserve to be called out for your role in destroying innocent people's lives.

These people are hostile to all immigration because you and yours are in favor of immigration and they therefore view any pro-immigration policy as a sneaky maneuver by people like you to undermine America, democracy, freedom, apple pie, etc. Whatever nasty trick you're up to, they oppose it. They are viewing the world through much the same Manichaean lens you are, just from the other direction. They view the harm done to people like you--or the veteran in my town who shut down his Mexican restaurant after they locked up his law-abiding mother--as an unfortunate side effect, or possibly a lie concocted by woke propagandists, if they are even aware of them. All of this, like American politics writ large, is simply a metastasizing ball of frightened idiocy grown into tragedy.

Classic conservative ... blame the victim.

You are wrong, they hate. Racism and xenophobia are alive and well. The pain is the point. That's why they cheer for pointless brutality like Alligator Alcatraz, sending people to foreign prisons, tearing babies from their mothers. That's why they cheer for Trump, he appeals to their base instincts. He tells them their hate is ok.

They are not like me. I want everyone to be free and prosperous. Even racists and xenophobes. I just won't ignore racism and xenophobia destroying innocent lives.

I'll oppose the tankies when they're lining you up against the wall too. (Not just because they'll line me up with you either.)