The Anti-ness of the Trumpified Right

By David Corn  May 25, 2022

Tucker Carlson is seen onscreen delivering remarks to the CPAC conference in Budapest, Hungary, on May 19, 2022. Szilard Koszticsak/AP

Last week, perhaps the most influential outfit on the Trumpified right, the American Conservative Union, held one of its Conservative Political Action Conferences in Hungary to celebrate the autocratic regime of Viktor Orbán. As others have noted, this was an alarming event. Orbán has seized control of the judiciary, rigged the media in his favor, been a pal of war criminal Vladimir Putin, and outlawed same-sex marriage. All this has made him a hero for the American right and led to the staging of this CPAC in Budapest, which featured a speech from Orbán. The gathering included a presentation from a racist Hungarian talk show host named Zsolt Bayer, who has referred to Jews as “stinking excrement,” called Roma “animals,” and used racial epithets to describe Black people, according to the Guardian. Also on the bill was Jack Posobiec, a far-right blogger who spread the noxious Pizzagate conspiracy theory that falsely claimed notable Democrats were pedophiles. Amid all this—authoritarianism, racism, and conspiracy nuttiness—CPAC, naturally, received warm video greetings from Big Liar Donald Trump and Fox host Tucker Carlson.

Carlson is a well-known Orbán fanboy. The feeling is mutual. In his address to the CPACers, Orbán said that American conservatives needed more right-wing media that would broadcast Carlson “24/7.” I think Putin would agree. (A few days earlier, Orbán essentially endorsed the racist white replacement theory that Carlson and other right-wingers have championed.) Carlson’s video message to the Orbánfest was short—about one minute long—but telling. He said:

Greetings to Hungarian CPAC. I can’t believe you’re in Budapest and I am not...What a wonderful country, and you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who've turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out. The last thing they want is any kind of signpost to a better way. Hungary certainly provides that. A free and decent and beautiful country that cares about its people, their families, their physical landscape. A great place.

It's disturbing that such a prominent voice in the United States would praise an overseas autocrat who promotes a racist conspiracy theory. But what’s striking about Carlson’s comment is that he defines his support for Orbán and Hungary by the negative reaction it draws from his critics: Hungary must be wonderful because the left gets mad when you say it is. This statement captures one of the driving forces of the right and Trump’s cult of personality: trolling the libs. Whatever they say, we say the opposite. And this leads to applying an old adage—the enemy of my enemy is my friend—to an extreme extent. With his gay-bashing, democracy-bashing, and immigrant-bashing, Orbán pisses off the liberals. Thus, he must be okay.

A similar impulse caused conservatives to bear-hug Putin. The evening before Moscow launched its illegal and horrific invasion of Ukraine, Steven Bannon, once Trump’s White House strategist, expressed his support for Putin, praising the repressive thug for being “anti-woke” and opposed to LGBTQ rights. (Carlson, too, declared before the war that he was “rooting” for Putin in his conflict with Ukraine.) As with Orbán, Putin’s opposition to an important piece of the left’s agenda—as well as his opposition to President Joe Biden and the European community—made Putin appealing to the ultranationalist, pro-alt-right, Trump-loving Bannon, despite the Russian leader’s tyrannical ways. The enemy of my enemy.

This underscores a basic element of the Trump right: anti-ness. Trump and the GOP are often driven by what they’re against, not what they’re for. There are multiple reasons for this. Part of the right is moved by the desire to wage and win a culture war and impede the advancement of rights for those Americans they do not favor. There’s also a reflexive oppositional pettiness. Look at health care. Trump and his GOP minions attempted to kill Obamacare without bothering to replace it. They did so only because it was an accomplishment of the libs. For the four years of the Trump presidency, they never developed a plan for improving the nation’s health care system. Trump had no interest in this. He promised during the 2016 campaign that he would end Obamacare and deliver a system that would offer better care at a lower cost. But once in office, he focused on eradicating his predecessor’s signature accomplishment and nothing else related to health care. Just as he did nothing to boost the infrastructure and devoted little attention to policies to enhance American manufacturing.

Trump and his Republican allies were not keen on advancing measures to address the nation’s challenges. Trump was an against-it president. He was against the Swamp (though his administration was swampier than most). He was against Black Lives Matter protests. He was against the media. He was against the Deep State, without ever saying what it was. He even ended up being against his own public health experts and advisers during a pandemic. (At the close of the 2020 campaign, he encouraged “Fire Fauci” chants at his rallies.) Trump was for a few things: an ineffective trade war, a modest criminal justice reform measure, a big tax cut for the wealthy. But he has long defined himself and his persona by his battles against others. As many commentators have observed, Trump has adopted the style of professional wrestling: bombastic, confrontational trash-talking in support of inauthenticity. And he concluded his presidency with an assault on his various foes (real and imagined)—the CIA, the Chinese, the Democrats, the media, RINOs—who had all supposedly conspired against him.

Anti-ness certainly can work in politics. It’s an effective way to exploit grievances and resentments. Identify the actual or perceived enemies of a bloc of voters and fire away. This shows you’re on their side. You’re offering emotional or psychological satisfaction without delivering the goods. Trump didn’t revitalize American manufacturing, provide better health care, or repair the nation’s infrastructure. But he sure was nasty to the libs, the Dems, the Blacks, migrants, and Hillary Clinton. (Lock her up!) So his voters stuck with him and nearly extended his run in the White House.

Democrats tend to want to do things, implement policies that they believe will be beneficial. During the 2020 race, Biden proposed a host of measures while running for president to deal with education, health care, college debt, climate change, you name it. Trump claimed he was the best president since Lincoln, screamed and yelled about Black Lives Matter, antifa, thugs, and criminals, and excoriated the Democrats as radical socialists who purposefully intended to destroy the country. The modern right is propelled by hatred of its political opposition. Consequently, it’s drawn to Orbán, an autocrat, who can smite his liberal foes without being hampered by democratic niceties. Trump yearns for such power, and his supporters yearn for him to have it. How long before CPAC is held in Moscow?

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

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The Watch, Read, and Listen List

Tokyo Vice. Pastel T-shirts and white suits, moody rock music, great hair and smooth bods, boss cars, and intricate, sometimes indecipherable, plots—I was a big fan of Miami Vice in the 1980s. The show was a breakthrough for television and popular culture. I once almost wrote a script for it—with Abbie Hoffman. But that’s another story. Miami Vice even took on Ronald Reagan’s illegal Contra war, with episodes in which Watergate crook G. Gordon Liddy played a Vietnam vet who was managing a secret, CIA-ish operation running guns to the Contras. One of the best television moments of the 1980s was the scene in which detective Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) tries to halt an illicit arms shipment from an Everglades airstrip. “You can’t stop the inevitable flow of history, Crockett,” Liddy’s character snarls at him. With a shrug, Crockett replies, “Oh, you never know. I can try.” And because this was the cynical 1980s, Crockett does try, and he fails. The plane takes off, and later he hears a news broadcast conveying the disinformation that Sandinista forces killed a priest, when he knows the true perps were the contras being armed by Liddy. All this happens, as Jackson Browne’s “Lives in the Balance” plays. It may look a bit cheesy now. But it was a brilliant summation of the dark underbelly of the 1980s. You can watch it:

This is to say I will always have a soft spot for Michael Mann, who created the show and went on to direct Heat, The Insider, and other films. So I was excited for Tokyo Vice, Mann’s new HBO Max series based on the book of the same name by Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who covered crime and the yakuza underworld in Japan. (Mann directed the pilot episode and is one of several executive producers.) The series shows Adelstein, an American Japanophile played by Ansel Elgort of West Side Story, becoming in 1999 the first Westerner to be hired by a major Japanese newspaper. He’s put on the crime beat and slowly, through guile and grit, penetrates the Japanese mob and the Tokyo police department to develop sources. He befriends—platonically or romantically, it’s hard to tell—a former Mormon missionary from America (Rachel Keller) who’s now a hostess with a heart of gold, and a rising yakuza lieutenant (Shô Kasamatsu) who’s ambivalent about his life of crime. The three form something of a love (or lust) triangle. There’s a good detective and a bad detective. A good (sort of) mob boss and a bad (truly) mob boss. And suspicious suicides of loan-shark victims and a big illegal drug shipment that must be stopped.

The series is an effective blend of cop-show and journalistic procedural. Adelstein is the relentless reporter, who bounces like a ping-pong ball between the other players in the seedy and sexy world of nighttime Tokyo. The series is not as stylized as Miami Vice. But the plot is adorned with anthropology, as Adelstein navigates the rigid rituals and social norms of Japan. The show has generated controversy over the accuracy of Adelstein’s stories about his career in Japan. Putting that aside, it’s a riveting ride. One complaint: The season finale doesn’t strike the right balance between resolution and cliffhanger. Not enough is settled and the questions that remain open are gaping. A viewer deserves a few more answers after eight episodes.

“Talkin’ to Myself,” Sarah Shook and the Disarmers. What makes a song cool? I know this is one of those philosophical questions that has never been satisfactorily answered. Is it a dirty guitar lick? A soulful saxophone? A swinging beat? A raw and sensual feel? A fuck-you sensibility? Is it the notes or the attitude? Little Steven Van Zandt (of the E Street Band) has for years picked the Coolest Song of the Week for his Underground Garage radio show. It could be a tune from a band you’ve never heard or a new cut from Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. Yes, you read that right. Last year’s No. 1 Coolest Song of the Week, as determined by listeners who voted, was Dolenz’s cover of a Monkees song, “Circle Sky,” written by his fellow bandmate Michael Nesmith (whose mom invented Liquid Paper). That track came off an album Dolenz released last year called Dolenz Sings Nesmith. You can check out the song:

Little Steven recently assembled all the Coolest Songs he has honored over the years for a Sirius XM radio channel. Like his Underground Garage, it’s worth a listen if you have access to the network. You can also check out all the Coolest Songs of 2021 on Spotify.

What got me thinking about coolness and music was a song I recently heard on WXPN, a very cool radio station in Philadelphia: “Talkin’ to Myself” by Sarah Shook and the Disarmers. “Man, that’s cool,” I thought. I wasn’t familiar with her work, which has been described as “country-punk.” This song, released last year, has more rock than twang to it. Shook was raised and homeschooled in a fundamentalist Christian household, and Shook’s first band was called Sarah Shook and the Devil, which gives you an idea of Shook’s attitude toward things. (I see Shook has been playing with an old pal of mine, drummer Will Rigby.) Shook’s music has been awarded accolades by Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, and others. Listen to “Talkin’ to Myself,” and tell me why it's so damn cool.

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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.