The End of Republican Extremism

Kingsley Wilson with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. @KingsleyCortes/X

What happens when extremism becomes the mainstream? Does it no longer exist as extremism? The second coming of Donald Trump compels us to ponder this philosophical question, for in MAGA World, extremists have come to be treated as normies, and their extremism is now fully accepted as ordinary. Let’s look at a few recent examples.

The Pentagon last week announced that twentysomething Kingsley Wilson will become its new press secretary. As my colleague Anna Merlan described her, Wilson has been an “internet troll with a long history of bigoted, xenophobic, and deliberately provocative shitposting.” This record included repeating lies about Leo Frank, a Jewish man lynched in 1915, including the claim that Frank was guilty of a murder that most historians agree he did not commit. She said Black Lives Matter movement had an “affinity for race-based violence” and argued transgender people should not be allowed to purchase a firearm because they are mentally ill. She has cheered on the Great Replacement theory, a racist and xenophobic conspiracy theory that asserts non-white immigrants are being brought to the United States to replace white Americans. Last year, she declared on X that she was “proud to be an enemy of globalist Ukraine”—which made it seem she was rooting for Vladimir Putin. The Times of Israel story on Wilson’s appointment was headlined, “US official who spread antisemitic rhetoric online becomes Pentagon press secretary.”

Meanwhile, Laura Loomer, the far-right provocateur, anti-Islam bigot, and conspiracy pusher who Donald Trump has so embraced that she’s engineered the firing of administration officials she deems insufficiently loyal to Trump, put up a vile post on the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder: “Congratulations to George Floyd on being 5 years sober today.” Such hatred will not get her excommunicated from Trump’s inner circle. It’s an asset.

On Thursday, Trump bear-hugged another extremist. He nominated the 29-year-old Paul Ingrassia to run the Office of Special Counsel. Ingrassia is a former far-right podcaster and election denier who once promoted an article urging the imposition of “martial law” to keep Trump in office after his loss in the 2020 election. That wasn’t his only sign of support for political violence. On January 2, 2021, as CNN has reported, “Ingrassia called right-wing commentator Seb Gorka ‘soft’ after Gorka rebuked a post that called for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be arrested and executed by firing squad for not supporting attempts to overturn the 2020 election.” Ingrassia also defended the Confederate flag and insisted that “exceptional white men are not only the builders of Western civilization, but are the ones most capable of appreciating the fruits of our heritage." So folks who are not white don’t appreciate America?

In 2023, Ingrassia hailed misogynistic “manosphere" influencer Andrew Tate and even worked on his legal team. Romanian authorities had charged Tate with human trafficking. More recently Florida's attorney general opened a criminal investigation of Tate and his brother, Tristan. This week, British authorities announced the Tate brothers would be charged with rape, human trafficking, and assault. (The two Tates have denied all wrongdoing.) In June 2024, Ingrassia attended a rally in Detroit led by Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and white nationalist. At a fundraiser that year for January 6 rioters, he praised Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who was convicted of multiple nonviolent offenses for storming the Capitol and whom federal prosecutors described as a "Nazi sympathizer."

You get the picture. Now Trump wants this racist radical to lead the presumably independent federal agency that has the mission of protecting federal employees from prohibited personnel practices, such as whistleblower retaliation, and that is supposed to enforce the Hatch Act, which restricts partisan political activity by government employees. Yeah, right.

Ingrassia is a member of the board of advisers for the New York Young Republican Club, and last week, after Trump met in the Oval Office with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and confronted him with fraudulent claims of white genocide, this group of ultra-MAGA-ites released a statement headlined, “Decolonization and its Consequences Have Been a Disaster for the Human Race.”

Ingrassia’s club asserted, “In South Africa, genocide is the logical conclusion of decolonization.” It contended, “Identity politics and social justice end not in an equal world, but rather in a hellscape. South Africa is a model case not for decolonization, but for the horrific consequences thereof.” And it hysterically compared South Africa to Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia, maintaining Nelson Mandela’s legacy was “the cold deaths of…peaceful, hapless victims.” It was as if these Ingrassia-advised young Republicans were bemoaning the end of colonization. If only white people had continued to oppress the dark-skinned natives!

Last month, the president of the New York Young Republican Club, Gavin Wax, was appointed to be chief of staff to a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission. As Broadband Breakfast reported, “During [Wax’s] six-year tenure [as president], the group hosted a range of controversial figures, including Peter and Lydia Brimelow of the white nationalist website VDARE, conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, and far-right European political operatives affiliated with Austria’s Freedom Party and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland.”

While we’re considering the descent (ascent?) of extremism into mainstreamism, don’t forget Elon Musk’s X. Spotify, SoundCloud, and other platforms tried to block Kanye West’s new song, “Heil Hitler,” which glorifies the mass-murdering, antisemitic German dictator, but X opened its door to the single, and West (a.k.a. Ye) found millions of listeners for his tune of hate on the site. Musk, one of Trump’s most important advisers and operatives, enabled the dissemination of this antisemitic and genocidal trash. (X claims it has a policy that limits hate speech that targets specific groups or urges genocide. But, no.) It was only two-and-a-half years ago that Trump held a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with West and Fuentes. He paid no political price for supping with these antisemites and Hitler fans. And Musk faces little opprobrium for platforming a champion of the Fuhrer.

A major story of the Trump years is how far-right extremism has so easily glided into the center of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Trump accelerated a decades-long trend (which I chronicled in American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.) As I noted a year ago:

During the 2016 race, [Trump] hobnobbed with and praised conspiracy-monger Alex Jones and encouraged anti-Muslim hatred. A few months into his presidency, Trump hailed participants in the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville as “very fine people.” The insurrectionists who stormed Capitol Hill on January 6 for Trump included Christian nationalists, members of right-wing militias, white supremacists, Confederate flag wavers, neo-Nazis, and others. In 2022, he supped with antisemite Kanye West and Hitler fanboy Nick Fuentes. He has repeatedly winked and nodded at the unhinged QAnon movement.

The guardrails that once kept the wingnuts, wackos, and radicals out of the core of the GOP have long been ripped up. But in Trump 2.0, the extremists are flooding the zone. There is no barrier to racists, bigots, and conspiracy pushers. No line between fringe and acceptable. Barry Goldwater, the conservative hero, once said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” He was pilloried for that. These days, the sentiment within the Republican Party is that extremism in the service of Trump is no vice and…it’s not even extremism.

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

As previously announced, the next Our Land Zoom get-together will occur on June 4 at 8 p.m. ET. At these events, readers of this newsletter and I gab about what’s in the news and vent about the whole sick mess. These gatherings are only open to premium subscribers—those generous souls who keep Our Land afloat with their monthly contributions of a few bucks. Without these wonderful people, this newsletter would not exist.

If you’re not a premium subscriber, there’s still time to sign up so you can share the fun on June 4. You’ll also get the full version of this newsletter, which includes additional behind-the-scenes features on politics and media; reviews of movies, television shows, books, podcasts, and music; the Dumbass Comment of the Week contest; an interactive mailbag (you send in comments and questions, and I respond); and MoxieCam™. If you appreciate the independent and kickass journalism and analysis of Our Land, please join the band of readers who make this newsletter possible. Click here to do so!  You likely won’t regret it.

There have been many indicators that MAGA is a movement not tethered to reality. Here’s one I came across recently: Forty percent of Republicans now believe that the Covid vaccine has killed more people than the coronavirus.

This is crazy. A 2022 study reported “55 cases of death after COVID-19 vaccination”—noting not all these deaths were linked to the vaccine. As of a year ago, about 1.2 million Americans had died of Covid. What’s particularly worrisome is that the number of Republicans who believe this bunk is rising. Two years ago, 25 percent of them thought the vaccine was deadlier than the disease—a high number but less than today. With Trump back in office, MAGA is becoming more irrational.

The judges wished to highlight this dash of hokum from conspiracy-monger Alex Jones so they could remind you of a not-so-fun fact.

Now here’s the fact: Jones was a “special guest” at the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland.

An always competitive Stephen Miller was in the running this week. After the US Court of International Trade on Wednesday  blocked Trump from implementing sweeping tariffs, ruling he had illegally claimed the power to do so, the White House aide had a hissy fit:

Judicial coup? This was a three-judge panel. One was a Reagan appointee. One was an Obama appointee. One was a…Trump appointee. The ruling was unanimous.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy once again dumped on public transportation: “"If you're a liberal, they want you to take public transportation...The problem is that it's dirty. You have criminals. It's homeless shelters. It's insane asylums. And it's a work ground for the criminal element of the city to prey upon the good people."

I ride the Metro in Washington regularly and in recent weeks have used the subway in New York City. Duffy is hysterical. While big-city mass transit systems have problems—and many of these are due to issues related to social services, not the systems themselves—riders are not encountering the dystopian hellholes Duffy describes. Why is he so he freaked out?

During a recent interview, CNN host Jake Tapper asked House Speaker Mike Johnson why he has demonstrated such little curiosity about Trump’s corruption and his vast conflicts of interest.

Tapper: You oversaw as speaker a congressional investigation into President Biden's ties to his son Hunter's questionable business dealings to enrich him. You seemed to think it was your responsibility to look into this sort of thing then.

Johnson: The important distinction—the Biden crime family, as they were named, earned that title. Why? Because they used shell companies, fake LLCs, a series of what appeared to be money-laundering operations…The evidence just piled up…The difference, of course, is that President Trump does everything out in the open. He’s not trying to hide anything…He’s putting it out there.

Johnson was spewing balderdash. Days earlier, Trump held a fancy dinner at his golf club in Virginia for 220 of the top investors in his bullshit meme coin. The White House refused to disclose the names of the attendees—all people who have helped to enrich Trump. Tapper followed up on this point: “On this matter with the crypto, shouldn’t we at least just know who was at the dinner? Wouldn’t you want to know that list of people?” Johnson played dumb:

I guess. I don’t know anything about that dinner. I do know that President Trump is the most transparent president and the most transparent administration probably in history. He has nothing to hide.

Maybe Johnson should read the newspapers more often. This past week, Michael Johnston, a professor emeritus at Colgate University and author of multiple books on corruption in the United States, told the New York Times that he has been overwhelmed by the level of grift in this administration: “I’ve been watching and writing about corruption for 50 years, and my head is still spinning.”

Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, demonstrated she does not understand the basic concept of academic freedom. Defending Trump’s (perhaps illegal) war on Harvard, she said, “Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and are in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish.”

So now universities must support the policy agenda of a White House to receive funding for cancer research?

It’s always tough for the judges to select a winner. But when an entry embodies ignorance and bigotry, that helps. Rushing to the barricades for the crusade against Harvard, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt bellowed on Fox News, "Electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University. And that's what this administration's position is."

Make Homophobia Great Again? In this season of graduations, Leavitt tops our dean’s list for dumbassery.

Maybe you can’t fight city hall, but you can fight the Trump White House—and win. Federal judges have been striking down Trump’s absurd executive orders that seek to punish big law firms that have performed work or employed lawyers he doesn’t fancy. On Tuesday, it happened again, with Judge Richard Leon in Washington, DC, ruling Trump’s order targeting WilmerHale unconstitutional and declaring it null and void.

Several of the judges slamming Trump for his legally baseless crusade against the firms have produced feisty decisions in these cases. And we can add Leon, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, to that list. He wrote:

The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this! Accordingly, they took pains to enshrine in the Constitution certain rights that would serve as the foundation for that independence. Little wonder that in the nearly 250 years since the Constitution was adopted no Executive Order has been issued challenging these fundamental rights. Now, however, several Executive Orders have been issued directly challenging these rights and that independence. One of these Orders is the subject of this case. For the reasons set forth below, I have concluded that this Order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional. Indeed, to rule otherwise would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!

Score another win for the rule of law. But I do wonder what will happen when these cases reach the Supreme Court.

Many readers old enough to remember the 1980s reacted favorably to the last issue, which noted Trump is pursuing policies on taxes, spending, the military, and South Africa that echo Ronald Reagan’s failures.

Sari Kadison-Shapiro emailed:

Great post about Trump trying to bring back the 1980s. I totally agree that all this shit was begun by Reagan and his lie about “trickle-down economics.” It always sounded like peeing on the lower classes to me. I will consider becoming a paid subscriber, if I can afford it and if I haven’t done it already.

We appreciate that, Sari.

Bill Maxey wrote:

A case can also be made for the 1880s.

That’s especially true, given Trump’s disastrous obsession with tariffs.

Harry Freiberg shared this:

"The nation has not learned from the past. We are reliving it with another show-biz president—as both farce and tragedy.”

   —David Corn

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

   —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

I am flattered.

RA Hutton had this observation:

I always wondered what fascism would look like when it got here. We should have known from the last ten years, as the red hats and other cheesy merchandise 47 was peddling washed ashore. This is even below PT Barnum kitsch. The MAGA party has finally got what they wanted, and we are going to be living in the upside-down for a generation or more, while these vampires suck the blood out of the country and leave an empty shell.

That’s pretty dark, Richard. But kitsch and blood-sucking kind of sums it up.

Georgina Robinson appreciated my farewell to a onetime colleague:

Your tribute, “Goodbye, Betsy Pochoda,” was excellent. And your reminder that “help we provide others—no matter how small it might seem to us—can mean so much to them” resonates with me, as you help me see my life in a different way. That’s not a small thing but a big thing for me.

Peter Gee sent this note:

Perhaps your best hope is that these Trumpian jerks will finally overstep the mark and actually try to arrest and jail Springsteen, Tay-Tay...or Obama! Democracies decay, not from coups, but from citizens cheering for selective applications of rights.

I don’t think we should rest our hopes on Trump doing something that stupid. (In a Trump-Springsteen face-off, my money is on the Boss.) But while democracies do decay for many reasons, one of those is indeed popular disdain or even merely apathy regarding due process and the rule of law.

Richard Gilbert vented:

Trump took an oath twice to defend and preserve the constitution. He is guilty of treason by virtue of January 6 attack on the Congress. Recently, he was asked if he’s required to uphold the Constitution, and he answered, “I don’t know.” Treason again. He has violated his oath of office to preserve and defend the Constitution by his actions and words at least twice. This ought to be headlines at least in every newspaper.

I don’t know if Trump’s glib reply to that question counts as treason. But whether you believe or not that he deliberately encouraged the insurrectionist assault on the US Capitol on January 6, it’s clear he abandoned his obligation to protect the Constitution that day. For this he was justifiably impeached, and most senators voted to convict him—though not the two-thirds majority necessary for a conviction. His actions—or non-action—on January 6 were traitorous. Alas, it turns out, most Republicans and many voters in 2024 did not consider this a disqualification. That’s our real problem.  

With Harvard under assault by Trump, Martha Ture wrote in to ask me to inform Our Land readers that Harvard offers free courses in government, public policy, and many other matters. I did not know that. You can take an online course in “Citizen Politics in America: Public Opinion, Elections, Interest Groups, and the Media,” taught by Thomas Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press. Or “Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic,” with Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and previously the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. There are many enticing offerings. Check them out.

“Look, Moxie, it’s a baby shark.”
“Does that mean you’re going to….”
“I think I have to.”
“Please don’t.”
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice. I’m choosing not to roll on top of it.”
“Okay, that’s a fair deal.”