The Advancing MAGA Mob is Not a Monolith

Waiting for the Great Schism

According to the old cliché, a frog dropped into a pot of boiling water will immediately leap out, while the same frog placed in a pot of room-temperature water is incapable of noticing the water slowly coming to a boil, and will remain in the pot, unaware of the impending doom, until it is cooked alive.

I call bullshit. I’ve not performed this sadistic little experiment myself, and I doubt anyone else has either, but my guess is that even the daftest frog—the amphibian equivalent of Eric Trump, say—would perceive subtler changes in its aquatic environment long before it’s time to throw in the spaghetti.

Case in point: the brackish H2O in the great big cauldron that is America has been simmering on the MAGA range long enough that even the frogs in the media (the Kermits?) have begun to report on the sudden appearance of so many bubbles. While preparing for The Five 8 on Friday afternoon, I happened to glance at the Washington Post home page. What I saw shocked me. Any one of those headlines would, in the room-temperature-water-pot world of our not-so-distant past, beggar belief; collectively, they looked like something out of a Twilight Zone episode—a series of rapid-fire news alerts that, shown one after the other on the screen, quickly conveyed the details of the simmering-pot dystopia we now find ourselves in.

At the top of the WaPo page were stories about Trump’s nominations for various cabinet positions, each one worse than the next, and all of them so laughably unfit that it felt like Kremlin trolling. It most likely was Kremlin trolling. Either way, these loathsome humans will actually be appointed—and possibly, as the headlines also suggest, recess-appointed: installed, like so many leaky air conditioners at some cut-rate Trump development.

Behold the headlines. I’m putting some key phrases in bold, to better convey just how not normal this all is—and how terrifying:

• RFK Jr. tapped for health czar: 10 false claims and conspiracy theories, in his words

• Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth was investigated for alleged sexual assault

• Gaetz nomination brings new focus on underage sex allegations

• President-elect looks to bypass Senate to push through polarizing choices

• Trump is already testing Republicans, and they seem unwilling to defy him

Next, we hear about how a massive disinformation campaign, set in motion by the Trump people and amplified by the odious chaos agent Elon Musk on the social media platform he hijacked and crashed into a Nazi mountaintop, was waged against the Vice President:

• Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters

Then, we see how Trumpism is seeping like toxic waste into our politics and our justice system, contaminating everything it touches:

• Two Republicans who lost Senate races refuse to concede

• Judge puts off Jan. 6 trial after defendant points to possible Trump pardon

After that, the awful geopolitical ramifications of the Putin-fluffer’s electoral victory are brought into sharp focus:

• Russia pushes forward in Ukraine amid talk of negotiations

• Trump and the Israeli right resume their embrace

• Bombings in Brazil’s capital revive fears over fate of democracy

Oh, and just in case anyone forgot, now that the ravages of Hurricane Helene in the Asheville environs are off the front page: climate change is still real and still a dire emergency that will only get worse once Trump and his crypto-happy accelerationist advisors retake the White House:

• Drought in the U.S. is so severe, only significant rainfall will help break the trend

• Why wildfires in the Eastern U.S. can be more destructive than you may think

Last but not least, just to bring it back around to Brain Worm, we are reminded of the sick future the nation would have to look forward to, should our public health policy be set by the whale-beheading antivax lunatic Trump has tapped to “Make America Healthy Again”:

• Surge in worldwide measles cases driven by lack of vaccine coverage, WHO says

And. . . scene!

Funny how the media waited until after the election to talk about all the ill effects Trump’s policies would have on the American people. I could criticize the Fourth Estate more, but to what end? To continue our animal-cliché motif, that horse has left the barn.

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All of this feels bleak, I realize. Or, worse, like fait accompli. Despite two full months remaining until Inauguration Day, it sure seems like we’ve already waved the white flag.

Kamala Harris, the presumptive leader of the Democratic Party, who just three weeks ago drew seventy-five thousand people to the Ellipse to hear her speak about a hopeful future, seems to be communicating solely through cryptic fundraising emails:

First and foremost, we want to acknowledge the fear, confusion, and sadness many of you are feeling at this moment.

But what if we told you that as you read this there are races that are either too close to call, or within the margin of recounts or certain legal challenges.

What if we told you that they all need our help to get across the finish line?

And what if we told you that your support today will help make sure we succeed and count every vote in these final races?

Honestly, this sounds like something the Trump people would send out. You raised a billion dollars, ffs! Do you really need ten bucks from me? Next they’ll be hawking Kamala-branded Chuck Taylors.

To be fair, Harris is no doubt also scared, confused, and sad…but, like, it’s been three weeks! You’re the sitting Vice President of the United States! Seventy-four million people voted for you! Tell us what to do! Does her glaring absence indicate that we are meant to meekly surrender without a fight? Or pack “go bags” and look into which countries offer Golden Visas, like the national security experts who came out against handing a Kremlin asset another term? Do we really have to move to [looks at list] Montenegro?

And while the apparent capitulation of the grotesquely wealthy (Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong making obeisance via their newspapers), prominent members of the media (Joe & Mika going to Canossa), Congress (Mike Johnson standing there like a maître d’ as Orange Grover Cleveland polished off his Quarter Pounder), the Supreme Court (“Here, sir, enjoy immunity!”), the White House (Biden making nice-nice with Trump by a roaring fireplace, as if this is all just peachy-keen), and the Department of Justice (Merrick Garland Merrick Garlanding) is not reassuring, I noticed something else in the Washington Post last week that buoyed my spirits.

The piece that caught my eye was an op-ed under the headline “Mike Johnson must block Trump’s scheme on recess appointments” that helpfully explained the chicanery the MAGA brain trust has cooked up to install Matt Gaetz at the DOJ sans Senate approval:

It appears that the Trump team is working on a scheme to allow Trump to recess-appoint his Cabinet officers. This scheme would exploit an obscure and never-before-used provision of the Constitution (part of Article II, Section 3) stating that “in Case of Disagreement” between the houses of Congress, “with Respect to the Time of Adjournment,” the president “may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”

Under this scheme, it appears that the House would adopt a concurrent resolution that provided for the adjournment of both the House and the Senate. If the Senate didn’t adopt the resolution, Trump would purport to adjourn both houses for at least 10 days (and perhaps much longer). He would then use the resulting intrasession recess to appoint Gaetz and other Cabinet nominees.

The author of the op-ed, Edward Whelan, seemed to me to be adamant that Matt Gaetz, and Matt Gaetz specifically, should not be the beneficiary of this constitutionally dicey maneuver:

The Senate’s power to approve or reject a president’s nominees for Cabinet positions is a fundamental feature of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. As Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, that power “would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters,” including those “who had no other merit than that … of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of [the president’s] pleasure.” Almost as if Hamilton were describing Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general.

Nothing about this take is remotely controversial. Any sane, rational non-Nazi would agree with it. It’s remarkable only because of who wrote it.

Edward Whelan, his bio says, is “a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the Antonin Scalia chair in constitutional studies.” He’s also, I happen to know, a close associate of Leonard Leo. Remember the cockamamie theory floating around Twitter during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, replete with floorplans and architectural drawings, suggesting that Dr. Ford had somehow misremembered the house where her sexual assault took place? Whelan wrote that—earning himself the nickname “Zillow Ed.”¹

The point is that, if Ed Whelan feels strongly enough about the perils of a potential Matt Gaetz recess-appointment to publish an op-ed on the subject, Leonard Leo likely shares the same sentiment.

As detailed painstaking on these pages, Leonard Leo, Trump’s “Court whisperer,” is BFFs with Clarence Thomas and hand-picked the other five reactionaries on the Supreme Court. He’s a powerful guy. If Leo’s faction already disagrees with Trump on something as important as who gets to run the DOJ, that’s meaningful. I explain why in a piece I wrote for DAME Magazine three years ago:

Many times in the last five years of covering Trump/Russia, I’ve been asked to provide a Theory of Everything—a one-size-fits-all explanation for why the United States teeters on the brink of tyranny, why seemingly-intelligent and wealthy people backed a mobbed-up mountebank like Trump, why Russia behaves as it does, why sketchy folks like Steve Bannon and Erik Prince and Patrick Byrne flit around doing shady shit and rarely seem to face consequences, and so on.

Let me say upfront: I cannot do this. It’s impossible. Every character in this global drama, whether Jared Kushner or Rebekah Mercer or Semion Mogilevich, is his or her own person, with motives unique to him or her. And just because individuals happen to have things in common—both members of the Federalist Society, partners at Jones Day, paramours of Maria Butina, etc.—doesn’t necessarily mean they are all in cahoots. Six people won’t agree on where to have dinner; it strains credulity to believe that a lot more than six people secretly run the world in perfect, monolithic congress.

Simply put, the advancing MAGA mob is not a monolith.

Trump is not a coalition builder. On the contrary, he’s a polarizing figure, even among his supporters. The sycophants in his orbit all have different, and sometimes wildly divergent, reasons for backing him. They are all using him to have their way. Bobby Kennedy Jr. does not want the same thing as Vivek Ramaswamy. JD Vance’s ulterior motives are not identical to Jared Kushner’s or Tulsi Gabbard’s. Lara Trump and Ivanka do not share a single Grand Plan. Heck, I bet even Elon Musk and Peter Thiel disagree on how to Make Apartheid Great Again.

Sooner or later, these factions will begin to spar with each other. Fissures will form, and become chasms, and then the entire rickety enterprise will break apart. Mob families fight each other for territory all the time! Might the Ed Whelan op-ed be the first crack in what will be (to use a term Leonard Leo will appreciate) a Great Schism among Trump supporters—a rift between Leo’s true believers and Elon Musk’s debauched apostates?

I have been outspoken in my disdain for Leo and his radical Catholic fellow travelers in the Federalist Society and on the Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, these weirdos are lawyers, not criminals. I may not agree with their lousy decisions, or their approach to judicial ethics, or their interpretation of the third clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or their fondness for insurrectionist flags, but the Leo faction of Trumplandia operates within a defined legal system, with its precedence and its black robes and its stare decisis. Leonard Leo didn’t spend decades infiltrating and reimagining the third branch of government only for a loutish Chief Executive who once called him a “fat fuck” to tear it all down like a bankrupt casino.²

At some point, Leo’s fealty to the rule of law will come into conflict with Trump’s brazen criminality. Team Opus Dei will bump heads with Team Oligarch. Given that Donald’s last confirmed Attorney General, Bill Barr, is, like Leo & Co., intimately involved with the Opus Dei-affiliated Catholic Information Center, we can safely assume that Leonard’s influence on the nomination process is not insignificant. The Whelan op-ed suggests that the Leonard Leonines would prefer not to have an alleged sex trafficker with a yen for high school girls leading the Justice Department. And bear in mind that Trump needs Leo just as much as Leo needs Trump: if Donald loses Leonard, he loses SCOTUS, too.

The plot thickens.

With all that said, it may also be that I’m so desperate for signs of hope that I’m reading too much into a single 500-word op-ed. Not only that, but rooting for Leonard Leo is distasteful. Furthermore, even if I’m right about the imminent Great Schism, the fact that merely some of the people in Trump’s orbit are not crazy about the idea of an alleged sex trafficker with a yen for high school girls leading the Justice Department should not be cause for celebration.

The water in this-here pot is getting mighty warm.

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Photo credit: Mash-up of The Sopranos and the Trump inner circle.

1. I’m not sure if I should reveal who told me this, although I want to give credit for something so clever. I’ll update here if I can.

2. Re: the “fat fuck” comment, so I’ve been told by a well-placed source.