U.S. President Donald Trump attends the commencement ceremony at West Point Military Academy in West Point, New York, U.S., May 24, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Left Hook creator Wajahat Ali and author/professor Jared Yates Sexton say President Donald Trump’s base is feeling the pain of tying themselves to him.
Sexton referenced FBI Director Kash Patel’s ploy to use UFC fighters to train agents at Quantico, saying “we are unfortunately at the whim right now of some of the least talented and least intelligent and least competent people we've ever seen.”
“And why? Because everything in this country was rigged for a very specific group of white, wealthy men who basically took over the economy and then they took over our politics and they are in charge of everything now in a way that not only are they over their heads, but they're too stupid to even understand that they're in over their heads,” said Sexton, a political writer with roots in Indiana and Mississippi’s white rural class.
Sexton added that the FBI “is so stupid” now that rich celebrities have to “go on TV and talk about a ransom to try and get their mothers back” because the FBI “can't even handle that” anymore.
Ali said the subservient white class that made the idiocy possible have now reached the stage of exploitation where the suffering Trump promised to other races is now reaching for them as it inevitably does.
“It ain't just going to be Black people and Muslims,” said Ali. “… This is going to drag us all in. And now you're seeing these white voters finally say, ‘wait a second, the price of my [food] and the price of my gas! Wait, you were supposed to bring it down. But you're making a $400 million ballroom.’”
“[Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth is spending $93 billion on steak and a piano. Kash Patel is with his honeypot girlfriend going to friggin' Italy and chugging beer with the hockey Olympic team. Kristi Noem is banging Corey Lewandowski, allegedly, in a multi-million-dollar luxury jet. … [but here you are saying] ‘I have no money. I don't understand what's happening. And now you're telling me, literally, [Sen.] Lindsay Graham (R-Kent.), that I have to go die for Israel? I don't want to go die for Israel. And now what the F? My business is being hurt because apparently the Strait of Hormuz is choking off the oil.”
Sexton said the personality of the men exploiting the white underclass is easy to recognize.
“All of these people know [they’re insecure] deep down in their quietest moments, which is why … they have to get all the money. That's why they have to hurt people. They have to gain joy from crushing people. In their quietest moments, the voice that speaks to them, what you would call a conscience, it tells them, ‘hey, you're in way over your head and you have no idea what's going on.’ So, instead, they have to fill it up with all of this performance," Sexton said.
“[T]hese are the men who seek white supremacy because white supremacy gives them this ideology that their faith, the universe, God, nature or whatever made you supreme. You—by your very existence — are better than everyone else and the world belongs to you,” said Ali. “So if you're a broken person, if you're weak, if you're terrified of your own shadow because it's Black, if you're terrified of women, if you don't have any game whatsoever, if you're a loser who doesn't know how to court a woman properly, instead of saying, ‘there's something inside me I should fix,’ instead, you say ‘it's them. They're the ones who are wrong.’ … which is why this is such a seductive, but ultimately self-destructive fantasy, folks.”
“And we're seeing the self-destruction at play because … the fever dream has turned into a nightmare,” Ali added, “and now you're seeing it collapse. You're seeing it collapse in Iran. You're seeing it collapse with the economy. You're seeing it collapse with immigration. You're seeing it collapse with the gas prices.”