Trump needs the obvious lesson of hit movie as he destroys US: conservative

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio with U.S. President Donald Trump in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Some of President Donald Trump’s most prominent right-wing supporters are denouncing director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” because of its diverse casting. Yet one conservative commentator says they could actually learn an important “small-c conservative” lesson about Trump’s billions in grifting from watching it.

“A president enriches himself at a scale never seen before in the United States. An Epstein class of abusive libertines always seems to evade accountability for its crimes,” conservative columnist David French wrote for The New York Times on Sunday. “Government officials break the law with impunity, banking on presidential pardons to excuse their crimes — all while truth is buried under an avalanche of lies, lies that are shared with gusto by cadres of grifters and fools.”

He added, “Without saying one word about modern politics, Christopher Nolan has rebuked the spirit of the age. His retelling of ‘The Odyssey’ is an admonition: Moral transgressions always carry a consequence.”

French went on to describe how Odysseus, as depicted by Nolan, is haunted morally and practically by his decision to violate Zeus’ law. In ancient Greece, individuals were expected to show hospitality when faced with guests and to be hospitable if they are guests. By invading Troy by hiding in a supposedly gifted wooden horse, Odysseus and his men violated this rule by being the least hospitable type of guest — that is, one who murders, steals and destroys everything he can.

“In the movie’s powerful third act (spoiler alert, for those who care about spoiling a modern take on an almost 3,000-year-old epic poem), Odysseus connects all the dots,” French wrote. “The Trojan War wasn’t a great victory conducted in service of a righteous cause. It was a war fought for greed and power under the pretext of fighting to bring Helen of Troy home.”

He continued, “And the Trojan Horse? Odysseus’s strategic masterstroke? In Nolan’s depiction, it is essentially a war crime — an act of subterfuge that takes advantage of ancient customs to unleash the horrifying sack of the city after Troy’s army is defeated. Odysseus is determined to get home, but he is also wracked with guilt.”

Because Odysseus committed these horrible acts, French explained, Nolan concludes his version of the Homeric poem by not having Odysseus “come home to Ithaca to sit on his throne, but to confess, to rescue his wife from the clutches of evil men and to choose exile.” From there he pointed out that “The Odyssey” actually has a fundamentally conservative message, despite right-wingers like X CEO Elon Musk and The Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh complaining about its diverse casting.

“It’s a reminder of how stupid and petty much of the right has become that anyone would think this movie was ‘woke,’” French wrote. “Yes, a Black actor — Lupita Nyong’o — plays Helen of Troy, and a trans actor — Elliot Page — plays Sinon, the Greek warrior who unwittingly tricks the Trojans into accepting the Trojan Horse as a gift. But to label a movie woke simply because of the identity of the actors is to indulge in a caricatured version of the same identity politics that the right claims to loathe.”

French instead argued that “in reality, Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ is one of the most small-c conservative movies I’ve ever seen. I can easily imagine a natural law theorist watching the movie, nodding his head and saying, ‘Yes, there are universal moral laws, and this is exactly what happens when prideful men believe they know more than God.’”

This means that “The Odyssey” issues a warning for Trump and his cohorts, who are blatantly profiting from Trump’s presidency.

“Defy the gods? Deny the dignity of your neighbor?” French wrote. “You certainly can, if you so choose. And you may prosper for a time. But the narrative arc of the movie tells us our destiny if that’s the path we choose. It turns out that there are rules for rule breakers, just as there are for everyone else, and those rules have persisted throughout human history.”

He concluded, “Here’s one, arguably the central truth of the film: Heedless people, you will pay for what you destroy.”

In addition to the conservative French, the liberal commentator Thom Hartmann similarly opined that “The Odyssey” has valuable lessons for people who are open to it, especially on the Trump right.

“When you go to see Christopher Nolan’s new epic film ‘The Odyssey’ (as Louise and I did on Saturday), you’ll be bathed in the revelation that Trump and his military lickspittles are breaking the most ancient law that created what we today call Western civilization,” Hartmann wrote. “The movie even explains Iran’s rageful response to Trump’s violations of ‘Zeus’ Law’ and tells us of the possible consequences of his illegal and morally criminal attack on that country (which had not attacked us first) as his war of choice plays out.”

As both French and Hartmann noted in their editorials, conservatives have had a meltdown over “The Odyssey,” complaining that it is “woke” because of Nolan’s casting choices. Nolan himself dismissed the criticisms as “irrelevant.”

As the Daily Beast reported earlier this month, “His comments come after MAGA commentators — including X owner Elon Musk — trashed the film for months over Nolan’s choice to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and trans actor Elliot Page as the Greek warrior Sinon.”

“Musk, Newsmax host Robert Finnerty, and more have slammed the film, which isn’t out until July 17, as a ‘rewriting of history’ and Nolan as ‘racist’ for casting a Black actress in a fictional Greek character’s role,” The Daily Beast continued.

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