kyle hunt

President Donald Trump has touted a new initiative to try and address a major economic pain point for midterm voters, but as a new piece from MS NOW argued, it is a "half-hearted" and "flimsy stunt" that perfectly encapsulates the collapse of his presidency.

Earlier this week, Trump took to Truth Social to tout "Freedom Fuel," a network of 25 gas stations in Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey that would be "lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President." As reporter James Downie noted in a Sunday piece for MS NOW, the post and an accompanying video were meant to give viewers "the impression that the administration, whether through subsidy or takeover, was directly intervening to lower gas prices."

It remains unclear at this time who is actually behind the Freedom Fuel locations and how they are managing to lower prices at their pumps. The only information available about its incorporation, per materials from the Delaware Department of State, shows that it was set up on June 23, and nothing else. The situation also drew some criticism that Trump was engaging in precisely the sort of "communist" government intervention policies that he has recently been railing against Democrats for supposedly espousing.

"But whoever is behind Freedom Fuel, Trump’s praise is emblematic of his second year back in the White House: a half-hearted, poorly thought-out stunt," Downie wrote about the whole affair. "Trump is apparently hoping for copycats. For days, he has complained that gas prices are not as low as they were before he recklessly started a war with Iran. Now he is lobbying for other retailers to do what Freedom Fuel has done. 'This Retailer is taking the lead,'” he wrote in that social media post praising the mystery retailer. 'And others should follow.'”

He continued: "Trump, in other words, is asking for volunteers to ease the economic pain that his own policies have caused. Such presidential requests have a checkered history. Herbert Hoover, the president with whom Trump most fears comparisons, declared more than a year into the Great Depression that the 'local communities through their voluntary agencies have assumed the duty of relieving individual distress and are being generously supported by the public.' He said, 'The result of magnificent cooperation throughout the country has been that actual suffering has been kept to a minimum during the past 12 months.' The suffering was in fact far from minimal, and the economy would find salvation not in private enterprise or individual fortitude, but in government spending and relief."

Downie called Trump's Freedom Fuel post a "particularly poor attempt" at his usual tactic of trying to "claim credit" whenever a company lowers prices. The attempt also "reminds drivers how much prices have jumped since Trump launched the Iran war," as $3.47 is still around $0.50 above what the national average was for gas prices before Trump's Iran war.

The abrupt passing of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham took almost everyone by surprise, but as one doctor pointed out on Fox News, his family medical history may have put him at a much higher risk of a major medical episode, especially considering his recent excursion to Ukraine.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, built a reputation over the last decade as a staunch political ally of President Donald Trump, especially when it came to his recent war with Iran. This marked a shift from earlier in his career, when he was notably opposed to Trump's 20216 presidential run, and considered himself a close ally of the late Sen. John McCain, one of Trump's most hated Republicans.

On Saturday evening, reports emerged that Graham had passed away following a "brief and sudden illness," with later reports indicating that he died from cardiac arrest. During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Dr. Marc Siegel, a senior medical analyst for the conservative network, revealed that the senator had a close family history of heart disease, with his father dying from a heart attack when Graham was just 20.

Given that Graham had completed a trip to Ukraine immediately prior to his sudden passing, Siegel said that he was at an elevated risk of cardiac arrest, given his family history and advanced age.

"A long plane flight from Ukraine increases his risk of blood clotting,” Siegel said. “There’s 350,000 per year out-of-the hospital cardiac arrests. Only 10 percent of them make it because, as you can imagine, you can’t get there fast enough to restart the heart right away.”

He added: “The vast majority don’t make it, and most of the time it’s heart disease that causes this... Now, none of that is known, and I'm not suggesting that's the cause, I'm giving you the statistics of what's likely. Especially at his age, you start to see sudden heart disease occurring, and sudden heart attacks occurring right around that age.”

Graham, 71, was only three years older than his father was at the time of passing from a heart attack.

President Donald Trump is "stuck" in a conflict that appears doomed to swallow up his presidency, and according to his one-time biographer, it is all because he has run up against an enemy who knows precisely "how to play him."

Michael Wolff is a longtime reporter and author, best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's personal and political histories, including a series of books about the chaos of his first term. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he touched on the disintegration of Trump's Iran ceasefire deal, making a bold proclamation about where the ordeal ranks across his entire political career.

“This is the worst mistake he has made," Wolff said, adding that the Iranians have been able to play Trump by way of "trolling," later adding. "These presidents get into these forever wars, and they can’t get out of them."

Wolff argued that Trump now finds himself trapped in the sort of foreign conflict that can "bring presidencies down," something that Iran is keenly aware of.

"These presidents get into these forever wars, and they can’t get out of them," he added.

Wolff further claimed that Trump had effectively told Iran, "I’ll give you any kind of agreement you want if you just stop this war," even going so far as to offer to pay them, something he had relentlessly attacked former President Barack Obama for supposedly doing with his Iran deal.

“They keep coming back,” Wolff said of Iran. “This is a whole process of trolling Donald Trump.”

Trump has now threatened to attack Iran with "1000 Missiles" if they attempt to assassinate him, even reportedly laying out instructions for Vice President JD Vance on how to approach the situation if he is killed. Wolff suggested, however, that "the death thing is probably more clearly related to his polling numbers than it is to whatever threats the Iranians are making."

Wolff also noted that the notion of threats against his life "does get under [Trump's] skin, and he is somewhat paranoid about this."

Veteran journalist Simon Marks made similar arguments last week, suggesting that Trump "fundamentally lacks the skills and temperament to successfully manage a diplomatic deal with" a country that operates like Iran, which does not operate anything like the world of New York real estate dealing that he is used to, and is not interested in giving him something he can tout as a victory.

President Donald Trump's alienation of key allies is creating a world in which the world views the U.S. as a major threat to be avoided and prepared for, one former White House deputy warned for The New York Times, and the situation is leaving the country at risk of a "fundamental rupture" under future presidents.

Jon Finer is a journalist and diplomat who previously served as deputy national security adviser during the Biden administration, and currently serves as a "distinguished senior fellow" at Yale Law School and the Center for American Progress. In a new opinion piece published by the Times on Sunday, he sounded the alarm about how Trump's treatment of global allies is "already costing us" in the near term, and about how it will leave us weakened in the years to come. Whereas three years ago, he explained, Europe navigated the threats posed to it by China, now it must do so for the U.S. instead.

"Three years later, de-risking from predatory superpowers remains the fundamental challenge facing European leaders, but China is no longer the main country of concern: The United States is," Finer explained. "As they publicly seek to mollify a vindictive American president, policymakers across Europe are quietly working to reduce their decades-long dependence on the United States by increasing their own defense, energy and technology industries and diversifying their relationships with other nations. That dynamic was on display last week at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, where President Trump renewed his threats against the U.S. allies Denmark and Spain."

He continued: "It’s not just Europe backing away from the United States. Leaders of America’s partners in Asia and the Middle East are quietly doing the same. The second Trump administration’s ostentatious corruption, trade conflicts, military adventurism and mercurial artificial intelligence regulation have produced a new moment in international affairs: a nearly global grand strategy of countries distancing themselves from the world’s most powerful nation."

This "sea change" for the U.S. is costing it the benefits to the "economy and national security" that came with being an ally that other nations relied on for military protection and technology. As these allies now move away from the U.S., Finer warned that it is "limiting our ability to respond to China’s industrial advantages."

"One doesn’t have to look far to see the costs," Finer argued. "The lost war against Iran, the first in which we didn’t have diplomatic or military alignment with our closest allies in Europe and Asia, caused a spike in gas and fertilizer prices that contributed to a $132 billion hit to American consumers, according to Moody’s. Even as Europe increased its military spending by 14 percent, to $864 billion, in 2025, its military purchases from American companies actually fell by almost half. Mr. Trump’s immigration policies are also driving countries away. Four million fewer visitors came to the United States in 2025 than in 2024, at an estimated cost of more than $8 billion. America is hemorrhaging future skilled labor as enrollment by international university students dropped 17 percent last fall from the prior year, already costing universities at least an estimated $1 billion, and potentially costing the country hundreds of billions in future revenue."

He concluded: "As our partners enhance their own resiliency to us, future American administrations must prepare plans for avoiding a more fundamental rupture. Whoever succeeds Mr. Trump will be the first to take office with countries around the world asking not what America can do for them, but rather seeking to do as much as possible without us. The first step to coping with the fallout is realizing just how much — and how permanently — the world has changed."

President Donald Trump has recently taken to accusing his foes of being communists, so much so that social activist Ralph Nader described the Republican leader as "Senator Joe McCarthy on steroids, who in the 1950s smeared political opponents, activists, and others, falsely accusing them of being communists.”

Yet according to The Washington Post, a newspaper owned by Trump ally Jeff Bezos, the president himself is acting quite a bit like a communist — at least when it comes to the government taking charge of private businesses.

“President Donald Trump is warning of a ‘resurgence of the communist menace’ as the Democratic Party shifts to the left, invoking historical memories of terror, collectivization and poverty in a bid to regain voter support ahead of the November congressional elections,” wrote The Washington Post’s David J. Lynch on Sunday. From there, Lynch went into detail through the right-winger’s presidency to point out a contradiction in his argument.

“Trump’s aversion to the heavy hand of the state has not kept him from wielding it himself,” the reporter explained. “The president has had the federal government take partial ownership of nearly two dozen companies since he returned to the White House, including chipmaker Intel and MP Materials, a leading producer of rare earth minerals.”

He added, “Outside of war or financial crisis, Washington has never been so eager to buy stakes in private companies. Critics warn that state capitalism is a recipe for cronyism, waste and inefficiency. But some businesses are volunteering to partner with the government. OpenAI, which is eyeing an initial stock offering later this year, this month offered to give Washington a 5 percent stake when it lists.”

Lynch also quoted Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

“Far from being a bulwark against creeping American communism, Trump is laying the groundwork for more of this in the future,” Lincicome told Lynch. “The president himself has said that he thinks it’s very American to take these government equity stakes based on what the country needs. It’s almost comical how much that sounds like ‘seizing the means of production’ [or] ‘to each according to his needs.’”

As one example of Trump’s socializing private businesses, Lincicome wrote that the president “obtained a 10 percent share of chipmaker Intel after the president publicly criticized Lip-Bu Tan, the company’s CEO, and suggested he be fired. Tan emerged from a private White House meeting a few days later having agreed to surrender a minority stake to the government as the president crowed on social media: ‘I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL.’”

He added, “To critics, it looked as if the president had made the company an offer it couldn’t refuse. In March, Richard D. Paisner, an Intel shareholder, sued the company, its board of directors and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, alleging that the company had given the government ‘$11 billion worth of Intel stock for no meaningful consideration in response to extortionary threats by the government.’”

Speaking with AlterNet earlier this month, Ed Gresser, the Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the liberal-leaning think tank Progressive Policy Institute, also argued that there is an irony in Trump denouncing communists while meddling so much in private businesses.

“I don't think of it as communism, although the Trump administration is actually a very big-government presidency — taking stakes in big companies and trying to manage them in a fairly inappropriate way,” Gresser told AlterNet. “So it's a bit odd to see them drumming up fears of socialism, since that's very much in the background of a lot of what they've done."

Republicans in North Carolina are begging the national party to dump more money into its Senate race, according to Politico, as Democratic candidate Roy Cooper looks increasingly unstoppable in the state that was once seen as reliably red.

Cooper is currently running to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Trump critic Sen. Thom Tillis, who has opted to retire after his current term. He will face former RNC Chair Michael Whatley in the general election, with polls recently shifting the race to "lean Democrat" amid the GOP's increasingly brutal midterm headwinds.

Cooper has long been considered the Democratic Party's best hope for flipping a Senate seat this cycle, given his popularity in the state as its former governor. His potential win would mark a major coup for the party in the state, given that it swung for Trump in the last three presidential races and has not gone for a Democratic president since Barack Obama in 2008, which also marked the last time a Democrat won a Senate race in the Tarheel State.

In a Sunday report, Politico revealed that the North Carolina GOP is hoping that they can avert a Cooper win if Washington sends in the "cavalry," in the form of more spending, which they believe could help turn around his polling and fundraising deficits, as well as his biggest overall problem against Cooper. To date, Cooper has raised north of $13 million, compared to Whatley's much more modest $5 million haul.

"Republicans believe Whatley still has time to turn around those steep deficits — but only if the national GOP opens its deep pockets sooner than later, according to interviews with nearly a dozen North Carolina Republicans and national strategists," Politico detailed. "A massive infusion of cash ahead of the typical late summer and early fall spending spree, they say, would combat Whatley’s biggest problem: a lack of name ID."

“He has an uphill climb,” Tuesday Sauer, chair of the Bertie County GOP, told the outlet. “Even though he was the RNC chair, a lot of people who aren’t politically involved really don’t know who Michael Whatley is.”

Some Republicans told Politico that Whatley's campaign has, so far, been too "generic" to compete with Cooper, who the outlet described as a "blue-chip opponent" from the left. This mediocre approach, the party worries, just "won’t cut it" given the brutal national environment for Republicans amid voter revolt against Trump's failures.

“That money needs to be brought to North Carolina, so the people of North Carolina can be reminded of what a crappy Governor Roy Cooper was,” GOP state Sen. Amy Galey told Politico, referring to the "massive $350 million warchest" of fundraising hauls held by Trump's MAGA Inc. PAC.

“Getting his name, face recognition in 100 counties is tough, especially in North Carolina, with just plain geographics of going from Manteo to Murphy,” another GOP state lawmaker, Rep. Donnie Loftis, added. “It comes down to funding. That money drives your message, and if you don’t have the money, you can’t get your message out there.”

“Whatley and his allies have been caught lying time and again, but the truth is Roy Cooper spent his career locking up criminals while Whatley pushed for prisoners to be released during COVID,” Cooper campaign spokesperson Kate Smart said in a statement to Politico.

“The reality of all of it is that between Republican super PACs and the RNC, they just have way more money,” Morgan Jackson, a veteran North Carolina Democratic strategist and adviser to Cooper, added. “There’s no white horse coming, the way that Republicans are waiting on their savior to come.”

President Donald Trump is investigating a quarter of The New York Times' reporters for breaking a story about security concerns regarding the Air Force One plane donated by Qatar — and a former Republican presidential aide is calling out Democrats for not doing enough to hold the Republican leader accountable.

After describing how Trump subpoenaed journalists Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt — as well as persecuted Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post and Don Lemon and Georgia Fort while covering ICE in Minnesota — Steve Schmidt, who served as an aide to President George W. Bush, wrote on his Substack on Sunday.

“This isn’t a media story,” Schmidt argued. “It isn’t a leak story. It isn’t another partisan spectacle. It’s a constitutional story. Full stop. The First Amendment was never written to protect journalists. It was written to protect the American people from government. The founders understood something every generation must learn again.”

He added, “Power hides. Power resents scrutiny. Power fears exposure. Power almost never announces that liberty is ending. It advances one justification at a time. One subpoena. One search warrant. One seizure. One arrest. One frightened source. One intimidated reporter. One knock at the door. That’s how free societies become less free.”

From there, Schmidt claimed that Democrats can start holding Trump accountable by making sure he is not allowed to keep the Qatar jet that was given to him as a gift by that nation’s royal family.

“The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is scheduled for later this month,” Schmidt argued. “This isn’t an ordinary year. There’s nothing ordinary about federal agents appearing at the homes of reporters. There’s nothing ordinary about search warrants executed against journalists. There’s nothing ordinary about reporting equipment being seized. There’s nothing ordinary about the cumulative pressure these actions place on a free press.”

He added, “The annual ritual should give way to constitutional seriousness. The White House Correspondents’ Association exists for a purpose greater than hosting a dinner.” For that reason, he argued that the White House press corps must acknowledge Trump’s behavior at the current event. He added that the Democratic Party must also stop cowering at Trump’s threats and instead demand institutional responsibility for the gifts he has accepted.

“Its leaders should make a simple pledge,” Schmidt said. “No aircraft accepted under these circumstances should ever become Donald Trump’s personal property. Not after his presidency. Not at a presidential library. Not in a private museum. Not anywhere. The presidency is a public trust. Its symbols aren’t private trophies.”

The New York Times is not alone in receiving Trump’s wrath over the reporting on his Qatari plane. Last week, Trump reported did the same thing to a journalist speaking on MS NOW.

“Trump’s earlier choice to use the gifted Qatari jet as a primary presidential aircraft has been controversial because the gifted plane lacks key military defenses of the original Air Force One, including the ability to refuel mid-air and missile-defense systems, according to a law enforcement official briefed on its capabilities,” MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig reported.

In response to this story, White House communications director Steven Cheung attacked Leonnig, claiming that “Carol Leonnig is a liar and this article is complete Fake News. She has no idea what she is talking about. She says the White House declined to comment. Not true. We gave comment to The New York Times and many other outlets. Carol is not a real journalist. A complete fraud.”

One of President Donald Trump's top allies in the MAGA movement is pushing a major new conspiracy theory about Sen. Mitch McConnell, per The Daily Beast, alleging that a "massive coverup" is underway surrounding his recent health scare.

McConnell, best known for his time as a highly obstructionist GOP Senate Majority Leader, has been hospitalized since mid-June after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest and being found unresponsive in his home. Despite his staff's insistence that he is on the mend, their lack of transparency has led to mounting speculation that they are hiding the severity of his condition, or even his death, in order to prevent a special election to fill his seat.

Among the biggest names on the right pushing these theories about McConnell has been Laura Loomer, a prominent MAGA activist and pundit, noted for her close relationship to Trump and her ability to influence his decision-making. Loomer was one of the first major voices to suggest that the senator was near-death, despite his staff's claims, citing sources high up in the White House.

Over the weekend, she continued to push this theory about McConnell, with a Daily Beast report highlighting a recent post to X in which she claimed that new renovations underway at his home were a sign of a "massive coverup."

"Don’t be shocked if this week the Senate GOP leadership says, 'we regret to inform you that Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell sadly took a turn for the worst over the weekend and quietly and peacefully passed away in his sleep on Sunday evening. We are hereby flying all flags at half staff this week to honor his legacy,'” Loomer wrote in the post. "Then they will say, 'we didn’t lie. We did speak to him…' and nobody will be able to say anything."

She continued: "Everyone knows this is a massive coverup. McConnell’s neighbors told the media he looked dead when he was wheeled out of his home into an ambulance the day he was found unconscious. Who the hell renovates their floors when they are in the hospital on life support? Maybe the spouse of a dead person who wants to sell the home their loved one may have died in… Why would someone who suffered cardiac arrest at 84 years old renovate their floors? Come on. Everyone knows this is very dark and twisted. We all know what’s going on… Time for the Senate to come clean. I won’t be shocked if a statement like that comes out this week."

Loomer previously claimed that her White House sources told her that McConnell had been left "brain dead" and would be unable to return to Congress, even if he was not actually dead yet. Several Republican lawmakers and pundits claim to have spoken with him over the phone since he was hospitalized, but their details remained vague, and the uniformity of their stories led some to question their authenticity. Trump himself has claimed to have little knowledge of the situation and has seemed eager to avoid talking about it.

President Donald Trump’s big and controversial Supreme Court win in Trump v. Slaughter empowered the head of America’s executive branch to fire members of previously independent agencies in order to solidify his power and policy agenda. Now, a conservative publication is publishing an article on how opponents of this case can fight back.

“The death of independent agencies should not be considered a fait accompli,” wrote Todd Phillips, a consultant and former law professor at Georgia State University, in The Bulwark on Sunday. “The Court’s ruling in Trump v. Slaughter just turned a wonky bill focused on the structure of crypto markets into a live test case for whether Congress will let one party’s White House—present or future—singlehandedly control how every industry in the United States is regulated.”

Phillips added, “Slaughter need not be the last word on bipartisan policymaking. Although the Court has ruled that the president must be permitted to remove board members and commissioners at will, Congress is still permitted to structure agencies in ways that disincentivize firings.”

From there Phillips argued, citing a recent Stanford Law Review article he co-authored with University of Minnesota Law Professor Nicholas R. Bednar, that “one partial solution worth pursuing would be to emphasize and clarify independent agencies’ quorum rules, requiring that bipartisan slates of commissioners are seated before agencies take any actions.” This process might work because “commissions’ quorum requirements could be structured such that members from both the Democratic and Republican parties must be in office and must not be recused before the agency may advance any action. Such quorums would ensure that even if members of the minority party are not successful in persuading their colleagues of their policy proposals, they are at least in the room when decisions are being made.”

Indeed, “although the Supreme Court has made its decision, Congress need not let the six justices have the last word on whether agency independence is permitted to exist. Tightening quorum requirements for independent regulatory agencies is not a perfect solution. But it’s a step worth taking.”

He concluded, “Legislators who oppose volatile, episodic regulation driven by who happens to control an agency at any given moment should use the CLARITY Act as an opportunity to preserve, at least in a limited way, bipartisan, independent agencies while articulating a blueprint for reforming other commissions in the future.”

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Slaughter case, dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor broke down in detail why she believed the case was poorly reasoned.

“There is little to suggest 'Executive Power,' as understood at the time of the founding, was as capacious as the Court today asserts,” Sotomayor explained. “The powers held by the English Crown and state governors before ratification did not include a removal power that the legislature could not modify. Instead, Parliament often restricted the Crown's ability to remove even high-level royal officers, and states with vesting clauses like the Constitution's similarly allowed for limits on gubernatorial removal powers."

She added, “Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of Government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time. Its conclusion is wrong.”

A large number of President Donald Trump’s supporters began wearing masks in mid-2020 after their leader urged them to do so — and now, a scientific paper explains the psychology behind why they did so, per PsyPost.

“Political leaders play a potentially important role shaping behaviors and beliefs during crises. In the pandemic, a number of high-status politicians, notably leaders of populist parties, were seen to diminish compliance with institutional recommendations by casting doubt on COVID guidelines,” proclaimed the abstract of a recent study by Bartholomew A. Konechni, a sociologist at Sciences Po Paris, published in the journal American Sociological Review. “But what happens when such leaders change position and endorse previously discouraged behaviors?”

Konechni analyzed data of more than 5,000 patients from the Understanding Coronavirus in America panel to study how millions of Trump’s supporters switched from refusing to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic to embracing them, entirely because of Trump saying on July 1, 2020, that he started wearing them because he thought doing so made him look like the Lone Ranger. He learned that when Trump made his announcement that he would wear masks, it closed the gap between Republican and Democratic compliance by roughly 40 percent, particularly among individuals who were more exposed to the early-summer spikes in COVID-19. Yet this did not mean that they necessarily abandoned their original anti-mask views.

“In contrast to expectations from most dominant theoretical models of behavioral change, especially the health belief model, no corresponding shift in beliefs about facemasks can be detected,” Konechni wrote. “These results have important theoretical implications for understanding how pivots can shape behaviors during crises, the validity of existing models in public health, pandemic populism’s causes, and directions of future research.”

PsyPost’s Karina Petrova elaborated on what exactly happened.

“Such a disconnect might seem unusual, but sociologists have documented similar patterns in everyday life,” Petrova wrote. “College students often drink heavily in public to fit in with peers, even if they privately disapprove of binge drinking. Parents sometimes refuse childhood vaccinations based on suspicion, but they will accept a vaccine for themselves under intense workplace pressure. Social expectations frequently push people into actions they do not intellectually endorse.”

Konechni found that Trump’s “Lone Ranger” comment worked because many of Trump’s supporters were “living in states where the outbreak was spiking the hardest. This suggests that the severity of the crisis acted as a catalyst. When people are navigating immediate danger, they may look to their preferred leaders for survival cues. They might follow those cues for group solidarity or out of plain anxiety, bypassing the need to logically validate the underlying science.”

Petrova added, “There are limitations to this analysis that warrant attention. The study used self-reported data. Survey participants might have altered their answers simply to project loyalty to their political camp instead of accurately reporting their habits. The focus on a single political figure during a rare global disaster also restricts how broadly these lessons can be applied.”

Yet the science journalist continued, “Face masks were highly visible and novel, which might separate them from more private medical choices like taking a pill. Trump also commands a decidedly unique relationship with his base. The results from this specific historical moment may not translate seamlessly to a standard politician asking their constituents to eat less sugar or exercise more frequently. Future studies might explore how strong social networks shape these reactions, or how long such unanchored behaviors can be realistically maintained.”

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2021, Dr. Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, said that “when we’re engaging [in] motivated reasoning, we tend to hold evidence to a lower threshold of quality before we believe it’s true. A person trying to justify a belief they have might ask themselves ‘can I’ believe this to be true, while a person trying to refute a belief they’d rather not have holds evidence to a higher standard, asking themselves ‘must I’ believe this to be true. Both are motivated approaches to evaluating evidence. The first can lead us to accept weak evidence in support of a belief, while the latter can lead us to be overly skeptical of good evidence.”

President Donald Trump’s supporters have long been accused of acting like they are in a cult and viciously turning on anyone who criticizes their leader. Now Corey Nathan,

“There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome, but it’s not what you think,” wrote Corey Nathan, who was born Jewish and subsequently converted to Christianity, in an editorial for a conservative publication called The Dispatch. Instead of using it to describe people who criticize Trump, Nathan argued that it refers to people “who look upon the words and actions of Donald Trump and cannot see them for what they are. On any given day, his conduct exhibits the very antithesis of what Scripture—or anyone with the most basic sense of decency—calls virtue.”

He mentioned that, whenever he cites Trump’s numerous actions that would be described as sins according to the tenets of Christianity, he receives “now entirely predictable, seemingly reflexive comebacks. ‘Oh, well what about Biden? What about Ka-MAH-la? What about Obama? Nobody was more arrogant than Barack Hussein Obama.’ Or something like, ‘Doesn’t the Bible tell you not to judge?’ Or maybe simply, and this was said to me just last week, ‘The TDS is strong in you, man.’”

Nathan continued that these arguments tend to be self-serving and one-way, made by people who are putting out whatever they hope might help them defend Trump rather than because there is any internal consistency or moral logic to what they are propounding. In this expedient and irrational mindset, Nathan compared Trump supporters to individuals struggling with addiction issues.

“The dynamic feels familiar: the denial, the defensiveness, the way confrontation closes doors that patience might eventually open,” Nathan wrote. “The problem I keep wrestling with isn’t political. It’s human. What do we do when people we love become morally and epistemically unavailable to us?”

He added, “By that I mean, why do people I care about seem not even to know about example after example (and the volume is part of the MAGA strategy) of what should be disqualifying statements and actions Trump has made through the years? By the time you’ve cataloged everything, you’ve already forgotten Helsinki. You’ve forgotten his sanitization and deflections for people chanting ‘the Jews will not replace us.’ You’ve forgotten ‘I like people who weren’t captured.’ Those moments now seem almost quaint.”

Describing this phenomenon as “a moral and epistemic disorder, a specific kind of blindness with a specific structure,” Nathan compared the attitudes of Trump supporters to those that facilitated the rise of fascists in the 20th century and were chronicled by writers of the time like George Orwell and Theodor Adorno.

“There are moments in history when one thing is happening that dwarfs everything else,” Nathan argued. “The people who miss it aren’t always wrong about their concerns; they’re just catastrophically misallocating their moral attention. My friend the pastor isn’t pro-Trump, exactly. He’s distracted. And distraction, at this historical moment, is its own form of complicity. But Trump promises to win the culture war this faith leader is losing. In exchange, he doesn’t have to look too hard at the man doing the winning.”

He continued, “There’s also the matter of incentives. Calling out Trump would cost him—empty pews, less tithing, the church across town gaining ground. Russell Moore was pressured out of his position with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission within the Southern Baptist Convention for less. I’ve seen how that goes firsthand. I’ve been asked to leave Bible studies for insisting on what Scripture actually says when it cuts against the room’s political preferences. The people who showed me the door didn’t say they disagreed with my politics. They said I was ‘getting political.’ The politics were always there, of course. Just not the right kind.”

Overall, Nathan ended by saying that people who oppose Trump but are close to people who support him must continue showing up and conversing with them, in an understanding and non-confrontational tone, even though he does not know beyond that how to deprogram them.

“These are not stupid men,” Nathan said. “My good friend is sharp and informed. My old pastor is educated and theologically serious. That’s the syndrome. The real one. Not the inability to tolerate Trump. The inability to see him clearly.”

He concluded, “I don’t know what cures it. But I’m not ready to stop trying to find out.”

Nathan is far from alone in comparing Trumpers’ behavior to that of a cult. Speaking with the conservative website The Bulwark in March, former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair bluntly said that the Trump movement “is a cult. And what you have to understand is that in any abusive relationship, your access to other people is cut off. You're isolated. Your access to information is cut off. Your access to people who might have rational perspectives on what you're involved in — that's cut off too.”

She added, “These people are told it's all fake news. The only things you can trust are Twitter and Truth Social. And for better or worse, they actually believe that. They believe that established outlets are lying to them, that nothing those outlets publish can be true."