In his 2023 book, Government Gangsters, which claims a supposed Deep State has been plotting against Donald Trump for years, Kash Patel, whom Trump has tapped to replace Chris Wray as FBI director, recounts his three-year stint as a mid-level attorney at the Justice Department. For him, this gig was apparently a radical learning experience. During that time, Patel writes, he came to see that the top leaders of the government were “political gangsters, frauds, and hypocrites.” Yet in the book and in interviews, Patel has embellished his own work at the department.

Patel, previously a public defender in Miami, was a lawyer at the Justice Department’s counterterrorism section from late 2013 until after the 2016 election. In his book, he calls it “a dream job for a young and ambitious lawyer,” and he states that he played a key role in the Benghazi case, in which the FBI and the Justice Department pursued the culprits responsible for the September 11, 2012, attack on a US diplomatic compound in Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. “I was leading the prosecution’s efforts at Main Justice in Washington, DC,” Patel writes.

Several FBI and Justice Department officials who worked the Benghazi case say this description is an exaggeration. Asked about Patel’s characterization, a former FBI special agent who was on that investigation for years exclaimed, “Oh my god, no. Not on that case. Not on Benghazi.”

“Kash has claimed he made certain decisions on what crimes should have been charged and should not have been. He did not make those decisions. He had no major role.”

This former agent said that the counterterrorism section had a small role in the Benghazi probe. Primarily, the FBI and the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, handled the case. “I don’t recall Patel having any influence on it,” he said. He recounted one meeting during the investigation that Patel attended in which Patel was not taken seriously by the main attorneys on the investigation. “The issue was whether or not we had the information needed to make a charge,” the former agent said. “He wasn’t a very experienced attorney and was dismissed by some of the attorneys at the table. The message was, we’re not paying attention to you.”

A former official in the counterterrorism section pointed out that Patel “briefly” worked on the Benghazi case but “made no major decisions.” He added, “Kash has claimed he made certain decisions on what crimes should have been charged and should not have been. He did not make those decisions. He had no major role.”

Andrew McCabe, a former top FBI official who oversaw much of the Benghazi investigation, said he didn’t recall Patel playing any significant part in that case: “I was deeply involved in that case and personally involved in numerous meetings and briefings and interactions with Justice Department personnel. I don’t believe I ever met the guy. While it is possible we did meet or that we were in the same meeting on occasion, he was not one of the many people I worked closely with while overseeing the FBI’s long investigation of the attack.” (In his book, Patel includes McCabe on his list of purported anti-Trump Deep Staters who deserve “investigation.” Patel has vowed to seek revenge against Trump’s opponents, and Trump recently suggested he expects Patel to take such steps if he becomes FBI chief.)

Since writing his 2023 book, Patel has repeated his claim that he was a “lead prosecutor” on the Benghazi case. “I was the Main Justice lead prosecutor for Benghazi,” Patel said in a YouTube interview earlier this year. NBC News subsequently reported, “The Justice Department’s 2017 announcement that the Libyan [Ahmed Abu Khattala] had been charged in the attack and of his conviction in a 2019 federal trial do not list Patel as the lead prosecutor or as part of the prosecution team.”

The New York Times, too, has reported that Patel “has repeatedly claimed he was the ‘lead prosecutor’ in” the Benghazi case, but was “a junior Justice Department staff member at the time, and he was not part of the trial team.”

In his book, Patel claimed that he argued for a more aggressive prosecution of the Benghazi case and contended the investigation was unduly influenced by political decisions made to protect the Obama administration. But the former counterterrorism official disputed this, saying that there was “no political interference” and that Kash was not part of the discussions in which the critical decisions were made.

In an email to Patel, Mother Jones asked him to respond to the statements from the former FBI and Justice Department officials challenging his description of his involvement in the Benghazi case. Replying for Patel, Alex Pfieffer, a Trump transition team spokesperson, addressed only the McCabe comment: “Kash was assigned as the lead prosecutor for Main Justice in DC on the Benghazi case as part of his role as a national security prosecutor in the Obama Justice Department. Andrew McCabe was fired from the FBI after lying to investigators. He clearly resents that Kash will bring reform to the agency.”

(A 2018 Justice Department inspector general report concluded McCabe had “lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions” when he had been questioned about a leak to the Wall Street Journal. He was fired soon after. Three years later, the Justice Department reversed his dismissal and restored his pension, settling a lawsuit McCabe filed insisting that he had been fired for political reasons.)

In Government Gangsters, Patel also inflated his role in another terrorism case.

On the evening of July 11, 2010, bombs exploded at an Ethiopian restaurant and a rugby club in Kampala, Uganda, where patrons were watching the World Cup final. More than 70 people were killed, including an American who worked for a nonprofit. Al Shabaab, a Somali terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility. Within days, the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, at the request of Ugandan authorities, dispatched a team of FBI agents, analysts, and forensic experts to assist the investigation.

Eventually, nine conspirators, including the accused mastermind, were captured and found guilty in Ugandan courts of assorted crimes related to the bombings. They received sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment. This was a major victory for the fight against terrorism, for it marked, according to the BBC, “the first major conviction of al-Shabaab suspects outside Somalia.”

In his book, Patel boasted that he “served as the lead DoJ prosecutor” on this case. But there was no prosecution in the United States related to this bombing. “Kash was assisting the Ugandans,” the former counterterrorism official said. “There was no DoJ prosecution. He was for a time the DoJ lead in working with the Ugandans. But if that description makes you think he was prosecuting this case, that was incorrect.” A former FBI agent who worked for years on the Uganda investigation said, “No one on the team would have considered him a lead prosecutor. Maybe he did.”

In his reply to Mother Jones, Pfeiffer did not address these comments about Patel’s participation in the Uganda case. Instead, he noted, “Kash Patel received the Assistant Attorney General Award For Excellence in 2017 for his efforts assisting Uganda prosecute and convict the Al Shabaab terrorists responsible for the 2010 World Cup bombings.”

In response to a question about Patel’s statements indicating that he aims to pursue revenge against Trump’s political opponents and journalists, Pfeiffer said, “The FBI will target crime, not individuals with Kash leading the bureau,” and he maintained, “Kash is committed to safeguarding Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

The former counterterrorism official noted that Patel was a competent employee when he worked at this Justice Department section: “He was fine. He did his job. He’s exaggerated what he did for us. But I had no issue with him. He got along with the FBI and the military, who he often worked with. They had no issues with him. He wasn’t a problem. The one glitch was in Houston.” That glitch occurred when Patel had to rush from Tajikistan to a courtroom in Houston for a hearing in a case involving a suspected ISIS operative accused of planning to blow up an American shopping mall. The judge berated Patel for not wearing a tie and threw him out of his chambers. This kerfuffle drew some press attention, and in his book Patel bitterly expresses dismay that his superiors at the department did not stick up for him. “Cowards,” he wrote.

The former counterterrorism official noted that he and others who worked with Patel at the Justice Department have been surprised by Patel’s transformation into a self-proclaimed warrior against what he calls the Deep State. “He left the counterterrorism section to work for Devin Nunes [then the pro-Trump California Republican chairing the House Intelligence Committee], and the rest is history,” he said. “Up until then, he was a regular employee. He didn’t talk politics in the office that much. There was nothing to explain his view now that the DoJ should go after Trump’s enemies. I didn’t see this coming. None of the people I worked with saw this coming. I am mystified by what he’s become.”

Mr. Smith, please come in, have a seat. Our records show you’ve been with the State Department for 17 years, the past five in the Bureau of National Security and Nonproliferation. Now it has come to our attention through an anonymous tip to the America First Compliance Program that you made a derogatory comment about the president. A subsequent internal investigation discovered your wife donated $125 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Through further inquiry—with the assistance of the TrumpX social media team—we located a deleted post from your daughter’s timeline that included a photograph of her and your wife knocking on doors in west Philadelphia for Kamala Harris. Under the new Loyal Americans in Government executive order, we are terminating your employment as of this moment. As you might know, your position has been reclassified and no longer enjoys the civil service protections of the past. There is no right of appeal. My secretary will provide you the separation paperwork. You may leave now.

Donald Trump has many plans for his return engagement at the White House. Several will require police-state tactics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly and enthusiastically declared he would order the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants. At his rallies, diehard fans excitedly waved signs proclaiming the slogan they chanted: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” Such a program would require deploying a paramilitary force—or even the National Guard or the military—to locate migrants, apprehend them, and guard them in a network of prisons and detention camps. (Executives at private prison, security, and surveillance software companies are already salivating.) This system would depend on Trump ramping up monitoring of workplaces and neighborhoods, and on anonymous tip lines susceptible to abuse and false leads. (Have a problem with a neighbor? Report ’em.) Perhaps the forces rounding up migrants will be afforded special powers to evade civil liberties protections. As in East Germany during the Cold War, an atmosphere of terror and intimidation will pervade.

Expect something similar within the federal workforce. Months before he left office at the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order that would have removed employment protections from civil servants deemed disloyal to the president and that could have required expressions of allegiance before being hired—in other words, loyalty oaths for Trump. The order created a new employment category called Schedule F, to be applied to perhaps tens of thousands of federal workers (maybe more), permitting them to be fired without cause. President Joe Biden rescinded the order upon entering the White House and, in October, his administration issued final rules aimed at preventing a future president from reinstating it. But Trump has vowed to bring the plan back on “day one” and turn a large section of the federal workforce into a Trump corps—a stated goal of Steve Bannon and other MAGA schemers.

Reviving Schedule F, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) has warned, would be a “direct threat to our national security and our government’s ability to function.” Under such a regime, a broad range of federal employees—say, lawyers at the EPA who work on climate change, scientists at the CDC who prepare for pandemics, or analysts at the CIA who watch the Kremlin—could be dumped at will if they raise questions about a Trump position or don’t pay him obeisance. And the threat of a pink slip would not only silence dissent; it could be used to press government employees to take inappropriate actions—maybe jigger statistics to make Trump’s economic policies look good, or slow-walk disaster aid destined for blue states.

Independent, fact-based, and expertise-driven work across the executive branch would be threatened. Picture a world in which ratting on colleagues is encouraged and snitches roam the hallways of federal agencies looking for signs of disloyalty to Trump. The federal bureaucracy will become a frightening place for many public servants, likely triggering an immense brain drain.

There could be pressure to award government contracts, impose or lift regulations, or conduct investigations based on Trump’s lists of friends and foes. With this power, Trump would be able to threaten corporations, organizations, and people who piss him off. He could sic the IRS on them. He could order the imposition of tariffs to hinder specific firms and sectors. Most notably, Trump could instruct FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors to investigate his rivals, even when there is no legitimate case. In the past, he has called for initiating criminal probes against Joe Biden, Alvin Bragg, Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Kamala Harris, Letitia James, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and many others. Were he to demand such investigations, it would turn the Justice Department into an agency of retribution, serving Trump’s revenge fantasies and shifting resources from legitimate endeavors. That would be good news for real criminals.

And what of the agencies that Congress has long intended to be insulated from presidential interference? The infamous Project 2025 policy blueprint—expected to be the basis of many Trump actions—calls for ending the independence of these powerful and important regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. The Supreme Court would probably need to okay such a bold expansion of presidential power, but conservative groups recently took one challenge designed to provoke such a decision all the way to the high court. While the justices this past October declined—for now—to hear the case, Trump and his allies have mused about seizing control of these bodies, and Trump has openly discussed using the FCC to punish troublesome newscasters by pulling broadcasting licenses.

There are protections against spying on Americans. But with the Supreme Court ruling a president has wide-ranging immunity, what’s to stop him?

The military, too, might not be immune. In mid-November, the news leaked that Trump advisers were weighing an executive order that would create a “warrior board” of former senior military personnel to vet three- and four-star officers and recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership. Such a board would permit Trump to purge the military of leaders tied to DEI programs—whom he previously assailed as “woke generals”—or those he deems to be insufficiently devoted to him, creating a chilling effect throughout the Pentagon.

And there’s another way the military could be politicized. Trump allies have urged the revival of the Insurrection Act, which permits a president to use the military “to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.” Trump loyalists have claimed he could declare undocumented migrants an invading army and set the military upon them. And in an interview late in the campaign, Trump proposed using the armed forces to go after “radical left lunatics.” He might want to do the same to others opposing his actions—what he calls “the enemy within”—and the Insurrection Act’s vague standards are ripe for abuse: Under the supposed goal of suppressing domestic violence, the military could be ordered to spy on Americans who might be planning protests.

Once he’s back in the White House, Trump will again have access to the extensive surveillance power of the intelligence community. He could compel agencies to spy on American citizens with whom he has a beef. They could be coerced to supply him with information he could use to pressure, embarrass, or harm a detractor. Doing so might be illegal; there are civil liberty protections against spying on Americans. But now that the Supreme Court has ruled a president has wide-ranging immunity against criminal prosecution, what’s to stop him? (During oral arguments, his lawyer suggested that, as president, Trump could order a Navy seal team to assassinate a political rival and be clear of prosecution.)

The same goes for other laws that prohibit abusing government power. It’s not just Trump who is free of guardrails. If other government officials break the law doing his bidding, he will have the power to pardon them. His minions will be well protected.

There are more than 430 federal departments and agencies. Trump could turn each into a ministry of fear, full of devotees who serve him, not the public interest, which he can use to target anyone who draws his ire. Meanwhile, the mass deportation program, should it come into being, will terrorize millions and create an infrastructure fueled by suspicion. If Trump succeeds in these authoritarian endeavors, it will radically reshape not only the US government but the very nature of America.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

With Donald Trump tapping Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory monger, and grifter, to be FBI director, it’s time to revisit the Trump-Russia scandal. I know many folks think this is old news. The matter was long ago swept under the rug. Yet the basic facts remain incontrovertible: Vladimir Putin attacked the 2016 election with a covert hack-and-leak operation to help Trump win, and Trump aided and abetted that assault by denying it was underway—thus providing cover to a foreign adversary subverting American democracy—while seeking to exploit it. As president, Trump continued the cover-up by echoing and affirming Putin’s phony professions of innocence. Despite the clear evidence, Trump has gotten away with this act of profound betrayal. Patel is a big reason for that.

As an aide to then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Patel led an investigation after the 2016 election of the FBI’s probe of the Kremlin’s attack and contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. It’s important to remember that there were two different components of that probe. The bureau was looking at the Russian operation—which entailed hacking Democratic officials and operatives and then publicly disseminating through WikiLeaks internal memos and private emails to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign—and it was also examining ties between the Trump crew and Russians. This inquiry was triggered when the bureau learned that a Trump foreign policy adviser named George Papadopoulos supposedly told a senior Australian diplomat he had been informed that Russia could secretly assist the Trump campaign by releasing derogatory information on Clinton. After that, the FBI began looking at Trump associates with connections in Russia. One lead for the investigators was a campaign adviser named Carter Page, a business consultant who had mucked about in Russia for years and who made a trip to Moscow in July 2016 and met with Russian officials.

With Page of interest to the investigators, the bureau sought and received a secret surveillance warrant—in government parlance, a FISA warrant—to spy on Page. Here’s where things get tricky. The FBI used what became known as the Steele dossier in its applications for a series of FISA warrants for Page. This was the now infamous collection of private memos produced by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that contained a host of unproven accusations about Trump-Russia links. (Remember the golden showers?) As a Justice Department inspector general later concluded, the FBI erred in using this document to justify its request for the FISA warrant on Page and screwed up in other disturbing ways in obtaining these warrants. That is, Page’s civil rights were violated. (Interest declared: I was the first reporter to reveal the existence of the Steele dossier—with an article in Mother Jones that appeared on October 31, 2016. But I did not publish the unsubstantiated memos.)

Now pay close attention to follow Nunes and Patel’s dodgy sleight of hand. They contended (loudly) that the FBI misconduct regarding its use of the Steele dossier and the Page warrants meant that the entire Trump-Russia investigation was a witch hunt and that all talk of the Russian attack mounted to boost Trump was a hoax. And as some Trump critics and journalists raised the notion that the Trump campaign might have colluded with Putin’s operation, Patel and other Trump defenders used the Steele dossier mess-up to counter that accusation and to contend that the entire matter was nothing but a phony Democratic dirty trick. (Steele had written his memos as a consultant to an opposition research firm paid by a law firm working for the Clinton campaign.)

In a brilliant stroke of disinformation, Trump, Nunes, Patel, and others falsely asserted that it had been the Steele memos that had prompted the FBI to launch its Trump-Russia investigation—called Crossfire Hurricane—meaning the inquiry, based on a purportedly fraudulent document that was a product of a Democratic oppo initiative, was utterly illegitimate and illegal. The real scandal, they insisted, was not Moscow clandestinely helping Trump win the White House and Trump accepting and assisting that effort, but rather the Deep State fabricating this so-called scandal.

In his 2023 book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, The Truth, and Our Battle for Democracy, Patel claims credit for “breaking open the biggest criminal conspiracy by government officials since Watergate — Russia Gate.” He repeatedly boasts that by exposing this supposed scandal—the Deep State concocting a bogus investigation to sabotage Trump—he helped save American democracy. He also asserts over and over that the FBI’s Russian investigation was predicated on the Steele dossier, which he alleges was purposefully manufactured as part of a conspiracy against Trump—“a political hit job”—run by Democrats, the FBI, the “fake news mafia,” and the Deep State.

What Patel did from the start was to engineer a wonderful deflection to defend and protect Trump. He created a false narrative in which the FBI’s misuse of the Steele dossier delegitimized Crossfire Hurricane and proved the whole investigation was baseless and a criminal conspiracy against Trump—and nothing else mattered. This is the cover story that Trump and his acolytes have been deploying for years.

Patel’s book makes almost no mention of the actual Russian attack on the 2016 election. Absent is any reference to the material stolen by Moscow’s hackers and leaked to hurt Clinton and aid Trump. (The worst leaking began right after the “grab-’em-by-the-pussy” video came out.) Nor does he acknowledge that Trump and his team repeatedly issued false denials and covered for Putin. He doesn’t include the meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 between Trump’s senior aides and a Russian emissary who they were informed was part of a secret Kremlin operation to assist the Trump campaign. WikiLeaks does not appear in these pages.

Patel ignores Trump’s own secret efforts during the campaign to score a huge real estate deal in Moscow—and his company’s attempt to obtain assistance from Putin’s office. Not surprisingly, he leaves out the Justice Department IG’s finding that the FBI’s initiation of Crossfire Hurricane was not based on the Steele document and not the product of “political bias or improper motivation.” It was legitimate. Also missing from the book is the key fact that John Durham, a special counsel handpicked by Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate and advance the Patel-promoted conspiracy theory that the Deep State illegally whipped up the Russia “hoax” to destroy Trump, flopped and found no massive criminal plot or significant and widespread wrongdoing.

No, all that counts is the Steele dossier and the Page FISA warrants. In Patel’s world, the various government reports that confirmed that Russia waged information warfare to boost Trump do not exist. Most notably, there’s not a hint in his book that in 2020, the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, released a bipartisan 966-page report that detailed the Russian assault, stating it was designed to help elect Trump and that the “Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia, and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.” That is, the Trump campaign helped the Russians.

This report disclosed that Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chair for months during 2016, repeatedly held covert meetings with a former business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, who was a Russian intelligence officer, and “sought to secretly share internal Campaign information” with him. The committee put it bluntly: “Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” Moreover, the committee reported it had “obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to [Russian intelligence’s] hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” And the committee said it had uncovered “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility” that Manafort himself was connected “to the hack-and-leak operations.” The report’s discussion of that information, though, was redacted.

Trump’s top campaign adviser clandestinely huddling with a Russian intelligence officer who was possibly involved in Moscow’s attack—that sure smells like collusion. At the least, it’s a real, honest-to-God scandal. The committee’s conclusion: Manafort posed a “grave counterintelligence threat.” (Manafort was imprisoned in 2018 for committing fraud and money laundering. Trump pardoned him in late 2020.)

Manafort does not appear anywhere in Patel’s book. Not a single sentence. (Here’s a suggestion for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Should Patel make it to a confirmation hearing, ask him if he read the Senate Intelligence Committee report and if he accepts its findings. If he says he hasn’t, he’s not a serious nominee for this job.)

For eight years, Patel has been engaged in Soviet-style revisionism. Create a sham story and airbrush out the truth. He bears much credit for concocting the fraudulent tale that Trump and MAGA have used for years to hide a truth they can’t handle: Trump was elected with covert Russian assistance, and, if the campaign didn’t collude directly with the Russians, Trump and his gang winked at this attack on America and joined Putin in the cover-up. In part thanks to Patel, this has never become the dominant narrative.

Put simply, Patel has been a useful idiot for Putin.

Given that Patel, a QAnon supporter who has peddled the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and championed the ridiculous idea that the January 6 riot Trump incited was sparked by “strange agitators” and federal agents, has sued his critics for defamation, let me be explicit: By calling him a useful idiot I’m not suggesting he has been a Russian asset or in cahoots with Russian operatives. But his effort to help Trump escape the treasonous stench of the Trump-Russia scandal by promoting a misleading account of this affair has been of tremendous value to Moscow. Patel essentially created a false alibi for Trump and a distraction that took the heat off Trump and Russia. And he has vowed to seek revenge against those Deep State schemers who he claims illegally plotted against Trump by investigating the Russia matter. In the distorted view of reality Patel pushes, they are the wrongdoers in this episode, not Trump and not Putin. Patel hasn’t stopped selling this bunk. Yesterday, he sent out an email solicitation for the foundation he operates—under the subject heading “The Deep State can not be trusted”—that opened with this exclamation: “Remember Russia Gate? Fraud!”

One component of the FBI’s mission is to counter Russian espionage and covert actions aimed at the United States. Is this a mission Patel can take on? There are few MAGA advocates who have done more than him to help Trump and Putin dodge accountability for their devious misdeeds of 2016. Placing Patel in charge of the FBI could be akin to putting it in the hands of a mole. One can imagine the joy within the Kremlin prompted by the prospect of Patel leading this critically important agency. The Russians certainly would have reason to call him “our man in the bureau.”

For years, Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory monger, and seller of pills he claims reverse the effects of Covid vaccines, who Donald Trump has announced as his pick to replace FBI Director Chris Wray, has made his mission plain: He wants to crush the supposed Deep State that has conspired against Trump. Last year, while appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, he vowed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” This was not an empty threat, for Patel has a list of specific targets for his score-settling. And that line-up includes not only Democrats but also prominent Republicans.

Patel laid out his plans in a 2023 book titled Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for our Democracy. In this work, he breathlessly described the Deep State as a “coordinated, ideologically rigid force independent from the people that manipulates the levers of politics and justice for its own gain and self-preservation.” It is run “by a significant number of high-level cultural leaders and officials who, acting through networks of networks, disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain, all at the expense of equal justice and American national security.” He added, “They are thugs in suits, nothing more than government gangsters.” And he inveighed that this is “a cabal of unelected tyrants.”

In his book, Patel, a supporter of QAnon and a promoter of assorted MAGA conspiracy theories (the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, the Trump-Russia investigation was a hoax, and the January 6 riot was sparked by “strange agitators” and federal agents), called for mounting “investigations” to “take on the Deep State.” Though he doesn’t specify what the cause for these inquiries would be, he has plenty of people in mind. In an appendix to the book, Patel presented a list of 60 supposed members of the Deep State who are current or former executive branch officials and who presumably would be the prey. He noted this roster did not include “other corrupt actors,” such as California Democrats Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, “the entire fake news mafia press corps,” and former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. (When Patel worked for the GOP-controlled House intelligence committee, he had run-ins with Ryan over the issuance of subpoenas and Patel leaking information to a Fox News reporter—which must mean that Ryan was a Deep State operative.)

Patel’s list names what would for a MAGA activist be the obvious purported cabalists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA chief John Brennan, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and former or current FBI directors Chris Wray, Robert Mueller, and James Comey. (Patel doesn’t explain why Comey, a supposed anti-Trump Deep State player, torpedoed Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016 when he reopened an FBI inquiry into her handling of State Department emails in the final days of the campaign.)

This line-up also includes a number of Republicans and onetime Trump appointees. These include Bill Barr, who served as attorney general for Trump; John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first White House stint; Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel; Mark Esper, a secretary of defense under Trump; Sarah Isgur Flores, who was head of communications for Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions; Alyssa Farah Griffin, the director of strategic commissions in the Trump White House; and Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff for Melania Trump.

When Barr was Trump’s attorney general, he prevented Trump from appointing Patel deputy director of the FBI, noting Patel was vastly unqualified for the position. “Over my dead body,” Barr told the White House at the time. Barr’s presence on Patel’s run-down of Deep State wrongdoers—like Ryan’s inclusion— suggests it might also function as a list of his own personal vendettas.

After recently learning her name appeared in Patel’s appendix of enemies, Flores, who’s now a news commentator, tweeted, “Just learned I’m included on this list. I’ve never met Patel or attended any meetings where he was present as far as I know. Will include a disclaimer when I talk about this intent to nominate from now on.”

There are other Republicans on Patel’s Deep State inventory: Robert Hur, the US attorney who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents; Cassidy Hutchinson, the twenty-something aide who worked for Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff during the first Trump presidency; Charles Kupperman, a deputy national security adviser for Trump; Ryan McCarthy, a secretary of the Army under Trump; Pat Philbin, a deputy White House counsel for Trump; Rod Rosenstein, a deputy attorney general for Trump; and Miles Taylor, a Department of Homeland Security official under Trump.

Last year, Patel filed a lawsuit against Wray, Rosenstein, Hur, and others, claiming that in 2017, when he was an investigator for the House intelligence committee, the Justice Department spied on him.

These Republicans on Patel’s hit list are all in his dark worldview sinister Deep Staters. Yet some of these selections are especially absurd. Barr, as attorney general, undermined Mueller’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal, an inquiry that according to Patel was a Deep State plot. Why would a Deep State denizen do that? And while Barr did not back up Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him, he endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign this year. Another curious move for an anti-Trump conspirator.

When she was at the Justice Department, Flores defended Trump’s controversial Muslim travel ban and his family separation policy. Hur issued a report that raised questions about Biden’s age and abilities. Rosenstein helped Trump fire Comey as FBI director. Hutchinson was an intern for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) before becoming an intern in the Trump White House for the office of legislative affairs. (She was a key witness at the hearings held by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 riot.). Griffin, the daughter of far-right journalist Joseph Farah, worked for her dad’s website, WorldNetDaily, then interned for a GOP congressman and was an associate producer for Fox host Laura Ingraham. She later served as a press secretary for Meadows and for the House Freedom Caucus before becoming a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence and, then, director of strategic communications for the Trump White House.

These are not the profiles or actions of Deep State plotters. Their inclusion on Patel’s list reveals the ludicrousness of his notion that a nefarious Deep State exists and has been scheming to sabotage Trump and destroy America. Patel is like the old commie-hunter who spots subversives under every bed and at every PTA bake sale. His book and his entire exercise of naming names raises questions about his analytical ability—an important asset for an FBI director. This appendix shows Patel is nothing but an extreme Trump loyalist, yearning to use (or abuse) government power to pursue Trump’s critics and opponents, as well as his own. Patel is even something of a Trump royalist, having written a series of children’s books about a “King Donald” who manages to triumph over his evil foes led by “Hillary Queenton.”

Still, Patel and Government Gangsters, which features a photo of Patel on the cover, ought not be dismissed. Patel has signaled he’s looking to conduct revenge-a-thon, and Trump endorsed this work as a “brilliant roadmap highlighting every corrupt actor.” He declared, “we will use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government!” That indicates Patel’s list could end up as a to-do—or to-get—list for Trump. Not only Democrats should worry about that.

For years, Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory monger, and seller of pills he claims reverse the effects of Covid vaccines, who Donald Trump has announced as his pick to replace FBI Director Chris Wray, has made his mission plain: He wants to crush the supposed Deep State that has conspired against Trump. Last year, while appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, he vowed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” This was not an empty threat, for Patel has a list of specific targets for his score-settling. And that line-up includes not only Democrats but also prominent Republicans.

Patel laid out his plans in a 2023 book titled Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for our Democracy. In this work, he breathlessly described the Deep State as a “coordinated, ideologically rigid force independent from the people that manipulates the levers of politics and justice for its own gain and self-preservation.” It is run “by a significant number of high-level cultural leaders and officials who, acting through networks of networks, disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain, all at the expense of equal justice and American national security.” He added, “They are thugs in suits, nothing more than government gangsters.” And he inveighed that this is “a cabal of unelected tyrants.”

In his book, Patel, a supporter of QAnon and a promoter of assorted MAGA conspiracy theories (the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, the Trump-Russia investigation was a hoax, and the January 6 riot was sparked by “strange agitators” and federal agents), called for mounting “investigations” to “take on the Deep State.” Though he doesn’t specify what the cause for these inquiries would be, he has plenty of people in mind. In an appendix to the book, Patel presented a list of 60 supposed members of the Deep State who are current or former executive branch officials and who presumably would be the prey. He noted this roster did not include “other corrupt actors,” such as California Democrats Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, “the entire fake news mafia press corps,” and former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. (When Patel worked for the GOP-controlled House intelligence committee, he had run-ins with Ryan over the issuance of subpoenas and Patel leaking information to a Fox News reporter—which must mean that Ryan was a Deep State operative.)

Patel’s list names what would for a MAGA activist be the obvious purported cabalists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA chief John Brennan, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and former or current FBI directors Chris Wray, Robert Mueller, and James Comey. (Patel doesn’t explain why Comey, a supposed anti-Trump Deep State player, torpedoed Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016 when he reopened an FBI inquiry into her handling of State Department emails in the final days of the campaign.)

This line-up also includes a number of Republicans and onetime Trump appointees. These include Bill Barr, who served as attorney general for Trump; John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first White House stint; Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel; Mark Esper, a secretary of defense under Trump; Sarah Isgur Flores, who was head of communications for Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions; Alyssa Farah Griffin, the director of strategic commissions in the Trump White House; and Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff for Melania Trump.

When Barr was Trump’s attorney general, he prevented Trump from appointing Patel deputy director of the FBI, noting Patel was vastly unqualified for the position. “Over my dead body,” Barr told the White House at the time. Barr’s presence on Patel’s run-down of Deep State wrongdoers—like Ryan’s inclusion— suggests it might also function as a list of his own personal vendettas.

After recently learning her name appeared in Patel’s appendix of enemies, Flores, who’s now a news commentator, tweeted, “Just learned I’m included on this list. I’ve never met Patel or attended any meetings where he was present as far as I know. Will include a disclaimer when I talk about this intent to nominate from now on.”

There are other Republicans on Patel’s Deep State inventory: Robert Hur, the US attorney who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents; Cassidy Hutchinson, the twenty-something aide who worked for Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff during the first Trump presidency; Charles Kupperman, a deputy national security adviser for Trump; Ryan McCarthy, a secretary of the Army under Trump; Pat Philbin, a deputy White House counsel for Trump; Rod Rosenstein, a deputy attorney general for Trump; and Miles Taylor, a Department of Homeland Security official under Trump.

Last year, Patel filed a lawsuit against Wray, Rosenstein, Hur, and others, claiming that in 2017, when he was an investigator for the House intelligence committee, the Justice Department spied on him.

These Republicans on Patel’s hit list are all in his dark worldview sinister Deep Staters. Yet some of these selections are especially absurd. Barr, as attorney general, undermined Mueller’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal, an inquiry that according to Patel was a Deep State plot. Why would a Deep State denizen do that? And while Barr did not back up Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him, he endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign this year. Another curious move for an anti-Trump conspirator.

When she was at the Justice Department, Flores defended Trump’s controversial Muslim travel ban and his family separation policy. Hur issued a report that raised questions about Biden’s age and abilities. Rosenstein helped Trump fire Comey as FBI director. Hutchinson was an intern for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) before becoming an intern in the Trump White House for the office of legislative affairs. (She was a key witness at the hearings held by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 riot.). Griffin, the daughter of far-right journalist Joseph Farah, worked for her dad’s website, WorldNetDaily, then interned for a GOP congressman and was an associate producer for Fox host Laura Ingraham. She later served as a press secretary for Meadows and for the House Freedom Caucus before becoming a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence and, then, director of strategic communications for the Trump White House.

These are not the profiles or actions of Deep State plotters. Their inclusion on Patel’s list reveals the ludicrousness of his notion that a nefarious Deep State exists and has been scheming to sabotage Trump and destroy America. Patel is like the old commie-hunter who spots subversives under every bed and at every PTA bake sale. His book and his entire exercise of naming names raises questions about his analytical ability—an important asset for an FBI director. This appendix shows Patel is nothing but an extreme Trump loyalist, yearning to use (or abuse) government power to pursue Trump’s critics and opponents, as well as his own. Patel is even something of a Trump royalist, having written a series of children’s books about a “King Donald” who manages to triumph over his evil foes led by “Hillary Queenton.”

Still, Patel and Government Gangsters, which features a photo of Patel on the cover, ought not be dismissed. Patel has signaled he’s looking to conduct revenge-a-thon, and Trump endorsed this work as a “brilliant roadmap highlighting every corrupt actor.” He declared, “we will use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government!” That indicates Patel’s list could end up as a to-do—or to-get—list for Trump. Not only Democrats should worry about that.

In the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners. (The still ongoing January 6 case, including scores of prosecutions for assaults on police, is one of the FBI’s largest and most successful criminal investigations ever.) Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump.

Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.

The QAnon theory, which arose in 2017, holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump. This evil band supposedly includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business tycoons, and other notables. Those who believe this bunk see Trump as a hero who is secretly battling this conspiracy in a titanic, behind-the-scenes struggle. It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence.

Yet Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging. As Media Matters reported: “Patel’s catering to the QAnon community has also gone beyond the @Q account. In July, he posted an image featuring a flaming Q on Truth Social and starting in at least April, he went on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Truth Social—urging viewers to join the platform, praising hosts for being on the platform, and promising to promote the hosts there.” On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”

“There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” Patel said of QAnon, which he called a “movement.”

On another show, Patel acknowledged he was courting the QAnon crowd for Truth Social: “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breath of the MAGA and the America First movement. And so what I try to do is—what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can’t ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following.” He praised QAnon, saying, “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” and he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel praised Q for starting a “movement.”

Appearing on Grace Time TV in Septmeber 2022, Patel said of the QAnon community, “We’re just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have.” He added, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.”

When Patel was promoting a children’s book he wrote—about a King Donald who is persecuted by his political enemies—he offered ten copies in which he signed the books and added a special message: “WWG1WGA!”” That’s the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” He hyped this special offer on Truth Social using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA.”

“Let’s have fun with the truth,” Patel said.

Appearing on the MatrixxxGrove Show, Patel defended his use of the QAnon motto: “People keep asking me about all this Q stuff. I’m like, what does it matter? What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way?” He added, “Let’s have fun with the truth.” He also characterized the QAnon movement as being a vital part of the national debate: “Basically, the bottom line is—and I get attacked for calling out some of the stuff that quote-unquote Q says and whatnot. I’m like, what’s the problem with that? It’s social discourse.”

Patel is a purveyor of far-right conspiracism in other ways that overlap with QAnon. He claims a nefarious Deep State controls the US government and is arrayed against Trump and conservatives. He encourages paranoia and calls for revenge. Talking to MAGA strategist Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast last year, Patel proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whither its criminally or civilly.”

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.”“We will go out and find the conspirators… Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media."

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T01:02:24.157Z

Seeking retribution, spreading conspiracy theories, backing an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, supporting J6 rioters, echoing Moscow talking points—none of this is what one would see in a responsible choice for FBI director. But Patel’s cozying up to QAnon is especially troubling. Among many vital duties, the FBI director oversees the federal government’s efforts to combat violent crime—an area where QAnon remains a concern. Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit. Neither is an approach suitable for the most powerful and important law enforcement agency in the land.

In the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners. (The still ongoing January 6 case, including scores of prosecutions for assaults on police, is one of the FBI’s largest and most successful criminal investigations ever.) Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump.

Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.

The QAnon theory, which arose in 2017, holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump. This evil band supposedly includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business tycoons, and other notables. Those who believe this bunk see Trump as a hero who is secretly battling this conspiracy in a titanic, behind-the-scenes struggle. It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence.

Yet Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging. As Media Matters reported: “Patel’s catering to the QAnon community has also gone beyond the @Q account. In July, he posted an image featuring a flaming Q on Truth Social and starting in at least April, he went on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Truth Social—urging viewers to join the platform, praising hosts for being on the platform, and promising to promote the hosts there.” On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”

“There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” Patel said of QAnon, which he called a “movement.”

On another show, Patel acknowledged he was courting the QAnon crowd for Truth Social: “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breath of the MAGA and the America First movement. And so what I try to do is—what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can’t ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following.” He praised QAnon, saying, “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” and he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel praised Q for starting a “movement.”

Appearing on Grace Time TV in Septmeber 2022, Patel said of the QAnon community, “We’re just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have.” He added, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.”

When Patel was promoting a children’s book he wrote—about a King Donald who is persecuted by his political enemies—he offered ten copies in which he signed the books and added a special message: “WWG1WGA!”” That’s the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” He hyped this special offer on Truth Social using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA.”

“Let’s have fun with the truth,” Patel said.

Appearing on the MatrixxxGrove Show, Patel defended his use of the QAnon motto: “People keep asking me about all this Q stuff. I’m like, what does it matter? What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way?” He added, “Let’s have fun with the truth.” He also characterized the QAnon movement as being a vital part of the national debate: “Basically, the bottom line is—and I get attacked for calling out some of the stuff that quote-unquote Q says and whatnot. I’m like, what’s the problem with that? It’s social discourse.”

Patel is a purveyor of far-right conspiracism in other ways that overlap with QAnon. He claims a nefarious Deep State controls the US government and is arrayed against Trump and conservatives. He encourages paranoia and calls for revenge. Talking to MAGA strategist Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast last year, Patel proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whither its criminally or civilly.”

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.”“We will go out and find the conspirators… Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media."

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T01:02:24.157Z

Seeking retribution, spreading conspiracy theories, backing an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, supporting J6 rioters, echoing Moscow talking points—none of this is what one would see in a responsible choice for FBI director. But Patel’s cozying up to QAnon is especially troubling. Among many vital duties, the FBI director oversees the federal government’s efforts to combat violent crime—an area where QAnon remains a concern. Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit. Neither is an approach suitable for the most powerful and important law enforcement agency in the land.

In March 2024, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and failed presidential candidate whom Donald Trump has tapped to be director of national intelligence, created a political action committee called Defend Freedom, Inc. The group posted a bare-bones website featuring photos of Gabbard and declared it “was organized to elect patriots who will fight to defend America’s Peace, Security, Prosperity, and Freedom.” It asked for donations of up to $5,000 to “make an impact across America.” Tens of thousands of people contributed to Gabbard’s PAC. Through mid-October it raised $1.9 million, including a $16,552 transfer from another Gabbard PAC called Team Tulsi.

Of all the money it pulled in, Defend Freedom, Inc. devoted only $20,000 to contributions for a small number of candidates, all far-right MAGA-ish Republicans: US Senate candidates Kari Lake and Tim Sheehy, and US House contenders Joe Kent, Brian Jack, and Mayra Flores. (Before running for a congressional seat in 2022, Flores published social media posts promoting QAnon.) Where did all the money go? Gabbard’s outfit spent $1.3 million on operating expenses—at least $1 million on fundraising and direct mail, according to its filings with the Federal Election Commission. Like many PACs, it acted mainly as a money-churning machine that generated donations that mostly profited vendors and consultants.

“It’s uncommon for a politician to have three or four separate PACs, though they can be used for different purposes. The most common number is one. Generally the more you have is because of obfuscation. It confuses people.”

Defend Freedom, Inc. is one of a network of organizations Gabbard has assembled in recent years, and they warrant a thorough review as part of her Senate confirmation process.

Gabbard is a highly unconventional candidate for the DNI job, which entails overseeing all 18 agencies in the US intelligence community (including the CIA and the NSA). She has espoused fringe views often in sync with Moscow talking points. She provided a preemptive defense of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and afterward boosted the conspiracy theory advanced by Russia that the United States had been collaborating with Ukraine to develop biological weapons to deploy against Russia. Her fondness for Putin has earned her favorable coverage from Russia’s propaganda outlets, and her appointment, if she is confirmed, will likely spook intelligence services throughout the world and make them hesitant to collaborate with US intelligence. She also has no experience managing or holding a senior position within a large organization, let alone an agency with the task of safeguarding the nation. Consequently, an extensive vetting of Gabbard ought to focus on her own political operation.

In February, Gabbard established a Super PAC called For Love of Country, Inc. Its name echoed the title of a book she would release in April with the subtitle “Leave the Democrat Party Behind.” Gabbard had quit the Democratic Party in 2022, proclaiming herself an independent, and she went on to become a highly partisan commentator, hurling harsh rhetoric at her former party. The promotional material for this book claimed that the Democrats were now “controlled by an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by woke ideology and racializing everything.” It slammed the Democratic Party as “a clear and present threat to the God‑given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.”

Around the time of the book’s publication—at a point when Gabbard’s bizarre political journey had taken her from a Democratic presidential bid to appearing on the short list of Trump’s potential running-mates—her For Love of Country, Inc. PAC banked hefty checks from several big-money Republican funders. The biggest amount came from a donor named David Flory, who sent Gabbard’s PAC a whopping $100,000. On the PAC’s FEC filing, it neglected to note—as it is compelled to do—Flory’s occupation and employer.

There was something odd about this contribution. The name David Flory matches that of a Miami investor and former Washington, DC, lobbyist who in recent years has donated millions to Republican candidates and committees, including the Trump campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the PAC run by John Bolton, a GOP hawk. But the David Flory recorded on the PAC’s filing listed a different address than the one used by the David Flory who made all those other contributions. The address on the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC filing was for a modest-looking apartment building on the western edge of Miami—a residence unlikely to be the home of a $100,000 donor. The Flory with the record of big-bucks donations lives in a Miami Beach apartment worth an estimated $4.1 million.

According to public records, there is no David Flory who resides at that apartment building in western Miami. But a fellow named David Flor once lived there. He died in 2013.

Looking to talk to the David Flory of Miami Beach, a Mother Jones reporter reached his wife, Julie Flory on her cell phone, and asked if she was familiar with the Miami address associated with the $100,000 donation to the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC. She said did not know it. She then conferenced her husband David into the call. Asked about the $100,000 contribution to Gabbard’s PAC and the address tied to it, he said, “Doesn’t sound familiar,” and he tried to end the conversation. Pressed as to whether he had made a donation to Gabbard, he said, “I’m not interested in talking to you about it.” Sounding irritated, he addressed his wife, “Julie, don’t take these calls. Just hang up on them.” He then left the call.

Another early major donor to the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC was John Calnan, the head of a Massachusetts construction company, who kicked in $25,000. He gave $200,000 to the Trump campaign this year. A few months later—shortly after Gabbard endorsed Trump—disgraced Las Vegas mogul, Steve Wynn, a close pal of Trump, cut this PAC a $60,000 check.

All told, from February through mid-October, For Love of Country, Inc. raised $280,000. It only spent $49,000. Ten thousand dollars of those expenditures paid for an event in Las Vegas. Almost all the rest covered payments to Gabbard’s political staff and advisers.

The PAC described itself as “Tulsi’s vehicle for messaging in the 2024 election, including a national ad campaign to communicate with middle-of-the-road voters, disenfranchised Democrats, and undecided Independents.” It claimed, “For Love of Country PAC will use traditional and disruptive methods to blend the tried-and-true approach with innovation to reach otherwise unlikely voting demographics.” Its expenditures through mid-October do not indicate there was much of an effort of that sort made by Gabbard’s PAC. It looks as if this PAC funded by pro-Trump Republican money-bags mostly existed to cover the costs of Gabbard’s political team.

Gabbard controls yet another PAC, Our Freedom, Our Future, which was launched in 2023. Its mission, according to its website, is “to protect our freedoms and support leaders who share her commitment to uphold and protect our God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution.” It declared, “Our founders envisioned a government that is of, by, and for the people—not of, by, and for the powerful elite. We need to elect leaders who are committed to the same.” From mid-2023 until October, it raised only $45,000, with the lion’s share of that money going to pay Gabbard’s spokesperson and another adviser. It made a $1,000 contribution to a Republican candidate in Ohio who lost a congressional primary contest.

“It’s uncommon for a politician to have three or four separate PACs, though they can be used for different purposes,” says Sarah Bryner, a political scientist and campaign finance expert. “The most common number is one. Generally the more you have is because of obfuscation. It confuses people.”

Gabbard also created a nonprofit called We Must Protect. In its tax filing, the group stated its mission was to “engage in research and public education for the benefit of those vulnerable populations in our community that deserve to be honored and cared for.” It drew only $2,500 in funding in 2022. After the horrendous wildfires on Maui last year, We Must Protect tried to raise money to aid the victims and promised “every dollar” contributed will “help people affected by the devastating fires.” The nonprofit’s 2023 tax filing is not yet available. So its fundraising and relief efforts related to the fires cannot be publicly evaluated. Nor are its donors publicly disclosed. In October, Gabbard said that We Must Protect had raised $331,000 to aid survivors of Hurricane Helene.

Last week, Mother Jones sent Tulsi Gabbard a long list of questions regarding her PACs and We Must Protect, which shares a phone number with Gabbard’s office and her Defend Freedom, Inc. PAC. We requested We Must Protect’s 2023 tax filing and information about its donors and its work regarding the Maui fires. The list included queries about the PACs’ spending and whether they did the work they claimed to do, about their high spending on fundraising, and about the $100,000 contribution attributed to David Flory.

Gabbard declined to respond to any of the questions or provide any information on We Must Protect’s donors and activities. Erika Tsuji, her spokeswoman, forwarded the list to the Trump transition office. Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for the transition, replied with a statement that did not address any of the queries. She only offered praise for We Must Protect and claimed Gabbard’s Defend Freedom PAC and For Love of Country PAC “enabled her to engage millions of Americans…encouraging them back pragmatic GOP candidates nationwide, including electing Donald. J. Trump.”

One Gabbard PAC did recently encounter trouble with the FEC. On November 4, the commission sent a letter to Thomas Datwyler, the treasurer of the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC, notifying the outfit that it had apparently placed $151,000 of its donations into the wrong account and setting a December 9 deadline for a response.

Datwyler, a longtime financial consultant for GOP candidates, is also the treasurer for Defend Freedom, Inc.; Our Freedom, Our Future; and Team Tulsi. Last year, he was caught up in the George Santos scandal. In the midst of the controversy over the then-GOP congressman’s false claims about his campaign finances—among his many lies about his background and career—paperwork filed with the FEC indicated that Datwyler had replaced the original treasurer for several of Santos’ campaign committees. But Datwyler’s attorney quickly informed the FEC that Datwyler had not agreed to become treasurer for the Santos entities. This added yet another level of mystery to the Santos scandal.

Months later, there was another twist to this story: Datwyler’s attorney wrote the FEC to withdraw his previous statement that denied Datwyler had become the treasurer for those Santos committees. He noted that “public reporting has caused me to lose confidence in the accuracy and veracity of the information provided by Mr. Datwyler at the time I submitted those communications on his behalf.” The Daily Beast had reported that that “Datwyler had in reality operated as a shadow treasurer for Santos—despite disavowing that role to the public, to the FEC, and apparently even his own lawyer.”

Datwyler did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the Santos episode and Gabbard’s PACs. Gabbard, too, did not respond to questions about Datwyler.

If Gabbard reaches a Senate confirmation hearing, there will be much for the senators to grill her on, especially her sympathetic views regarding Putin and Russia and her support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as her efforts to help Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who each exposed top-secret information that caused damage for the intelligence community. A key question will be whether someone as excessively partisan as Gabbard can be a fair-minded and even-handed overseer of the intelligence agencies, the intelligence they produce, and the covert actions they mount. Senate Intelligence Committee investigators should be sure to examine the network of organizations she has built and the flow of money in and out of her nonprofit. There are few jobs in the federal government as important as managing the sprawling US intelligence community. With no direct intelligence experience, Gabbard deserves scrutiny of all matters that can shed light on her fitness for this post.

Additional reporting by Russ Choma.

In March 2024, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and failed presidential candidate whom Donald Trump has tapped to be director of national intelligence, created a political action committee called Defend Freedom, Inc. The group posted a bare-bones website featuring photos of Gabbard and declared it “was organized to elect patriots who will fight to defend America’s Peace, Security, Prosperity, and Freedom.” It asked for donations of up to $5,000 to “make an impact across America.” Tens of thousands of people contributed to Gabbard’s PAC. Through mid-October it raised $1.9 million, including a $16,552 transfer from another Gabbard PAC called Team Tulsi.

Of all the money it pulled in, Defend Freedom, Inc. devoted only $20,000 to contributions for a small number of candidates, all far-right MAGA-ish Republicans: US Senate candidates Kari Lake and Tim Sheehy, and US House contenders Joe Kent, Brian Jack, and Mayra Flores. (Before running for a congressional seat in 2022, Flores published social media posts promoting QAnon.) Where did all the money go? Gabbard’s outfit spent $1.3 million on operating expenses—at least $1 million on fundraising and direct mail, according to its filings with the Federal Election Commission. Like many PACs, it acted mainly as a money-churning machine that generated donations that mostly profited vendors and consultants.

“It’s uncommon for a politician to have three or four separate PACs, though they can be used for different purposes. The most common number is one. Generally the more you have is because of obfuscation. It confuses people.”

Defend Freedom, Inc. is one of a network of organizations Gabbard has assembled in recent years, and they warrant a thorough review as part of her Senate confirmation process.

Gabbard is a highly unconventional candidate for the DNI job, which entails overseeing all 18 agencies in the US intelligence community (including the CIA and the NSA). She has espoused fringe views often in sync with Moscow talking points. She provided a preemptive defense of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and afterward boosted the conspiracy theory advanced by Russia that the United States had been collaborating with Ukraine to develop biological weapons to deploy against Russia. Her fondness for Putin has earned her favorable coverage from Russia’s propaganda outlets, and her appointment, if she is confirmed, will likely spook intelligence services throughout the world and make them hesitant to collaborate with US intelligence. She also has no experience managing or holding a senior position within a large organization, let alone an agency with the task of safeguarding the nation. Consequently, an extensive vetting of Gabbard ought to focus on her own political operation.

In February, Gabbard established a Super PAC called For Love of Country, Inc. Its name echoed the title of a book she would release in April with the subtitle “Leave the Democrat Party Behind.” Gabbard had quit the Democratic Party in 2022, proclaiming herself an independent, and she went on to become a highly partisan commentator, hurling harsh rhetoric at her former party. The promotional material for this book claimed that the Democrats were now “controlled by an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by woke ideology and racializing everything.” It slammed the Democratic Party as “a clear and present threat to the God‑given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.”

Around the time of the book’s publication—at a point when Gabbard’s bizarre political journey had taken her from a Democratic presidential bid to appearing on the short list of Trump’s potential running-mates—her For Love of Country, Inc. PAC banked hefty checks from several big-money Republican funders. The biggest amount came from a donor named David Flory, who sent Gabbard’s PAC a whopping $100,000. On the PAC’s FEC filing, it neglected to note—as it is compelled to do—Flory’s occupation and employer.

There was something odd about this contribution. The name David Flory matches that of a Miami investor and former Washington, DC, lobbyist who in recent years has donated millions to Republican candidates and committees, including the Trump campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the PAC run by John Bolton, a GOP hawk. But the David Flory recorded on the PAC’s filing listed a different address than the one used by the David Flory who made all those other contributions. The address on the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC filing was for a modest-looking apartment building on the western edge of Miami—a residence unlikely to be the home of a $100,000 donor. The Flory with the record of big-bucks donations lives in a Miami Beach apartment worth an estimated $4.1 million.

According to public records, there is no David Flory who resides at that apartment building in western Miami. But a fellow named David Flor once lived there. He died in 2013.

Looking to talk to the David Flory of Miami Beach, a Mother Jones reporter reached his wife, Julie Flory on her cell phone, and asked if she was familiar with the Miami address associated with the $100,000 donation to the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC. She said did not know it. She then conferenced her husband David into the call. Asked about the $100,000 contribution to Gabbard’s PAC and the address tied to it, he said, “Doesn’t sound familiar,” and he tried to end the conversation. Pressed as to whether he had made a donation to Gabbard, he said, “I’m not interested in talking to you about it.” Sounding irritated, he addressed his wife, “Julie, don’t take these calls. Just hang up on them.” He then left the call.

Another early major donor to the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC was John Calnan, the head of a Massachusetts construction company, who kicked in $25,000. He gave $200,000 to the Trump campaign this year. A few months later—shortly after Gabbard endorsed Trump—disgraced Las Vegas mogul, Steve Wynn, a close pal of Trump, cut this PAC a $60,000 check.

All told, from February through mid-October, For Love of Country, Inc. raised $280,000. It only spent $49,000. Ten thousand dollars of those expenditures paid for an event in Las Vegas. Almost all the rest covered payments to Gabbard’s political staff and advisers.

The PAC described itself as “Tulsi’s vehicle for messaging in the 2024 election, including a national ad campaign to communicate with middle-of-the-road voters, disenfranchised Democrats, and undecided Independents.” It claimed, “For Love of Country PAC will use traditional and disruptive methods to blend the tried-and-true approach with innovation to reach otherwise unlikely voting demographics.” Its expenditures through mid-October do not indicate there was much of an effort of that sort made by Gabbard’s PAC. It looks as if this PAC funded by pro-Trump Republican money-bags mostly existed to cover the costs of Gabbard’s political team.

Gabbard controls yet another PAC, Our Freedom, Our Future, which was launched in 2023. Its mission, according to its website, is “to protect our freedoms and support leaders who share her commitment to uphold and protect our God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution.” It declared, “Our founders envisioned a government that is of, by, and for the people—not of, by, and for the powerful elite. We need to elect leaders who are committed to the same.” From mid-2023 until October, it raised only $45,000, with the lion’s share of that money going to pay Gabbard’s spokesperson and another adviser. It made a $1,000 contribution to a Republican candidate in Ohio who lost a congressional primary contest.

“It’s uncommon for a politician to have three or four separate PACs, though they can be used for different purposes,” says Sarah Bryner, a political scientist and campaign finance expert. “The most common number is one. Generally the more you have is because of obfuscation. It confuses people.”

Gabbard also created a nonprofit called We Must Protect. In its tax filing, the group stated its mission was to “engage in research and public education for the benefit of those vulnerable populations in our community that deserve to be honored and cared for.” It drew only $2,500 in funding in 2022. After the horrendous wildfires on Maui last year, We Must Protect tried to raise money to aid the victims and promised “every dollar” contributed will “help people affected by the devastating fires.” The nonprofit’s 2023 tax filing is not yet available. So its fundraising and relief efforts related to the fires cannot be publicly evaluated. Nor are its donors publicly disclosed. In October, Gabbard said that We Must Protect had raised $331,000 to aid survivors of Hurricane Helene.

Last week, Mother Jones sent Tulsi Gabbard a long list of questions regarding her PACs and We Must Protect, which shares a phone number with Gabbard’s office and her Defend Freedom, Inc. PAC. We requested We Must Protect’s 2023 tax filing and information about its donors and its work regarding the Maui fires. The list included queries about the PACs’ spending and whether they did the work they claimed to do, about their high spending on fundraising, and about the $100,000 contribution attributed to David Flory.

Gabbard declined to respond to any of the questions or provide any information on We Must Protect’s donors and activities. Erika Tsuji, her spokeswoman, forwarded the list to the Trump transition office. Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for the transition, replied with a statement that did not address any of the queries. She only offered praise for We Must Protect and claimed Gabbard’s Defend Freedom PAC and For Love of Country PAC “enabled her to engage millions of Americans…encouraging them back pragmatic GOP candidates nationwide, including electing Donald. J. Trump.”

One Gabbard PAC did recently encounter trouble with the FEC. On November 4, the commission sent a letter to Thomas Datwyler, the treasurer of the For Love of Country, Inc. PAC, notifying the outfit that it had apparently placed $151,000 of its donations into the wrong account and setting a December 9 deadline for a response.

Datwyler, a longtime financial consultant for GOP candidates, is also the treasurer for Defend Freedom, Inc.; Our Freedom, Our Future; and Team Tulsi. Last year, he was caught up in the George Santos scandal. In the midst of the controversy over the then-GOP congressman’s false claims about his campaign finances—among his many lies about his background and career—paperwork filed with the FEC indicated that Datwyler had replaced the original treasurer for several of Santos’ campaign committees. But Datwyler’s attorney quickly informed the FEC that Datwyler had not agreed to become treasurer for the Santos entities. This added yet another level of mystery to the Santos scandal.

Months later, there was another twist to this story: Datwyler’s attorney wrote the FEC to withdraw his previous statement that denied Datwyler had become the treasurer for those Santos committees. He noted that “public reporting has caused me to lose confidence in the accuracy and veracity of the information provided by Mr. Datwyler at the time I submitted those communications on his behalf.” The Daily Beast had reported that that “Datwyler had in reality operated as a shadow treasurer for Santos—despite disavowing that role to the public, to the FEC, and apparently even his own lawyer.”

Datwyler did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the Santos episode and Gabbard’s PACs. Gabbard, too, did not respond to questions about Datwyler.

If Gabbard reaches a Senate confirmation hearing, there will be much for the senators to grill her on, especially her sympathetic views regarding Putin and Russia and her support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as her efforts to help Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who each exposed top-secret information that caused damage for the intelligence community. A key question will be whether someone as excessively partisan as Gabbard can be a fair-minded and even-handed overseer of the intelligence agencies, the intelligence they produce, and the covert actions they mount. Senate Intelligence Committee investigators should be sure to examine the network of organizations she has built and the flow of money in and out of her nonprofit. There are few jobs in the federal government as important as managing the sprawling US intelligence community. With no direct intelligence experience, Gabbard deserves scrutiny of all matters that can shed light on her fitness for this post.

UPDATE: After this story was published, Gabbard’s office sent Mother Jones a copy of the 2023 990 tax form filed by We Must Protect, the charity started by Gabbard. According to the document, the nonprofit brought in $127,913 that year, as it raised money for assisting the survivors of the Maui fires and vowed “every dollar” contributed would go to this relief work. The document noted that We Must Protect directly spent $43,425 on this effort. This included a $25,000 grant to a foundation run by professional surfer Kai Lenny and $18,425 to purchase relief supplies. At the end of 2023, We Must Protect had $60,345 in the bank—almost half what it had raised that year.

Additional reporting by Russ Choma.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Shortly after Donald Trump narrowly beat Kamala Harris, Politico, the all-politics-all-the-time news outlet, invited readers to participate in a contest: Predict Trump’s cabinet appointees. Whoever did best would walk away with assorted Politico swag. A convicted felon and deceitful demagogue who four years ago incited an attack on the Capitol and tried to overthrow American democracy—a man described as a “fascist” by retired generals who worked with him—is returning to power and bringing with him to the White House a fistful of threats, including vows to suppress the media. But we can have fun, right? Pin the tail on the Trump appointees and win prizes!

This was a stupid and small move that received scant public attention. But it symbolizes a shift in the media, as news outfits figure out how to contend with the new order. Too many, I’m afraid, will either purposefully choose or drift toward an accommodationist stance. I recently heard about the leaders of one online site that previously published hard-hitting stories on Trump and his allies informing their staff that it must pivot with Trump back in the White House. And it’s long been true that mainstream news organizations, particularly network television, have had to reach a modus vivendi with a White House to get the exclusive interviews and video footage they crave. That can be expected once again.

My hunch is that a line will form across the media landscape between those entities that cover the Trump crowd in a relatively normal fashion—What is the president thinking? What are his advisers telling him? What is happening between the White House and Congress? What’s the latest palace intrigue? Who’s invited to the state dinner? What do the polls say?—and those who view as the overarching story the profound threat of authoritarianism posed by Trump and his henchmen and henchwomen. Do the usual political stories matter as much if Trump moves ahead with plans to deport millions and to place in power assorted extremists? Or if he moves to undermine democracy?

Within days of Trump’s announcement that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services—one of his most absurd and dangerous picks—legacy media were downplaying the peril of a Kennedy appointment. On social media NPR reported, “RFK Jr. wants to tackle chronic disease. Despite controversial views on vaccines, his focus on healthy food and taking on special interests may find broad support—and face political headwinds.”

RFK Jr. wants to tackle chronic disease. Despite controversial views on vaccines, his focus on healthy food and taking on special interests may find broad support — and face political headwinds.

— NPR (@npr.org) 2024-11-15T19:28:48.033Z

The New York Times repeatedly referred to Kennedy as merely a “vaccine skeptic.” As did CNN. Controversial views? Skepticism? Describing Kennedy as a vaccine skeptic with unconventional views is a form of sanewashing. That’s rather value neutral and, more important, highly inaccurate. Kennedy is a promoter of debunked conspiracy theories that are bonkers. (Here’s one I examined.) And he is not a skeptic of vaccines; he is an anti-vaxxer who has said no vaccine is safe or effective. Not one. This fellow has declared he wants to place all new drug development on hold for eight years. That means no new medications for cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, heart disease, and everything else. He is a radical, and if he’s allowed to turn his “controversial views” into policy, millions of Americans could suffer.

One media trait is an aversion to repetition. News is what’s new, right? We already reported that.

This somewhat respectful treatment of Kennedy is but one example. Look at how the New York Times characterized several of Trump’s other bizarre appointments: “Trump Takes on the Pillars of the ‘Deep State.’” The paper reported, “The Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies were the three areas of government that proved to be the most stubborn obstacles to Mr. Trump in his first term.” This presentation gives weight to Trump’s conspiratorial claim there’s a diabolical Deep State that has been arrayed against him. Worse, it portrays government agencies that tried to hold Trump accountable for alleged wrongdoing as obstructionist. Meanwhile, the Washington Post is holding a 2024 Global Women’s Summit featuring Kellyanne Conway, a Trump adviser, and Lara Trump, the GOP co-chair and Trump daughter-in-law—two women who are part of Trump’s inner circle. I assume that Jeff Bezos’ newspaper is hoping to financially profit from this conference—being conducted in partnership with Tina Brown Media—and figure it needs Trump and Conway to help them succeed. Does democracy die at fancy confabs that celebrate enablers of autocracy?

Trump’s thin victory in 2024 ought not wipe the slate clean. He remains a thug who refused to accept election results not in his favor, encouraged political violence, amplified foul conspiracy theories of various stripes, lied nonstop to spread fear, hatred, and paranoia, demonized his foes as “the enemy within,” expressed admiration for Hitler’s generals, and proposed terminating the Constitution, placing critics in front of military tribunals, prosecuting his detractors, and even executing one of them. One media trait is an aversion to repetition. News is what’s new, right? We already reported that. But if Trump’s far-reaching offenses are not repeatedly centered in media coverage of him, the press will be accomplices to Trump’s perilous perversion of American politics.

No doubt, there will be the occasional wonderful exposé of Trump’s perfidy in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. But the big media institutions—mostly for-profit corporations with eyes keenly trained on the bottom line—will look to play ball with the Trump crew or, at least, cover it in business-as-usual fashion, even as Trump pummels them as the “enemy of the people.” The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who caused a fuss by blocking the paper’s editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president, this past week said that he wants to redo the “entire” paper to make sure “voices from all sides” are heard and the news is “just the facts.” He didn’t say much more to indicate whether this means a kinder approach to Trump and the land of MAGA. Yet that seemed the message.

The gravitational pull within this business encourages normalizing politicians and officials and eschewing evaluation and rendering judgments.

There are other media-related concerns as we approach Trump 2.0. As demonstrated in the past fortnight, Trump’s style is to wield a firehose of multiple outrages, realizing that it’s tough to track each and every one of his transgressions in such a blitz. I fear as he mounts his assault on good government and decency during his presidency, there will be too many misdeeds to follow. There won’t be enough journalists to cover all his villainy and its consequences—neither at the local nor the national levels. The media industry has been decimated in the past two decades, with a sharp decline in news reporters on the beat. Having fewer watchdogs allows grifters, miscreants, and outright crooks to get away with more wrongdoing. CNN reportedly intends to impose wide-ranging staff cuts, including dumping producers who work with reporters and correspondents. If this happens, the network will diminish its capacity for reporting. And Comcast is reportedly considering spinning off MSNBC, which would disconnect it from NBC News and perhaps weaken the network. (Interest declared: I am an MSNBC commentator.)

After the 2024 election—during which Trump was too frequently treated as a regular candidate by the press and his endless deployment of false narratives often not highlighted—I’m not confident that the American media is up to the task of covering a second Trump administration and all the potential damage it can cause. The gravitational pull within this business encourages normalizing politicians and officials and eschewing evaluation and rendering judgments. Trump is a disinformation machine and a threat to democracy. But will these be the central narratives of the mainstream coverage of his second presidency? Can the media maintain the main plot: Trump presents a danger? Already I sense a degree of acquiescence within certain media quarters that signals an acceptance of Trump to the public.

The powerhouse news outfits should not declare themselves a wing of the resistance to Trump. That is not their job. As Marty Baron, the former Washington Post editor once said, “We’re not at war with the [Trump] administration, we’re at work.” But in the Trump era, the press ought to think hard about what that work entails and not apply routine White House coverage to Trump and his gang, especially as Trump looks to limit press freedoms and continues his war on democratic norms and protections. Here’s my suggestion: not resistance, but not acceptance. The public needs constant reminders and reports on the Trump crowd’s authoritarian plans, extremist policies, and grifting schemes. These are not conventional times; they require unconventional coverage. The weeks, months, and years ahead will test all of us—voters, opposition politicians, and thought leaders—and the press, perhaps more so than most. If the media rolls over for Trump and his troops, that will make it far easier for Trump to roll over American democracy.

For eight years, an article of faith within Trumpworld and the right-wing media cosmos has been that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax, a canard cooked up by nefarious Deep State actors and bolstered by their co-conspirators in the press and the Democratic Party to sabotage and destroy Donald Trump. Trump himself continues to rail in shorthand about “Russia, Russia, Russia.” He has pointed to this “witch hunt” as evidence of extensive corruption within the intelligence and law enforcement communities of the federal government and called for the criminal prosecution of those whom he accuses of orchestrating this diabolical plot against him.

How then to explain his decision to tap for top national security slots in his Cabinet two Republican legislators with access to top-secret information who have previously confirmed that Vladimir Putin in 2016 attacked the US election to help elect Trump president and that Trump failed as an American leader to acknowledge and condemn this devious assault on the republic? One of these lawmakers even oversaw an investigation that concluded the most senior Trump campaign aide in 2016 had colluded with a Russian intelligence officer while the Kremlin was mounting its information warfare against America.

“I am concerned about some of the contacts between Russians and surrogates within the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign,” Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick as UN ambassador, said in 2018.

The pair are Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), whom Trump has picked to be UN ambassador, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Flas), whom Trump has selected to be secretary of state. Each is a veteran member of the intelligence committee of the chamber in which they serve and privy to the most sensitive secrets of US intelligence.

After the 2016 contest, Trump tried to con the public about the Russian attack—which included a hack-and-leak operation that disseminated stolen Democratic emails and materials to harm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and a covert social media scheme to spread messages, memes, and disinformation to sow discord and benefit Trump. The intelligence community and cybersecurity firms had concluded the Kremlin had waged this secret campaign against the United States to boost Trump, but Trump claimed no such thing happened. He dismissed all talk of the multiple contacts between the Trump camp and Russian representatives during the 2016 contest. He also covered up his own secret business dealings with Russian developers and Putin’s office during the campaign, as well as a hush-hush meeting held between his senior campaign advisers and a Moscow intermediary. 

Stefanik didn’t buy Trump’s subterfuge. In an interview with the Watertown Daily Times in March 2018, she said, “Russia meddled in our electoral process.” And she noted the Kremlin skullduggery was designed to benefit Trump: “We’ve seen evidence that Russia tried to hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign.” Moreover, she fretted about the curious Trump-Russia contacts: “I am concerned about some of the contacts between Russians and surrogates within the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign.”

A year later, with Trump still pushing his phony “Russia hoax” claim, Stefanik, at a town hall meeting, disagreed with the Trump line that the Moscow assault was no big deal. It was, she said, “much more systemic, much more targeted, with very sophisticated hacking efforts, disinformation efforts targeted to specific campaigns.” Stefanik added that the Trump administration needed to be pressed “to take the threat from Russia very seriously.” She criticized the Trump campaign for holding that covert meeting with the Moscow go-between. 

There was no Russia witch-hunt, Stefanik contended. According to her view, Trump was peddling a self-serving and false narrative about an important issue of national security: an attack by a foreign adversary on the United States.

Rubio went much further than this.

As chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Rubio, in August 2020, released a massive 966-page report on the Russian assault. In a press release, he noted, “Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy. We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over one million pages of documents. No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive.” And he stated the committee “found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”

That is, no hoax.

The detailed report confirmed what other investigations had concluded: “Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information [via WikiLeaks] damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.”

Worse for Trump, the report pointed out that he and his campaign had tried to exploit the Russian assault and had aided and abetted it by denying the Russians were engaged in such activity, thus helping Moscow cover up its effort to subvert an American election: “The Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”

Rubio’s report was full of damning information for Trump.

A large chunk focused on Paul Manafort, who was a senior Trump campaign official in 2016. The committee noted that Manafort, who was imprisoned in 2018 for committing fraud and money laundering (and pardoned by Trump in 2020), posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his Russian connections. The report detailed his extensive dealings during the campaign with a onetime business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, who the committee described as a “Russian intelligence officer.” The committee put it bluntly: “Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” Throughout the election, according to the report, Manafort “directly and indirectly communicated with Kilimnik,” Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and several pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine.

When the report was released, Rubio declared in a press release that the committee had uncovered “absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election.” Yet that was misleading. The report stated, “The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the [Russian intelligence service’s] hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election.” That meant Trump’s campaign manager was in close contact with a Russian intelligence officer possibly tied to Putin’s covert attack on the 2016 campaign. The committee also revealed it had found “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility” that Manafort himself was connected “to the hack-and-leak operations.” Perhaps there was some collusion. But the report’s discussion of that information was redacted.

Rubio’s report was a slam-dunk counter to the Trump-Russia deniers on the right who had strived mightily to turn this serious matter into nothing but a left-wing fantasy, and to Trump himself. It declared that Trump’s campaign was run by a counterintelligence threat who had covertly huddled with a Russian intelligence officer and that Trump and his lieutenants assisted the Kremlin’s attack on the United States by echoing Putin’s denials.

The report was proof Trump had betrayed the nation. This is a truth that he and his enablers within the GOP and the conservative movement have attempted to smother for years. To do so, they concocted the notion of a Deep State conspiracy and relentlessly derided Democrats, liberals, journalists, and anyone else who voiced concern about or interest in Russian interference and Trump’s acquiescence to Moscow.

Now Trump has embraced two senior Republican lawmakers who challenged Trump’s claim of a hoax and who affirmed the reality of the Trump-Russia scandal and Trump’s role in it. Were they part of that Deep State scheme against Trump? Neither have renounced their previous statements. Rubio has not disavowed the report he once proudly hailed. As the denizens of MAGA World—and Trump himself—should see it, Rubio and Stefanik were part of the traitorous cabal that pushed disinformation to demolish Trump. In their eyes, Rubio even produced a nearly 1000-page-long report to advance this treasonous con job.

Their appointments show the absurdity of Trump’s Russia-denying endeavors—though these efforts succeeded. Now Trump has included in his new administrations two prominent Republicans who know that he has been lying all along about Russia. While both Stefanik and Rubio were once critics of Trump, they have, like most within the GOP, bent the knee, and they don’t mind serving a fellow who provided cover for Putin and who cared more for his own political interests than the country’s security. Nevertheless, it would be worthwhile for Democrats to question Stefanik and Rubio on this matter during their Senate confirmation hearings. They ought to be asked about their previous statements and Rubio’s report. This will probably yield a fair amount of squirming. More important, it will serve as a reminder that Trump has gotten away with a foul deed that has profoundly shaped the nation.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Prices went up during a post-pandemic recovery, and American voters elected a convicted felon and fascist who incited political violence as president. Okay, that may be a bit glib. But it’s clear that Donald Trump’s election is a giant step toward authoritarianism in the USA. He and his crew have openly talked about consolidating power in the Oval Office and targeting political foes with investigations and prosecutions. Trump aims to turn much of the federal bureaucracy into a corps of loyalists who pledge fealty to him, and he has raised the possibility of deploying the military against protesters and taking action against news outlets that expose his wrongdoing. And if he implements his plan for the mass deportation of 11 million or so undocumented immigrants, that will likely require police-state-like tactics. It’s a grim moment as the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding.

Four years ago, when it appeared that Trump had a good chance of reelection, I wondered whether there were examples of other countries sliding toward authoritarianism but recovering before it was too late. There is a tremendous amount of research devoted to democracies descending into autocracies. The decline of democracy in Nazi Germany, of course, has been deeply studied. But have there been nations heading in that dark direction that put on the brakes and reversed course?

I found that two years earlier, University of Chicago professors Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq had had examined this question. In an article for the Journal of Democracy, they chronicled occasions when democracies suffered “substantial yet ‘non-fatal’ deterioration in the quality of democratic institutions and then experience[d] a rebound.” These “near misses,” they noted, “have received little or no attention in the new wave of scholarship on why democracies die (or survive).” 

Ginsburg and Huq looked at three historical episodes not well known within the United States: Finland in 1930, Colombia during the 2000s, and, more recently, Sri Lanka.

Their article looked at three historical episodes not well known within the United States. The first was Finland in 1930, when the right-wing mass Lapua movement that partly modeled itself on Mussolini’s movement gained influence and was welcomed by the conservative president and the ruling party, which then banned communist newspapers. This fascistic camp—which kidnapped political opponents—fueled the election of a former prime minister. “Finland appeared to be on the cusp of the sort of democratic erosion that was to engulf Germany and Austria soon thereafter,” Ginsburg and Huq wrote. “Yet Finnish democracy prevailed.” Key military officials did not join the Lapua movement, and judges issued tough verdicts in response to its use of violence. Other political parties banded together across ideological lines to oppose the Lapua movement, and some conservative politicians kept their distance from it. Come March 1937, a center-left coalition was in secure control of the government. 

Another near-miss: In Colombia, during the 2000s, President Álvaro Uribe tried to seize greater power for himself. He pushed for government reforms that would afford him more control and influence over the legislature and the courts. His regime waged a campaign of harassment against journalists. Ultimately, a court blocked his attempt to gain a third term as president. Uribe’s hand-picked successor, his defense minister, broke with him and restored the institutional status quo.

In Sri Lanka, Ginsburg and Huq pointed out, democracy was imperiled by the rise of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who won the presidency in 2005. As they put it, his “rule was marked by nepotism, corruption, and a degradation of rule-of-law institutions such as courts, prosecutors, and the police.” He appointed his three brothers to cabinet posts and developed a cult of personality. Journalists were imprisoned and murdered. He amended the constitution so he could run for a third term in 2015. “Sri Lanka seemed on the brink of seeing its democracy totally degraded,” Ginsburg and Huq observed. But a former minister of health in Rajapaksa’s government entered the presidential race to challenge him and quickly built a coalition that triumphed. Rajapaksa considered annulling the vote, but the army and police said no, as did the attorney general. Democracy was not upended.

In each of these close calls, elite players were instrumental in thwarting a move toward authoritarianism.

Since then, democracy in Sri Lanka has remained in a precarious state. Rajapaksa’s brother, Gotabaya, was elected president in 2019, but he was forced to resign by anti-government protests in 2022 that demanded economic and democratic reforms. He was succeeded by Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose administration cracked down on dissent and civil liberties. In September, Wickremesinghe lost his reelection bid to Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a Marxist politician and third-party candidate who had scored only 3 percent of the vote when he ran for president in 2019.

In each of these close calls, Ginsburg and Huq wrote, elite players were instrumental in thwarting a move toward authoritarianism: “Paradoxically, the experiences of democratic near misses that we have explored underscore the role of political elites and nonelected institutions—courts, military commanders, and election administrators—in decisively repudiating authoritarian leaders bent on democratic erosion.”

In an article published in 2020, Larry Diamond, a Stanford professor who studies democracy, and Aurel Croissant, a professor at Heidelberg University, examined “democratic backsliding” in Asia. They contended that the recent wave of “democratic recessions” around the world stood out from democratic reversals of the past: Today, democratic downturns tend to “unfold gradually” and don’t “necessarily lead to full-fledged autocracy.” They often are caused not by military coups, revolutions, or foreign intervention but by “those elected to lead a democracy,” and the assault on “political rights and civil liberties is typically related to social polarization and the mobilization of identity politics.” (Sound familiar?) Croissant and Diamond noted that there had been at least 14 episodes of democratic decline in 10 Asian democracies since the early 2000s. In half of these, “democratic forces managed to contain the process before democracy broke down.” (This included Sri Lanka.)

Sri Lanka in the 2010s, Colombia in the 2000s, and Finland in the 1930s might not be good examples for the United States. There’s also Poland more recently. In its 2019 parliamentary elections, a right-wing coalition led by strongman Jarosław Kaczyński won overwhelmingly. But after it tried to create a commission that could block candidates from running for office, there were massive protests. In the 2023 election, with voter turnout hitting a record 74 percent, a collection of opposition parties earned a majority of the seats in the Sejm. Turnout for younger voters increased by 50 percent, and within this bloc, support for the far-right party fell by half. The kids threw out the anti-democrats.

“There has never been a democracy nearly as long-established and liberal as the United States experiencing such a deep and potentially existential crisis of democracy.”

What does this mean for the United States, now that an autocrat wannabe has won the White House? Diamond told me several years ago, “I am cautious about reasoning by comparison because the circumstances of a long-institutionalized and wealthy democracy like the United States are very different from India, for example. The plain and sobering fact of the matter is that there has never been a democracy nearly as long-established and liberal as the United States experiencing such a deep and potentially existential crisis of democracy.”

The circumstances here are indeed quite different from other countries, and the expansion of disinformation and the fracturing of the information ecosystem have made it easier for authoritarians to wage war on democracy. But it is encouraging that other nations have reached the brink and stepped back. Doing so is not easy. Ginsburg and Huq noted, “There is no single ‘magic institution’ that can be adopted to prevent democratic backsliding or to arrest it once it has begun…Sustained antidemocratic mobilization is hard to defeat.” In some instances, a small group of officials safeguarded a democracy by openly resisting the machinations of a would-be autocrat and his henchmen. Other times, people power fueled democracy-defending defiance.

In assessing the experiences in Asia, Croissant and Diamond observed that for democratic resilience and resistance to triumph, “a sufficient number of citizens must still prefer a democratic form of government and have some degree of trust in democratic institutions.” Throughout his presidential campaigns and presidency, Trump exploited widespread dissatisfaction with establishment institutions, and during the 2024 race he banked on the calculation that his cult of personality could overpower concerns about his trashing of democratic values and practices. His assault on democracy can be repelled, but only if there are enough citizens who give a damn.

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

This article has been revised to reflect the latest election results.

Every election is a Judgment Day, but this one more so than any other in the history of the nation.

Never before has a major party run a nominee described by retired military leaders who worked with him as a “fascist” and a serious threat to American democracy. Never before has the electorate been provided the choice of a nominee who previously refused to accept vote tallies, falsely declared victory, covertly schemed to overturn an election, and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to stay in power, as well as one whose mismanagement of a pandemic caused the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Never before have Americans been asked to return to office a politician who waged a massive disinformation operation fueled by the most vicious vitriol to exploit hatred, racism, misogyny, and ignorance.

Is America a nation that accepts and embraces all that? The answer is yes.

Despite Trump’s multiple offenses (criminal, political, and social), tens of millions voters—more than half of the electorate—said they want more of him and desire this felonious, misogynistic, racist, and seemingly cognitively challenged wannabe autocrat to lead the nation once again. Trumpism triumphed, and the godhead of this cult has become both the first fascist and the first convicted felon to win an American presidential election.

Facing a highly unconventional candidate whose main strategy was to whip up fear and anxiety, Vice President Kamala Harris, a latecomer to the race, ran a conventional campaign. She touted the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, presented a compelling personal story, offered a host of generally realistic policy proposals, and critiqued her opponent—doing all of this mostly accurately. Her last-minute elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket raised the question of whether the United States could elect a Black woman president. Counterpoised was another question: Can a criminal awaiting sentencing (found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to keep secret his supposed extramarital affair with a porn star) who has been indicted for other alleged crimes, and who has called for the termination of the Constitution (so he could be reinstalled as president), be elected commander in chief and the nation’s top defender of the Constitution?

The visions of America presented by the two candidates were black-and-white opposites.

There was nothing subtle about the 2024 election. It pit the political extremism Trump has embraced and fomented to drive his red-meat base to the polls against Harris’ effort to expand her pool of voters by forging an alliance of progressives and independents, centrists, and Republicans concerned about the danger Trump poses to democracy. More so than in his previous campaigns, Trump endeavored to demonize his opponents. He peddled the false claim that the United States has descended into a hellscape with an economy in a “depression” and gangs of criminal migrants armed with military-style weapons conquering towns and cities across the land. Looking to stoke grievance, resentment, and bigotry, he asserted that “evil” Democrats, assisted by a subversive media, have purposefully conspired to destroy the country. He essentially QAnonized American politics. He dismissed Harris as “low IQ” and not truly Black. He called her supporters “scum.”

Trump debased the national discourse further than he had in the years since he launched his first presidential bid in 2015. That included violent talk of retribution, which included suggesting deploying the US military against “radical left lunatics,” putting Liz Cheney on trial for treason before a military tribunal and placing her before a line of guns, and executing retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For years, Trump has forced American politics into a downward spiral of unprecedented indecencies and anti-democratic impulses. And this year, more than 71 million Americans continued to cheer this along. Harris campaigned not only to implement a host of left-leaning policies related to such fundamental matters as health care, women’s freedom, and middle-class economics, but to prevent a would-be autocrat from gaining control of the US government. That’s a heavy lift for any one candidate.

The visions of America presented by the two candidates were black-and-white opposites. At Trump rallies, the former reality TV celebrity staged his own version of the Two Minutes Hate that George Orwell envisioned in 1984. He decried his rivals—“the enemy within”—for sabotaging America and directed his followers to vent tribalistic fury at these targets, exploiting their rage and, yes, ignorance.

At one of his final rallies—held in a half-empty arena in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Monday—when Trump called Harris dumb, he was met by approving and angry shouts from the crowd: “She’s an idiot.” “She’s a moron.” “She’s a puppet.” “Lock her up.” One Trump supporter there told me Harris was too stupid to make a decision about anything and former President Barack Obama was calling all the shots. Another Trump devotee wore a sweatshirt that declared, “Say No to the Hoe.” (Racism and misogyny in a single slur.) One of the most anticipated moments of Trump’s rambling and repetitive speech occurred when he assailed the press. As soon as he started his now-familiar anti-media screed, many in the audience pivoted to face the journalists and TV crews on the riser toward the rear of the arena, shook their fists at them, and screamed profanities. This seemed to be fun for them.

Attendees I spoke with echoed Trump’s talking points, insisting that gangs of thugs from overseas are terrorizing American cities, that the nation is a crime-ridden disaster, that US government funds are being siphoned from a host of programs and handed to immigrants, and that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. One fellow said he was for Trump because his 401(k) retirement fund was strong when Trump was president and now was in the dumps. When I explained that’s virtually impossible, given the Dow Jones average is now more than 44 percent higher than its best mark during the Trump years, he just shrugged and insisted President Joe Biden and Harris were to blame.

Some were unaware that retired Gens. John Kelly and Milley had called Trump a “fascist.” Those in the know dismissed these remarks as comments uttered by traitorous men envious of Trump or being paid by dark forces to undermine the Republican nominee. Many in the audience were wearing hats and T-shirts proclaiming Jesus backed Trump, and the ones I asked about this said that since Jesus had chosen Trump to be the victor in this race, only cheating could defy God’s will. (Apparently, God and Jesus can’t stop the steal.) Indeed, most of the Trump people I encountered said they would not accept a Harris win as legitimate, and a few remarked that there would be violence if Trump were declared the loser. They were fundamentalists: The nation must be Trump-led or all is lost.

It’s not a radical observation that Trump tried to win through hate. Harris, as was much commented upon when she became the presidential nominee, talked up joy. At her rallies, she highlighted the rhetoric and values of community, noting that Americans can work together to address challenges. She repeatedly promised to listen to those who oppose her views and consider Republicans for posts in her administration if she were to prevail. That might have been just nice talk. But it was better than fueling division and, as Trump did, vowing to use the power of the presidency to investigate and prosecute critics and opponents and to root out of the federal government civil servants deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. Certainly, there was anger on the Democratic side: over the Dobbs decision and those politicians enacting or advocating severe restrictions on women, over the lack of action on climate change, over the horrific war in Gaza. But at Harris events, she did not seek to channel that into paranoid and dehumanizing assaults against Americans on the other side. Her stance—at least, rhetorically—was that all Americans count. Trump’s position: Trump uber alles, all others are “vermin” and the “enemy.”

American politics has always contained an us-versus-them element, and the battle can be fierce. But Trump turned this into asymmetrical warfare. More than any other major presidential candidate in modern history, he lied, he insulted, he appealed to the basest reflexes in people. He waged war on reality, seeking to lead millions into a cosmos of fakery and false narratives that boosts an ultra-Manichean view of the world. He saw his path to power as exacerbating the divisions within American society. He has been an accelerationist for tribalistic discord, explicitly threatening the norms and values of democratic governance. His answer to what ails the United States is strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior. Harris ran as a feisty Democrat who wants to work with Congress to tackle assorted problems.

These were profoundly different approaches to…well, to life. And in the 2024 election, Americans had to choose which camp they were in. Certainly, there were many issues beyond this monumental clash in values for voters to focus on: inflation, immigration, housing costs, trade, taxes, Ukraine, education, abortion, and so on. But ultimately, voters were forced to pick a side, to render a verdict on Trump’s war on truth, democracy, and decency and Harris’ traditional embrace of pluralism and established norms.

At this fork in the road, Americans made a decision on what sort of country the United States will be. A judgment has been reached: This is a nation to be ruled by Trump’s politics of hate. It can happen here, and it has.

This article has been revised to reflect the latest election results.

Every election is a Judgment Day, but this one more so than any other in the history of the nation.

Never before has a major party run a nominee described by retired military leaders who worked with him as a “fascist” and a serious threat to American democracy. Never before has the electorate been provided the choice of a nominee who previously refused to accept vote tallies, falsely declared victory, covertly schemed to overturn an election, and incited a violent assault on the US Capitol to stay in power, as well as one whose mismanagement of a pandemic caused the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Never before have Americans been asked to return to office a politician who waged a massive disinformation operation fueled by the most vicious vitriol to exploit hatred, racism, misogyny, and ignorance.

Is America a nation that accepts and embraces all that? The answer is yes.

Despite Trump’s multiple offenses (criminal, political, and social), tens of millions voters—more than half of the electorate—said they want more of him and desire this felonious, misogynistic, racist, and seemingly cognitively challenged wannabe autocrat to lead the nation once again. Trumpism triumphed, and the godhead of this cult has become both the first fascist and the first convicted felon to win an American presidential election.

Facing a highly unconventional candidate whose main strategy was to whip up fear and anxiety, Vice President Kamala Harris, a latecomer to the race, ran a conventional campaign. She touted the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, presented a compelling personal story, offered a host of generally realistic policy proposals, and critiqued her opponent—doing all of this mostly accurately. Her last-minute elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket raised the question of whether the United States could elect a Black woman president. Counterpoised was another question: Can a criminal awaiting sentencing (found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush-money payment to keep secret his supposed extramarital affair with a porn star) who has been indicted for other alleged crimes, and who has called for the termination of the Constitution (so he could be reinstalled as president), be elected commander in chief and the nation’s top defender of the Constitution?

The visions of America presented by the two candidates were black-and-white opposites.

There was nothing subtle about the 2024 election. It pit the political extremism Trump has embraced and fomented to drive his red-meat base to the polls against Harris’ effort to expand her pool of voters by forging an alliance of progressives and independents, centrists, and Republicans concerned about the danger Trump poses to democracy. More so than in his previous campaigns, Trump endeavored to demonize his opponents. He peddled the false claim that the United States has descended into a hellscape with an economy in a “depression” and gangs of criminal migrants armed with military-style weapons conquering towns and cities across the land. Looking to stoke grievance, resentment, and bigotry, he asserted that “evil” Democrats, assisted by a subversive media, have purposefully conspired to destroy the country. He essentially QAnonized American politics. He dismissed Harris as “low IQ” and not truly Black. He called her supporters “scum.”

Trump debased the national discourse further than he had in the years since he launched his first presidential bid in 2015. That included violent talk of retribution, which included suggesting deploying the US military against “radical left lunatics,” putting Liz Cheney on trial for treason before a military tribunal and placing her before a line of guns, and executing retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For years, Trump has forced American politics into a downward spiral of unprecedented indecencies and anti-democratic impulses. And this year, more than 71 million Americans continued to cheer this along. Harris campaigned not only to implement a host of left-leaning policies related to such fundamental matters as health care, women’s freedom, and middle-class economics, but to prevent a would-be autocrat from gaining control of the US government. That’s a heavy lift for any one candidate.

The visions of America presented by the two candidates were black-and-white opposites. At Trump rallies, the former reality TV celebrity staged his own version of the Two Minutes Hate that George Orwell envisioned in 1984. He decried his rivals—“the enemy within”—for sabotaging America and directed his followers to vent tribalistic fury at these targets, exploiting their rage and, yes, ignorance.

At one of his final rallies—held in a half-empty arena in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Monday—when Trump called Harris dumb, he was met by approving and angry shouts from the crowd: “She’s an idiot.” “She’s a moron.” “She’s a puppet.” “Lock her up.” One Trump supporter there told me Harris was too stupid to make a decision about anything and former President Barack Obama was calling all the shots. Another Trump devotee wore a sweatshirt that declared, “Say No to the Hoe.” (Racism and misogyny in a single slur.) One of the most anticipated moments of Trump’s rambling and repetitive speech occurred when he assailed the press. As soon as he started his now-familiar anti-media screed, many in the audience pivoted to face the journalists and TV crews on the riser toward the rear of the arena, shook their fists at them, and screamed profanities. This seemed to be fun for them.

Attendees I spoke with echoed Trump’s talking points, insisting that gangs of thugs from overseas are terrorizing American cities, that the nation is a crime-ridden disaster, that US government funds are being siphoned from a host of programs and handed to immigrants, and that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. One fellow said he was for Trump because his 401(k) retirement fund was strong when Trump was president and now was in the dumps. When I explained that’s virtually impossible, given the Dow Jones average is now more than 44 percent higher than its best mark during the Trump years, he just shrugged and insisted President Joe Biden and Harris were to blame.

Some were unaware that retired Gens. John Kelly and Milley had called Trump a “fascist.” Those in the know dismissed these remarks as comments uttered by traitorous men envious of Trump or being paid by dark forces to undermine the Republican nominee. Many in the audience were wearing hats and T-shirts proclaiming Jesus backed Trump, and the ones I asked about this said that since Jesus had chosen Trump to be the victor in this race, only cheating could defy God’s will. (Apparently, God and Jesus can’t stop the steal.) Indeed, most of the Trump people I encountered said they would not accept a Harris win as legitimate, and a few remarked that there would be violence if Trump were declared the loser. They were fundamentalists: The nation must be Trump-led or all is lost.

It’s not a radical observation that Trump tried to win through hate. Harris, as was much commented upon when she became the presidential nominee, talked up joy. At her rallies, she highlighted the rhetoric and values of community, noting that Americans can work together to address challenges. She repeatedly promised to listen to those who oppose her views and consider Republicans for posts in her administration if she were to prevail. That might have been just nice talk. But it was better than fueling division and, as Trump did, vowing to use the power of the presidency to investigate and prosecute critics and opponents and to root out of the federal government civil servants deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. Certainly, there was anger on the Democratic side: over the Dobbs decision and those politicians enacting or advocating severe restrictions on women, over the lack of action on climate change, over the horrific war in Gaza. But at Harris events, she did not seek to channel that into paranoid and dehumanizing assaults against Americans on the other side. Her stance—at least, rhetorically—was that all Americans count. Trump’s position: Trump uber alles, all others are “vermin” and the “enemy.”

American politics has always contained an us-versus-them element, and the battle can be fierce. But Trump turned this into asymmetrical warfare. More than any other major presidential candidate in modern history, he lied, he insulted, he appealed to the basest reflexes in people. He waged war on reality, seeking to lead millions into a cosmos of fakery and false narratives that boosts an ultra-Manichean view of the world. He saw his path to power as exacerbating the divisions within American society. He has been an accelerationist for tribalistic discord, explicitly threatening the norms and values of democratic governance. His answer to what ails the United States is strongman government, in which he is the authoritarian savior. Harris ran as a feisty Democrat who wants to work with Congress to tackle assorted problems.

These were profoundly different approaches to…well, to life. And in the 2024 election, Americans had to choose which camp they were in. Certainly, there were many issues beyond this monumental clash in values for voters to focus on: inflation, immigration, housing costs, trade, taxes, Ukraine, education, abortion, and so on. But ultimately, voters were forced to pick a side, to render a verdict on Trump’s war on truth, democracy, and decency and Harris’ traditional embrace of pluralism and established norms.

At this fork in the road, Americans made a decision on what sort of country the United States will be. A judgment has been reached: This is a nation to be ruled by Trump’s politics of hate. It can happen here, and it has.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

For almost a decade, our world has been shaped and distorted by the lies of Donald Trump. He slithered his way into the White House eight years ago and was expelled four years later by popular demand. Yet like a monster in a horror film, he was not dispatched for good. He defied norms and the Constitution and attacked American democracy. He failed in his underhanded effort to overturn the election, but he succeeded in persuading millions of our fellow citizens to believe the baseless conspiracy theory that he had been swindled out of victory by a nefarious cabal of Deep State actors, the Democrats, the media, and other evildoers. That was quite the accomplishment. During his presidency, according to the Washington Post, Trump had made at least 30,573 false or misleading statements. (And the newspaper did not fact-check all of his utterances.) Yet he still maintained the trust of a large chunk of Americans.

Trump is unparalleled in the annals of deception. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian who studies authoritarianism, recently told me, “Trump is one of the most successful propagandists in history. He managed to convince tens of millions that he won a national election working not in a domesticated media system or a one-party state but in a fully pluralist media environment in a democracy. No one has ever done that on that scale. Also look at what he’s accomplished with the perception of January 6.”

As we approach yet another judgment day for Trump, like many of you, I remained puzzled by Trump’s ability to maintain his standing as a champion for so many Americans, despite his obvious lies and profoundly low and mean-spirited character. He’s a con man whose deceptions and hypocrisies are easy to detect (including his consequential lies about the pandemic and the assault on the US Capitol he incited). The question won’t fade: How does he get away with it?

He’s a con man whose deceptions and hypocrisies are easy to detect. The question won’t fade: How does he get away with it?

As we approach yet another judgment day for Trump, like many of you, I remained puzzled by Trump’s ability to maintain his standing as a champion for so many Americans, despite his obvious lies and profoundly low and mean-spirited character. He’s a con man whose deceptions and hypocrisies are easy to detect (including his consequential lies about the pandemic and the assault on the US Capitol he incited). The question won’t fade: How does he get away with it?

Not long ago, I came across an academic study that sought to answer this question. In 2018, Oliver Hahl of the Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business and Minjae Kim and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan of the MIT Sloan School of Management published an article in the American Sociological Review titled “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegitimacy.” As they put it, they were looking to explain “a puzzling pattern that has been discussed widely since the 2016 U.S. presidential election…[H]ow can a constituency of voters find a candidate ‘authentically appealing’ (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a ‘lying demagogue’ (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)?” In short, how to understand Trump’s popular support.

This trio noted that during the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton “was harmed by the perception that she was inauthentic.” Fairly or not, many voters saw her as motivated by self-interest and not honest. But, they write, Trump was “perceived by his supporters as appealingly authentic despite abundant evidence that (1) he was at least as sensitive to private self-interest as Clinton, with no corresponding record of public service; (2) he was considerably more prone to falsehood than Clinton; and (3) he deliberately flouted many norms that had been taken for granted for many years and were widely endorsed.”

After reviewing existing literature on populist demagogues and conducting a couple of studies, these three academics derived an explanation. Here it is (without the citations):

We argue that a particular set of social and political conditions must be in place for the lying demagogue to appear authentically appealing to his constituency. In short, if that constituency feels its interests are not being served by a political establishment that purports to represent it fairly, a lying demagogue can appear as a distinctively authentic champion of its interests. As first noted by [political scientist Seymour Martin] Lipset, such a “crisis of legitimacy” can emerge under at least two conditions: (1) when one or more social groups are experiencing what we call a “representation crisis” because the political establishment does not appear to govern on its behalf; and (2) when an incumbent group is experiencing a “power-devaluation crisis” because the political establishment is favoring new social groups over established groups. These scenarios broadly reflect the basis for populist ideologies that promote a “politics of resentment,” whereby the aggrieved constituency comes to believe that the establishment’s claim to represent the interests of the “real people” belies an ulterior agenda they feel powerless to stop. As such, a candidate who engages in lying demagoguery can be perceived as bravely speaking a deep and otherwise suppressed truth. By flagrantly violating norms on which the establishment insists, and thereby earning the opprobrium of this establishment, the candidate appears highly committed to the interests of her constituency. By contrast, an earnest opposition candidate seems less authentic.

I would shorten their conclusion to this: Trump voters like the lying. Or, the lying is the point.

Trump’s boldly false proclamations—about himself, about his rivals and critics, about the world—are not a bug. They’re a feature. They demonstrate he is sticking it to the other side. To the elites, the media, the establishment, the government, academia, Hollywood, the libs, the woke crowd, the minorities, the…whoever it is his supporters resent, despise, or disregard. So if he lies about legal migrants eating pets, or about Kamala Harris being “low IQ,” not really Black, and a communist, or about schools performing gender-affirming operations on kids without their parents’ consent, or about doctors in Democratic states killing babies after they’re born, or about criminal gangs of foreign thugs conquering cities and towns across the Midwest, or about the US economy being a hellscape, or about his majestic accomplishments as president, or about evil Democrats purposefully bringing undocumented people (and criminals) into the United States to destroy the nation, or that you can’t cross the street these days without being mugged, raped, or killed, it doesn’t matter.

Certainly, some of Trump’s supporters buy his bunk. But I suspect many don’t care whether it’s true or not. For them, it’s truthy, in that it corresponds to what they feel and what they think may be true.

Trump is demonstrating that he does not play by the rules of the establishment that these people perceive (for an assortment of reasons) as the enemy.

His wild assertions, narcissistic boasts, and offensive insults need not be factual. Trump’s ability to say whatever the hell he wants is not for his cultish followers only telling it like it is. It is a sign of strength. It’s his way of giving the finger to them. Trump is demonstrating that he does not play by the rules of the establishment that these people perceive (for an assortment of reasons) as the enemy. That’s the same reason they are not put off by—or even embrace—his crudeness, mean-spiritedness, bigotry, misogyny, and racism.

Trump’s lying and indecency are evidence to them that he will do whatever it takes to be their hero. And some Trumpers probably envy his ability to say whatever he wishes and escape the usual consequences. Trump can pull all this off because millions want him to be able to pull it off. His lies are not merely a personal flaw. His manifold deceits and their acceptance by tens of millions are a sign that our politics, maybe our nation, is broken. How broken will be determined by what happens on Tuesday and in the days and weeks afterward.

After all shouting and debating, all the billions in ads, and all the fury, the 2024 election will determine whether this nation remains committed to its imperfect democracy or slides toward fascism, whether the politics of hate, grievance, paranoia, fear, and racism triumphs or those of community and inclusion, whether women’s freedoms are curtailed or protected, whether climate change is ignored or addressed, whether the privilege of plutocrats is enhanced or challenged, whether millions of Americans are deported or granted a path forward. But the election will also determine whether Americans live in a world of facts or one of false narratives. It will tell us if America is reality-based.

Donald Trump, as a politician, is a creature of reality television. And reality TV is not real. It is designed to convey the impression of verisimilitude. But the story lines are concocted. The editing is manipulative. The goal is to orchestrate human interactions that can then be turned into compelling, don’t-touch-that-dial stories. They need not be true; they often aren’t. The trick is to fool the viewer into believing they are—or at least to persuade the audience go along with the ruse.

That’s what happened with Trump and The Apprentice, the NBC show he starred in for 14 years. Prior to its appearance, Trump was in a slump as a businessman, having gone bust in Atlantic City as a casino owner and moving from the development of large real estate projects to licensing his name as a brand. The show created a new reality for Trump, depicting him as a hyper-successful billionaire with razor-sharp intuition.

John Miller, a former marketing executive for NBC, recently noted that the network forged a “false narrative for Donald Trump as a big businessman.” Explaining this, he said, “Clearly we had to make something bigger than it was.” That something was Trump. He added, “If people think that he’s the person [to best handle the economy] because he was a great businessman, that is a false narrative. We did it for the show. But it became very dangerous now for the country.”

As Bill Pruitt, one of the producers of The Apprentice, pointed out earlier this year, deceit is at the heart of reality TV: “What actually happens is the illusion of reality by staging situations against an authentic backdrop… Although very few programs are out-and-out fake, there is deception at play in every single reality program. The producers and editors are ostensibly con artists, distracting you with grand notions while we steal from you your precious time.” Think of Trump pretending to work at a McDonald’s.

Trump entered the political world as this reality TV monster-celebrity. Millions of Americans saw him as the Trump of that show. The lesson for Trump, who had for decades devoted much energy and conniving to cultivating his image as a successful developer and glamorous playboy, was obvious: He could present a false personal tale and keenly exploit it.

Trump’s deep faith in hornswoggling was also enhanced by the close association he developed with professional wrestling. In the mid-2000s, he became a WWE fixture, and he and Vince McMahon, the WWE cofounder, cooked up a phony rivalry that they played out at high-profile wrestling matches. Trump enthusiastically adhered to what’s known in professional wrestling as kayfabe: the maintenance of a false reality in which staged events and rivalries are presented as genuine. Trump was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

Ever since he descended the golden escalator in 2015—surrounded by extras who he had paid to show up and act like supporters—and announced his presidential candidacy, Trump has relied on deceit. He has inaccurately touted his own assets while lying about his opponents. As president, he declared that he knew how to deliver a better and cheaper healthcare system and sparkling infrastructure. That was a fraud. His claim that he was handling the Covid pandemic magnificently—another fraud. And he pitched a bogus story about his political foes in 2020: They were Marxists and communists in league with antifa, BLM, and other radicals in a plot to destroy America. Then came the Big Lie that he had won the election but it had been stolen from him.

“If people think that he’s the person [to best handle the economy] because he was a great businessman, that is a false narrative. We did it for the show. But it became very dangerous now for the country.”

Trump was always pushing disinformation, going back to years before he entered presidential politics, when he promoted the racist birther theory about Barack Obama and insisted his so-called investigators had unearthed evidence the 44th president had been born in Kenya. (Narrator: They had not.) But in this election, Trump turned the volume of his disinformation up to 11. His campaign to regain the White House—nearly four years after he incited the insurrectionist mob that attacked the US Capitol—has been largely based on utterly untrue narratives designed to exploit voters’ fears, anxieties, and prejudices.

In stump speeches, Trump has sought to portray the United States as a crime-infested hellscape on the verge of collapse where migrant gangs run amok and terrorize good-hearted and law-abiding Americans. And you, dear viewers, ought to be afraid, very afraid.

He and his partner-in-slime, JD Vance, have pushed baseless and dangerous allegations about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets. Trump has asserted over and over that foreign thugs armed with military weapons have taken over Aurora, Colorado, and conquered other parts of the Midwest. He has claimed that America is being flooded with immigrants released from prisons and “insane asylums” in “the Congo” and elsewhere—and that the Biden-Harris administration has purposefully allowed these brutes to enter the country in order to ruin it. He charged that President Joe Biden “stole” disaster relief funds and handed the money to illegal migrants rather than use it to assist the victims of the recent Hurricane Helene. He has ranted that it is impossible to cross the street to buy milk without getting violently assaulted or raped. And Trump insists the Democrats are evil “scum” who allow the executions of infants after they’re born and who permit schools to conduct gender-affirming medical operations on students without the consent of parents.

None of this is true. These lies go far beyond his usual falsehoods: The economy during his presidency was the best ever, the current economy is the worst ever, the rest of the world is laughing at the United States, Kamala Harris is “low IQ,” a “communist,” “mentally disabled,” and so on. These falsehoods are designed to convey a fake reality—a catastrophe that only can be remedied by the election of Donald Trump. He is trying to create a reality TV horror show.

Simultaneously, Trump advances happy-ever-after magical thinking, often a selling point of reality TV. (Winners of The Apprentice got to work for Trump for a year—supposedly a ticket to success and the high life.) He proclaims that he can bring about prosperity by introducing extreme tariffs, deporting millions, decreasing taxes on the wealthy (and workers who collect tips, Social Security recipients, and overtime employees), and placing Elon Musk in charge of cutting the federal budget. (Musk absurdly says he can cut $2 trillion from the federal budget of $6.75 trillion.) Many economists point out that Trump’s plans will lead to inflation and a much larger national debt. He also boasts he will develop visionary infrastructure projects, such as whole new cities and airports of the future. (He couldn’t even pull off a single Infrastructure Week when he was president.) Trump’s grandiose ideas tend to be general, lacking specifics. The thrust of his pitch is what he said at the Republican convention in 2016: I alone can fix it. He’s not championing policy details. (To call his policy platform bare-boned is generous.) He’s presenting himself as the answer. It’s all reminiscent of the PR campaign for The Apprentice.

Trump’s characterization of present-day America is a false narrative. His sales pitch for himself is a false narrative. His demonization of Harris as a mentally deficient radical leftist and enemy of the United States is a false narrative. He has led the tens of millions of Americans who buy his bunk into a false universe.

This is how reality TV works. Fake good guys. Fake bad guys. Fake plots. As Pruitt described it, “We scammed. We swindled.” Trump is also a peddler of fake science and fake history. He insists climate change is a hoax. And, of late, he’s been falsely citing the 1890s as a time of plenty when “our nation was probably…the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs.” Yet during this era, when robber barons ruled, there was a severe economic depression that’s widely attributed to the harsh protective tariffs implemented. His history lesson is another fairy tale unmoored to the actual facts.

As Election Day approaches, Trump has been endeavoring to construct a new false narrative—or the extension of an old one. He has started issuing claims of Democratic electoral cheating before votes are tallied. Without evidence, he and his crew began flinging unsubstantiated charges that an election was again being rigged against Trump. The ploy was obvious: to establish a foundation for Trump to once more declare himself the victor regardless of the vote count. His goal is to redefine reality to his benefit and for a second straight election beset the nation with turmoil and chaos as part of a brazen and anti-democratic power grab.

In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind, writing about the George W. Bush White House, recalled a conversation he had two years earlier with a senior adviser to the president. This unnamed aide dismissed what he called “the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” He told Suskind, “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” This squib prompted a ruckus within the politerati, with much harrumphing about a hubristic gang that believed it was above facts and did not have to abide by truth and facts. Two decades later, such outrage seems quaint.

Trump has been engineering his own counterfeit reality for years. The media and the political system have each collectively failed to thwart him and prevent him from convincing millions across the country of the uber-fakery about himself and the world in which we live. He has turned the entire nation into a reality TV show with (so far) three acts: His initial surprise victory in 2016, his expulsion from the White House (due to the worst-ever chicanery waged by assorted miscreants and nefarious forces) in 2020, and his gallant effort at restoration and redemption in 2024. The results of this election will establish whether the biggest con in American history continues and whether an electoral majority resides in Trump’s fantasy cosmos or a universe of facts and authenticity. Much is at risk, including the future of America democracy and reality itself.

After all shouting and debating, all the billions in ads, and all the fury, the 2024 election will determine whether this nation remains committed to its imperfect democracy or slides toward fascism, whether the politics of hate, grievance, paranoia, fear, and racism triumphs or those of community and inclusion, whether women’s freedoms are curtailed or protected, whether climate change is ignored or addressed, whether the privilege of plutocrats is enhanced or challenged, whether millions of Americans are deported or granted a path forward. But the election will also determine whether Americans live in a world of facts or one of false narratives. It will tell us if America is reality-based.

Donald Trump, as a politician, is a creature of reality television. And reality TV is not real. It is designed to convey the impression of verisimilitude. But the story lines are concocted. The editing is manipulative. The goal is to orchestrate human interactions that can then be turned into compelling, don’t-touch-that-dial stories. They need not be true; they often aren’t. The trick is to fool the viewer into believing they are—or at least to persuade the audience go along with the ruse.

That’s what happened with Trump and The Apprentice, the NBC show he starred in for 14 years. Prior to its appearance, Trump was in a slump as a businessman, having gone bust in Atlantic City as a casino owner and moving from the development of large real estate projects to licensing his name as a brand. The show created a new reality for Trump, depicting him as a hyper-successful billionaire with razor-sharp intuition.

John Miller, a former marketing executive for NBC, recently noted that the network forged a “false narrative for Donald Trump as a big businessman.” Explaining this, he said, “Clearly we had to make something bigger than it was.” That something was Trump. He added, “If people think that he’s the person [to best handle the economy] because he was a great businessman, that is a false narrative. We did it for the show. But it became very dangerous now for the country.”

As Bill Pruitt, one of the producers of The Apprentice, pointed out earlier this year, deceit is at the heart of reality TV: “What actually happens is the illusion of reality by staging situations against an authentic backdrop… Although very few programs are out-and-out fake, there is deception at play in every single reality program. The producers and editors are ostensibly con artists, distracting you with grand notions while we steal from you your precious time.” Think of Trump pretending to work at a McDonald’s.

Trump entered the political world as this reality TV monster-celebrity. Millions of Americans saw him as the Trump of that show. The lesson for Trump, who had for decades devoted much energy and conniving to cultivating his image as a successful developer and glamorous playboy, was obvious: He could present a false personal tale and keenly exploit it.

Trump’s deep faith in hornswoggling was also enhanced by the close association he developed with professional wrestling. In the mid-2000s, he became a WWE fixture, and he and Vince McMahon, the WWE cofounder, cooked up a phony rivalry that they played out at high-profile wrestling matches. Trump enthusiastically adhered to what’s known in professional wrestling as kayfabe: the maintenance of a false reality in which staged events and rivalries are presented as genuine. Trump was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

Ever since he descended the golden escalator in 2015—surrounded by extras who he had paid to show up and act like supporters—and announced his presidential candidacy, Trump has relied on deceit. He has inaccurately touted his own assets while lying about his opponents. As president, he declared that he knew how to deliver a better and cheaper healthcare system and sparkling infrastructure. That was a fraud. His claim that he was handling the Covid pandemic magnificently—another fraud. And he pitched a bogus story about his political foes in 2020: They were Marxists and communists in league with antifa, BLM, and other radicals in a plot to destroy America. Then came the Big Lie that he had won the election but it had been stolen from him.

“If people think that he’s the person [to best handle the economy] because he was a great businessman, that is a false narrative. We did it for the show. But it became very dangerous now for the country.”

Trump was always pushing disinformation, going back to years before he entered presidential politics, when he promoted the racist birther theory about Barack Obama and insisted his so-called investigators had unearthed evidence the 44th president had been born in Kenya. (Narrator: They had not.) But in this election, Trump turned the volume of his disinformation up to 11. His campaign to regain the White House—nearly four years after he incited the insurrectionist mob that attacked the US Capitol—has been largely based on utterly untrue narratives designed to exploit voters’ fears, anxieties, and prejudices.

In stump speeches, Trump has sought to portray the United States as a crime-infested hellscape on the verge of collapse where migrant gangs run amok and terrorize good-hearted and law-abiding Americans. And you, dear viewers, ought to be afraid, very afraid.

He and his partner-in-slime, JD Vance, have pushed baseless and dangerous allegations about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets. Trump has asserted over and over that foreign thugs armed with military weapons have taken over Aurora, Colorado, and conquered other parts of the Midwest. He has claimed that America is being flooded with immigrants released from prisons and “insane asylums” in “the Congo” and elsewhere—and that the Biden-Harris administration has purposefully allowed these brutes to enter the country in order to ruin it. He charged that President Joe Biden “stole” disaster relief funds and handed the money to illegal migrants rather than use it to assist the victims of the recent Hurricane Helene. He has ranted that it is impossible to cross the street to buy milk without getting violently assaulted or raped. And Trump insists the Democrats are evil “scum” who allow the executions of infants after they’re born and who permit schools to conduct gender-affirming medical operations on students without the consent of parents.

None of this is true. These lies go far beyond his usual falsehoods: The economy during his presidency was the best ever, the current economy is the worst ever, the rest of the world is laughing at the United States, Kamala Harris is “low IQ,” a “communist,” “mentally disabled,” and so on. These falsehoods are designed to convey a fake reality—a catastrophe that only can be remedied by the election of Donald Trump. He is trying to create a reality TV horror show.

Simultaneously, Trump advances happy-ever-after magical thinking, often a selling point of reality TV. (Winners of The Apprentice got to work for Trump for a year—supposedly a ticket to success and the high life.) He proclaims that he can bring about prosperity by introducing extreme tariffs, deporting millions, decreasing taxes on the wealthy (and workers who collect tips, Social Security recipients, and overtime employees), and placing Elon Musk in charge of cutting the federal budget. (Musk absurdly says he can cut $2 trillion from the federal budget of $6.75 trillion.) Many economists point out that Trump’s plans will lead to inflation and a much larger national debt. He also boasts he will develop visionary infrastructure projects, such as whole new cities and airports of the future. (He couldn’t even pull off a single Infrastructure Week when he was president.) Trump’s grandiose ideas tend to be general, lacking specifics. The thrust of his pitch is what he said at the Republican convention in 2016: I alone can fix it. He’s not championing policy details. (To call his policy platform bare-boned is generous.) He’s presenting himself as the answer. It’s all reminiscent of the PR campaign for The Apprentice.

Trump’s characterization of present-day America is a false narrative. His sales pitch for himself is a false narrative. His demonization of Harris as a mentally deficient radical leftist and enemy of the United States is a false narrative. He has led the tens of millions of Americans who buy his bunk into a false universe.

This is how reality TV works. Fake good guys. Fake bad guys. Fake plots. As Pruitt described it, “We scammed. We swindled.” Trump is also a peddler of fake science and fake history. He insists climate change is a hoax. And, of late, he’s been falsely citing the 1890s as a time of plenty when “our nation was probably…the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs.” Yet during this era, when robber barons ruled, there was a severe economic depression that’s widely attributed to the harsh protective tariffs implemented. His history lesson is another fairy tale unmoored to the actual facts.

As Election Day approaches, Trump has been endeavoring to construct a new false narrative—or the extension of an old one. He has started issuing claims of Democratic electoral cheating before votes are tallied. Without evidence, he and his crew began flinging unsubstantiated charges that an election was again being rigged against Trump. The ploy was obvious: to establish a foundation for Trump to once more declare himself the victor regardless of the vote count. His goal is to redefine reality to his benefit and for a second straight election beset the nation with turmoil and chaos as part of a brazen and anti-democratic power grab.

In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind, writing about the George W. Bush White House, recalled a conversation he had two years earlier with a senior adviser to the president. This unnamed aide dismissed what he called “the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” He told Suskind, “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” This squib prompted a ruckus within the politerati, with much harrumphing about a hubristic gang that believed it was above facts and did not have to abide by truth and facts. Two decades later, such outrage seems quaint.

Trump has been engineering his own counterfeit reality for years. The media and the political system have each collectively failed to thwart him and prevent him from convincing millions across the country of the uber-fakery about himself and the world in which we live. He has turned the entire nation into a reality TV show with (so far) three acts: His initial surprise victory in 2016, his expulsion from the White House (due to the worst-ever chicanery waged by assorted miscreants and nefarious forces) in 2020, and his gallant effort at restoration and redemption in 2024. The results of this election will establish whether the biggest con in American history continues and whether an electoral majority resides in Trump’s fantasy cosmos or a universe of facts and authenticity. Much is at risk, including the future of America democracy and reality itself.

On May 10, 2017, President Donald Trump hosted two special guests in the Oval Office: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The meeting was curious. It was closed to American media. No American journalists were allowed to witness it or take photos or video of the meeting. But a Russian photographer was permitted to shoot a few pics, and the Russian government posted them.

There was much else odd about this get-together. Only a few months earlier, the US intelligence community had released a report confirming that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had mounted a covert operation against the United States to help Trump win the 2016 election. The Kremlin’s clandestine warfare had included the cyber-swiping and dissemination, via WikiLeaks, of Democratic emails and documents and a secret social media campaign that sought to sow discord in the United States and boost Trump’s chances of claiming the White House. The hack-and-leak op fomented conflict at the Democrats’ convention and then, in the final month of the race, impeded Hillary Clinton’s campaign by releasing, nearly on a daily basis, internal documents that prompted negative news stories about her and the Democrats. Throughout all this, Trump and his top aides denied Russia was intervening, essentially aiding and abetting Putin by providing cover for him.

Though there were numerous factors that contributed to Clinton’s defeat, the Russian operation was clearly one of them.

After the election, the Kremlin’s intervention and the ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow were the subjects of a federal investigation and congressional inquiries. Trump, though, kept denying Russia had meddled in the race and repeatedly called the whole thing a hoax and a witch hunt. (At the time, it was not yet publicly known that during the campaign his top aides met with a Russian emissary who was introduced to them as a participant in a secret Kremlin project to help Trump win or that Paul Manafort, the chair of the Trump campaign, regularly huddled with a former business associate who was a Russian intelligence officer and shared internal campaign data with him.) Irate about the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, Trump, on May 9, 2017, fired the bureau’s director, James Comey.

The following day—with the Comey dismissal dominating the news—Trump warmly greeted the two Russians at the White House. The photo that the Russians released showed the three of them yukking it up. Here was Trump with representatives of a foreign adversary that had attacked an American election, and they appeared to be having a jolly time. And the public wasn’t told what they discussed.

A few days later, the Washington Post reported that during the meeting Trump had revealed highly classified information about a possible Islamic State plot and jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on this terrorist group. According to the newspaper:

The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.

One intelligence official noted that Trump had “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.” Intelligence officials were shocked by this breach.

More about this meeting continued to come out. The New York Times soon reported that Trump had told the Russians that by dismissing Comey he had gotten himself out of a jam: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” The Times noted how bizarre this was: “The comments represented an extraordinary moment in the investigation, which centers in part on the administration’s contacts with Russian officials: A day after firing the man leading that inquiry, Mr. Trump disparaged him—to Russian officials.”

But there was even more to the meeting that the public wouldn’t learn about for more than two years. In September 2019, the Washington Post revealed that Trump had told Lavrov and Kislyak that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s intervention in the 2016 election and that this assertion had caused alarmed White House officials to limit access to the memo chronicling the conversation.

The Trump White House had fretted about this part of the discussion becoming public. According to the newspaper, the “memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly…White House officials were particularly distressed by Trump’s election remarks because it appeared the president was forgiving Russia for an attack that had been designed to help elect him.”

By the time this part of the conversation was disclosed, Trump was mired in his first impeachment for having pressured the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and to find information discrediting the Trump-Russia scandal. And this revelation, like so many about Trump, quickly faded from the national discourse.

It had taken over two years for Americans to learn that Trump had told the Russians he didn’t care about their efforts to subvert a US election. But it was obvious as soon as that original photo was released that Trump had no interest in holding Putin accountable for messing with the election—and for helping him reach the White House.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

April 26, 2026

My fellow Americans,

It’s four weeks since the passing of President Donald Trump, our dear leader. He sacrificed so much for us, working day and night, every day of the week, to make America great again…and then again. If he had one fault—and I’m not saying he did—it was that he cared too much for us and not enough for himself. The jackals in the media who remain at large keep demanding an explanation for his death. But we will not insult his memory by releasing irrelevant and private records. I can tell you this: He died for us. Who will ever forget that day we said goodbye to our president? The full military parade. Tanks on Pennsylvania as far as the eye could see. The F-35 fighter jets in the sky. More than 100,000 troops in the nation’s capital. A new generation of generals snapping their salutes to their fallen commander-in-chief. The biggest crowd ever on the National Mall. And the journey from the White House to Trump Arlington Cemetery.

But now it is time to end our federally imposed Month of National Mourning and return to the job he started and that we inherit: restoring our national greatness. After we saved the nation from the 2024 election, under the guidance of his majestic hands, we once again became a great nation. But as he told us in his State of the Presidency speech, “Our greatness can be greater. We will achieve what I call greater-ness.” Indeed, we will. As his humble servant—as we have all been his humble servants—it is up to us to carry forth the glorious programs he bequeathed us.

The military will continue its Subversion Suppression exercises, as well as maintain the Intrusion Zero Program at the border, where we routed enemy troops to create the Zone of Safety.

We will continue to expand the construction of Departure Camps, as our Criminal Migrant Collection/Expulsion Program expands. The military will continue its Subversion Suppression exercises, as well as maintain the Intrusion Zero Program at the border, where we routed enemy troops to create the Zone of Safety. The roll-out of the across-the-board Trump Tariffs will proceed, and we will continue to root out the bureaucrats in government agencies who are disseminating fake numbers on inflation, unemployment, and wages, seeking to dispirit the nation. We will maintain the Keep America Growing program that removes anti-business ideologues who promote fake science from government positions in which they use their power to stymie energy production and other business development. The White House Make America Healthy Again working group will continue developing a health care plan to replace the failed programs of the past, and it’s expected to release its findings sometime in the future.

I am pleased to report that on June 14, the birthday of President Trump, the MAGA Loyalty Oath—which was declared constitutional by seven Supreme Court justices—will go into effect for all federal workers and members of the military. We encourage states to follow suit. That day will also become a national holiday. And I will fly to Moscow next month, as President Trump planned to do himself, to meet with President Putin and attend the ceremony marking the end of the fighting in Ukraine and the peaceful addition of the new territories to Russia. I will not attend the upcoming NATO summit, but we will maintain our observer status. I have instructed the Justice Department to continue its Enemies Within investigation and prosecutions.

But as we proceed and carry the torch that will forever bear his flame, I will be adding to President Trump’s historic and magnificent agenda. This week, we will be unveiling a national program to encourage women under the age of 40 to give birth. This will include tax incentives for businesses that encourage female employees to leave the workforce to have children. We will also send to Congress our Make American Families Great Again Act, which will end quick-and-easy divorces for couples with children or that include wives of child-bearing age. Divorce is a serious matter. And family, along with a belief in an almighty God, is the foundation of society. Families or potential families should not be allowed to be disbanded by just one of the parties involved.

For any school district that receives federal education assistance, Bible instruction will become mandatory—now that seven justices of the Supreme Court have ruled this program fully constitutional.

We will launch our Bibles for All program. For any school district that receives federal education assistance, Bible instruction will become mandatory—now that seven justices of the Supreme Court have ruled this program fully constitutional. In addition, a new White House Task Force on American Values will oversee the formation of action plans at every federal agency and department to combat the twin nightmares of DEI and secularism. All federal contractors will have to certify they are free of any race- or gender-conscious policies. The US Mint will be producing a special “Merry Christmas” $10 coin that will feature images of Donald Trump and a manger. I expect to have an announcement about Mount Rushmore in the coming weeks.

There’s more. Today I am announcing the formation of a Post-Democracy Commission, which will study whether there are more effective ways of governing than our current system. The world is changing fast. We need to ensure that our government keeps up with the creative disruption that has become an essential tool for the heroic and visionary business leaders who work to keep our economy strong and prosperous. This commission will be chaired by Elon Musk, who has just finished his task of eliminating unnecessary, business-strangling regulations in 23 different federal agencies and departments; Peter Thiel, an accomplished entrepreneur and impressive political philosopher; and Tulsi Gabbard. In this age of technological advancement, do we really need the bloated and inefficient government interfering with our health care and retirement?

We will continue to explore ending Medicaid and Medicare payments to states where abortion remains legal. I look forward to the pending Supreme Court decision on this.

And I will be sending to Congress a proposed constitutional amendment to make voting family-friendly. Under this amendment, all people, regardless of age, will be granted the right to vote. But for anyone under the age of 18, their parents will be given a proxy to cast their vote. Not since the Civil War has there been such an expansion of voting rights. We will expand our Family Protection Program to include the criminalization of puberty-blockers and gender-changing surgeries for children that allow misguided and malevolent doctors to play God. This expansion will also include the monitoring of abortions at the state level to ensure that pro-family state laws are honored and the evil of “infanticide tourism” is ended. We will continue to explore ending Medicaid and Medicare payments to states where abortion remains legal. I look forward to the pending Supreme Court decision on this.

I am also today announcing the formation of Project 2028. This will be a gathering of respected policy experts who will draft a comprehensive plan for government action across a wide array of issues—including energy development, social policy, education, and criminal enforcement—that can be implemented by 2028.

The first year of the Trump Restoration was marked by peace and prosperity. We have returned to a nation of values and strength. Hard-working Americans, forgotten and dismissed by elites serving the destructive forces of wokeness, are now no longer forgotten or dismissed. We will not heed the naysayers who spread disinformation about our economic progress to sow discord and chaos. Troublemakers who threaten societal order are being taken care of. Criminals who poison the lifeblood of the nation are being removed. Enemies of the family are being neutralized. We are winning. As President Trump liked to say, “So much winning, so much winning.” He showed us the way. Now it’s our turn.