Dear Friends:
The latest episode of the Arc podcast features my interview with R.R. “Rusty” Reno, the editor of First Things. I think it’s one of the most interesting interviews I have done on the pod, not least because Rusty is a very smart guy and a good talker. I also respect that he brings his dog to the office, hence the barking you can hear in the background. We talked about a lot of things, but to his chagrin I spent a lot of time on his enthusiasm for the presidency of Donald Trump. At one point he asked me (here I paraphrase), “Why is it always all about Trump?”
As you know if you have read Rusty’s pieces in First Things, he has become increasingly well disposed to this presidency; on the podcast he calls Trump the “most honest president” in his lifetime. He sees Trump as a man who took the brokenness of the American system seriously and has worked hard to turn the boat around: with tariffs, immigration, with attacks on DEI, with a traditional view of gender, etc. He concedes that Trump has some dislikeable personal qualities, but he seems to feel that, on average, his unwavering commitment to a small core of issues makes him, in the big picture, more of a stand-up guy than any of his predecessors, in either party.
It’s hard to know what to do with this position. On the one hand, I can see the steelman version of it, and can even make it myself: after decades of politicians from both parties pretending to care about, say, immigration, here is someone who quickly showed that he would act in the interests of the majority of both parties who say that they think illegal immigration is a problem. If his tactics are sometimes unpleasant, well, at least he has finally grabbed the bull by the horns. Same with tariffs: they may not work, they may cause damage, but someone had to do something about the offshoring of work. And gender-affirming care, and biological males playing girls’ sports: if the other party was going to be totally radicalized in one direction, unwilling to look for common-sense compromises, nobody should be surprised when Trump lowers the boom. Maybe, this line of thinking goes, an overcorrection—on these and other issues—was even what we needed. What’s more—Reno would argue—we needed a president who understood “the strong gods” (to use the title of Reno’s last book) and was willing to speak unabashedly in the language of us vs. them, patriotism, etc.
I don’t fully agree with the argument above, but let’s for a moment accept it, for the sake of argument. Having accepted it, I still could never think well of this presidency, because I think that all the other stuff—the misogyny, the corruption, the self-enrichment, the blatant lies, big and small, on a daily basis, the exaltation of incompetence, the narcissism (renaming the Kennedy Center, for example), the crassness, the grossness—is simply too ugly and gross and stupid. And I think it bleeds onto all of us: the more we put up with it, the worse each of us is.
For those of us who are revolted by Trump even as we understand some of his appeal, and agree with him and his coalition on certain issues, it feels impossible to understand people whom we take to be decent and thoughtful who are not revolted by Trump. I kept trying to get Reno to say, “Sure, he’s awful, but…”—but the reality is that Reno doesn’t seem to feel, in his guts, that Trump is awful. If Reno had a son-in-law who lied that much, and was a proud pussy-grabber, and … and … and you get the point, why he’d lie awake at night wondering where he went wrong as a dad. But when his country is led by such a man, it all kind of wafts into a haze of general disagreeability, but not in a deal-breaking way.
There were two moments I found fascinating. One was when I asked Rusty if there was anything Trump could do, like begin using the n-word to refer to black people on a regular basis, that would turn Reno against him for good. And Reno’s answer was, basically, “Oh, come on, let’s not think about that.” (Have a listen yourself to hear his exact words.) It was interesting to me—surprising, and a little baffling, but interesting—that Reno seems not to have asked himself whether there is a line Trump could cross that would make him finally, at last, unfit to lead. It is apparently the case that Trump’s personal morality matters not at all—which is a strange position for a Roman Catholic to take, given the Catholic tradition of virtue ethics, which holds that ethics inheres in personal conduct, one’s practices, one’s way of being in the world; and also that ethics is formed by culture and habituation, such that if we’re surrounded by role models and leaders who behave poorly, it’s bound to lead the rest of us astray.
The second interesting moment for me was when I suggested that Trump has no stable self, that he seems to have bounced through life grasping after stuff but not asking who he is, who he should be, what he wants, and as a result has no stable friendships, relationships, etc. Reno found that point of view interesting, intriguing even. He did not seem to have considered it. In fact, he did not seem to hold any theory of Trump’s interiority. It seemed, from what I could tell, that Reno has been uninterested in psychologizing Trump. And that’s fine, of course; what motivates Trump isn’t, after all, germane—what matters is his conduct, and his policies. But it seemed curious to me that an intellectual like Reno did not have a theory of Trump’s mind. That’s the first thing I go to; it seemed more like the last, for Reno.
What do you think is going on? Have a listen:
Looking forward to listening because conversations with you are always interesting. I'll keep an open mind to a degree but Reno's position is morally untenable. All the other stuff, as you put it, matters.