Donald Trump and the Art of Contradiction In an essay for Esquire magazine in 1936, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” He was, perhaps, anticipating the elaborate and serpentine logic at work in the Trump administration’s approach to the Israeli bombardment of Iran.
President Donald Trump, who was elected on an “America First” platform that rejected involvement in conflicts abroad, is now reportedly considering joining Israel’s war against Iran. While the president himself seems capable of adroitly balancing these two conflicting ideas, the same can’t be said for the broader MAGA alliance, as Gabriel Sherman reports. The thorn in Trump’s side is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, who seems intent on holding the president to the original promise of “America First.”
Appearing on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast Monday, Carlson said, “Let’s focus on my country, where I was born,” and in a newsletter last week, he declared that because Israel used American weapons in its attacks on Iran, Trump was “complicit in the act of war.” Sherman writes that Trump remains untroubled by the incongruence of his statements. “Considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” he said in a recent interview with The Atlantic. In fact, Sherman notes, Charles Lindbergh first popularized the slogan.
Senate Republicans are also demonstrating a nimble intelligence, Bess Levin writes, by crafting a spending bill that simultaneously adds to the budget deficits and imposes massive cuts on Medicaid and food stamps, all while claiming that the legislation will help “families and businesses to save and plan for the future.” As Levin notes, “the legislation that passed the House is not its final form; right now it’s in the Senate’s hands, where lawmakers have an opportunity to make it less horrible. But, surprise! They decided to go in a slightly different direction, i.e. take a near-universally disliked bill and make it even more unpopular.”
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