MAGA Hates American Greatness

A movement that says it wants to restore our preeminence is hell bent on undermining it.

Some quick bookkeeping off the top: We’ve really appreciated everyone who’s reached out to our tipline in recent weeks, which has let us amplify stories and break news that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, they’re screwing up new things every day—if you’re in the middle of a story that hasn’t been told yet, drop us a line. Happy Wednesday.

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(Photo by Joe Lamberti / AFP via Getty Images.)

What Do They Want to Make of America?

by William Kristol

I’ve got to say, it’s actually quite amazing how many things about America that MAGA hates. MAGA hates the fact that we’re a nation of immigrants. MAGA hates the fact that we have a political system featuring checks and balances, one that supports free government and the rule of law. MAGA hates the fact that we have a society that’s diverse and a culture that isn’t static.

There’s one other thing that “Make America Great Again” hates: American greatness.

No moment better embodies American greatness in the twentieth century, I think, than D-Day. That longest day of the greatest generation was organized under the command of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. More than 4,400 allied troops died during the Normandy landings, but it began the liberation of Europe from the Nazis.

After the victory in World War II, the United States was determined to help establish and support a world order that would prevent another world war and the need for another D-Day. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a key part of that order. Eisenhower himself returned to Europe in 1951 as NATO’s first Supreme Allied Commander—picking up, so to speak, where he had left off five years before. Victory in war was followed by building a structure to preserve peace through strength.

And so for nearly 75 years, a four-star U.S. general has commanded NATO military operations in Europe, working together with a European NATO secretary general to lead a structure that has deterred aggression, kept the peace, secured freedom, and enabled prosperity.

But as NBC national security correspondents Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold reported late yesterday, the Trump administration would like to change that.

As part of a broader restructuring of the U.S. military’s combatant commands, an exercise driven by the desire to save costs and also to signal U.S. disengagement from Europe, the Trump administration is seriously considering no longer having an American general command NATO.

“For the United States to give up the role of supreme allied commander of NATO would be seen in Europe as a significant signal of walking away from the alliance,” retired Adm. James Stavrides, who held that command from 2009 to 2013, explained to NBC. “[It] would be seen, correctly, as probably the first step toward leaving the alliance altogether.”

That the Trump administration wants to walk away from NATO isn’t a surprise, given President Trump’s hostility to the alliance and Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s statement last month deprecating the U.S. commitment to Europe.

Still, it’s remarkable. Remarkably foolish. For minimal savings in the Defense Department budget—and at a time when we’re spending a very affordable 3.4 percent of GDP on defense—the Trump administration would walk away from an organizational structure that has worked well and embodied for 75 years our role as leader of the free world.

It’s been an emblem and symbol of American global commitment. But it’s also an emblem and symbol of American greatness. The success of NATO as a defensive and peace-keeping alliance is a great and historic achievement. A political movement that truly believed in American greatness would appreciate that. Instead, we have a cramped, mean-spirited and inward-looking political movement, masquerading as a movement for greatness and eager to turn its back on U.S. global leadership.

Compared to the attempted destruction of the rule of law at home or the betrayal of Ukraine abroad, walking away from this aspect of Eisenhower’s legacy wouldn’t perhaps be the most damaging thing the Trump administration has done. But it will be damaging. It would be yet another marker, another step in American decline.

And what’s notable about this step is that it’s utterly unnecessary. We can afford to lead NATO. We’re not Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, whose economic circumstances may have meant they had little choice but to walk away from their global responsibilities, as the great Philip Larkin, in his Homage to a Government, mordantly described:

Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

Unlike the British government, we can afford to sustain our global position. In fact, we will ultimately pay a far greater price by abandoning it and having to deal with enemies emboldened and a world grown far more dangerous.

One might call the Trump administration’s planned action an unforced error. But it’s not really even an error. It’s a choice. It’s a choice for smallness and pettiness. It’s a choice against seriousness, against responsibility, against a role of which we should be proud. It’s a choice against American greatness.

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The Peace President Preps for Wars

by Will Selber

In his first term, Donald Trump got lucky in that he largely avoided international crises. This time he’s not so lucky. Not only is he creating new crises, but old ones are flaring up, too.

Over the last 72 hours, the Middle East lurched closer to a possible confrontation between Iran and Israel. United States Central Command conducted air strikes against the Houthis, an Iranian-sponsored and terrorist group in Yemen that, in solidarity with Hamas, has wreaked havoc on international commerce since the October 7th pogrom. The strikes targeted Houthi commanders and air defense equipment, likely portending future strikes.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as predicted, resumed strikes against Hamas in Gaza, citing a lack of progress on transitioning to Phase 2 of the ceasefire. So far, the Israelis have primarily focused on air strikes, but the recent call-up reservists suggests more ground operations may be in store. Netanyahu will almost certainly expect more latitude to conduct the war as he sees fit with Trump in the Oval Office than with Biden.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the new offensive will be more successful. During Biden’s term, the IDF severely degraded Hamas, gutted Hezbollah, and bombed Iran. But we still ended up in this place. An optimist might say that Trump’s (at-best) laissez faire attitude toward the Israelis might make for a shorter, sharper operation. But it’s not clear Trump or Netanyahu want the war to be short—or know how to reach a political victory no matter how long the war goes on.

As always, the enemy gets a vote. Maybe the Iranians will blink and pressure Hamas back to the negotiating table. Or maybe they’ll respond with increased attacks against American forces in Jordan, in Iraq, or even at home.

President Trump is reportedly still interested in signing a nuclear deal with Iran, even though they recently tried to assassinate him. Maybe he just respects some tough negotiating, or maybe he’ll order a nuclear strike—you never know with this guy.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• The Constitutional Crisis Is Here… By shipping men to a Salvadoran prison without due process, Corbin Barthold writes, “The administration claims that it ‘carefully vetted’ each removed individual to ensure gang affiliation. That is not how due process works.”

• The Art of the Bogus Peace Deal… A must read from Cathy Young on the shambolic Trump-Putin phone call.

• Where is Our National Immune System? On Just Between Us, Mona Charen and Will Saletan discuss the attacks on our legal system, reminding us that “we can’t sit around just all the time complaining about the lack of an immune system. We are the immune system.”

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Quick Hits

WTFTC: One amazing thing about the Trump government purge is how petty it can be. Yanking Secret Service protection from Hunter Biden, scrubbing commemorations of minority servicemembers from Department of Defense websites. Or, for instance, scrubbing all Biden-era posts from the Federal Trade Commission’s “Business Blog.”

The FTC’s blog is a small, straightforward #TheMoreYouKnow-type affair with posts like “New toolkit for retailers to help stop gift card scams,” and “One thing marketers of CBD products need to know right now,” and so on. Visit its website today, though, and you’ll discover that, while the blog received regular updates from September 2010 until December 2020, no further posts exist until March 2025. Odd. Did they just decide to give up blogging for a few years at the FTC? How could one resist??!?

Nope. The Biden-era blogs were there, as cached versions of the webpages show. It appears someone in the Trump administration just decided to take them down.

Not the most important FTC news of the day—that honor goes to the two commissioners Trump illegally tried to fire last night—but still, can you believe these guys?

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WAR ON THE JUDGES: How strident and alarming has Donald Trump’s war on the courts grown? So much that Mr. Unflappable himself, Chief Justice John Roberts, is feeling the need to push back publicly.

Yesterday, Trump denounced James Boasberg, the D.C. judge who ordered certain deportation flights stopped this week, as “a radical left lunatic of a judge,” a “troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.” He called for him to be “IMPEACHED!!!”

Roberts responded: “For more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreements concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Trump’s contempt for America’s judiciary is obvious. But his calls for the impeachment of any judge who crosses him show a remarkable contempt for his GOP-controlled legislature, too. There aren’t 67 votes in the Senate for this stuff (assuming it even makes it through the House).

Yet no-name, ultra-MAGA lawmakers are a thirsty bunch. So there was never any doubt Trump would find someone to answer the call. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), a freshman Congressman most notable for stupid, ugly stunts like a petition to deport Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and legislation that would put Trump’s face on the $100 bill, introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg just hours after Trump’s post.

We imagine House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune would love to keep their heads down and plug away at passing Trump’s legislative agenda. Instead, they apparently get to look forward to a recurring impeachment psychodrama any time a judge bugs Trump.

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O, CANADA: It’s one of the great recurring bits of our moment: A Fox News host sits for a softball interview with Trump, then slowly feels compelled—due to his barrage of sheer lunacy on one topic or another—to try to gently coax him back to some slightly reality-based position. It rarely works.

Last night, that role fell to Laura Ingraham. In the closing minutes of the interview, she tried to drill through the president’s anti-Canada rhetoric to find some solid core. What’s this all about? What’s the endgame?

Well, Trump said: Canada was simply “meant to be the 51st state.” After all, we buy more goods from Canada than they buy from us—an unacceptable state of affairs. “We don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy, we don’t need anything. We certainly don’t want their automobiles.”

This, of course, is ridiculous on its own terms. If we don’t want anything Canada has to offer, why would Trump even want them to be a state?

Ingraham tried to press him: Why are you being so hard on Canada in particular? Why are you treating them more harshly than, uh, any of our actual geopolitical adversaries?

“One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Trump replied. “I call him Governor Trudeau: His people were nasty, and they weren’t telling the truth.”

But, Ingraham asked, hasn’t all this rejuvenated Canada’s liberals? Wouldn’t it have been better to get a conservative government north of the border?

“The conservative that’s running is stupidly no friend of mine,” Trump replied. “I don’t know him, but he said negative things. So when he says negative things, I couldn’t care less. I think it’s easier to deal actually with a liberal, and maybe they’re going to win, but I really don’t care.”

Every old alliance and enmity is swept away. One thing matters now: Will you fluff the big guy or not?

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