- Robert Reich collects comments from conservative intellectuals about the Trump administration;
- Reich summarizes ten points that demonstrates Trump’s ineptitude and incompetence;
- Similarly, Salon’s Brian Karem on how Trump has turned the White House into a joke;
- How RFK Jr.’s approach is the opposite of how actual science works;
So of course there are *some* conservative intellectuals. Even if they’re to the ‘left’ of the MAGA base, if only because they think things through (rather than react simplistically) and they’re not driven by raw tribal hatred of The Other.
Robert Reich, 22 Apr 2025: The view from the right, subtitled “Conservative condemnation of the Trump regime is almost as vehement as is progressive condemnation. Will they give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?”
There is an unfortunate tendency for those of us on the so-called “left” to assume that thinkers and pundits on the “right” disagree with us about Trump.
But what is occurring these days transcends left or right. It is now a matter of democracy or tyranny. More and more of those on the so-called “right” are condemning the Trump regime with almost as much vehemence as you and I condemn it.
Will this give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?
A recent sample of condemnation of Trump from the “right.”
Reich then quotes a bunch of them. More important than what they say, in the context of this blog, is who they are. I’ll list them with links to the articles Reich is quoting. I’m cleaning up some of the link redirects and including the titles of their articles.
- National Review’s Andrew McCarthy: JD Vance Pretends Due Process Is Beside the Point;
- Andrew Sullivan: “Two Perfect Months”, subtitled “That’s how Trump sees his opening act. Believe him — or your own lying eyes.” [Sullivan is a gay Catholic writer whom I’ve read a couple books by];
- The New York Times’s Bret Stephens: Bret Stephens on What Trump Gets Right, Wrong and Really, Really Wrong
- American Enterprise Institute’s Matthew Continetti: Think You Can Guess Trump’s Next Move? Think Again.
- The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board: Trump, Abrego Garcia and the Courts, subtitled “The President may win this showdown, but by taunting the Supreme Court he is tempting fate later on cases of far greater consequence.
- The New York Times‘s David Brooks: What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.
Reich concludes:
I continue to disagree with much of what these people say and write and I suspect you do as well. But I also continue to be surprised by how much our views are converging when it comes to the Trump regime’s dangerous drive toward dictatorship.
We’re on the cusp of a national wave of outrage that transcends the old political labels. This hardly means that died-in-the-wool Trumpers will change their minds. But it does give America’s business leaders who have so far remained silent or even supported Trump — the CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, the captains of our largest financial institutions, the heads of media empires — enough cover to come out against this dangerous and despicable regime. Will they?
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Today Reich has this:
Robert Reich, 24 Apr 2025: Ineptitude, incompetence, stupidity, and chaos, subtitled “Trump is fundamentally incapable of governing. That’s the theme that unites everything.”
I’ll summarize his ten points: The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disaster; The Harvard debacle; The tariff travesty; The attack on the Fed chair fiasco; The Kilmar Abrego Garcia calamity; ICE’s blunderbuss; Musk’s DOGE disaster; Measles mayhem; Student debt snafu; and Who’s in charge?
I can’t help but wonder if people who get their News from Fox have even heard of most of these stories.
Reich concludes:
All this ineptitude in just the last few weeks reveals that the Trump regime is coming apart. Incompetence is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect America.
While we need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight his utter inability to govern America.
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Along the same lines.
Salon, Brian Karem, 24 Apr 2025: “Two beautiful poles”: President Trump turns the White House into a joke, subtitled “If you can’t use a hook to yank the bad comic off the stage, then there is only one way left to end the show”
At first I thought it was satire.
On Earth Day, the Trump administration published a press release with the headline, “On Earth Day, we finally have a president who follows science.”
I stifled a laugh.
And so on, and so on.
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This the essence of conservative thinking, and why you can’t trust them when they claim to “follow science.” They already know what they want to conclude. That is not science; that’s ideology.
The Atlantic, Katherine J. Wu, 24 Apr 2025: ‘This Is Not How We Do Science, Ever’, subtitled “The Trump administration is manipulating government-sponsored research to get the answers it wants.”
One of the most notable things about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a federal agency tasked with “improving the health, safety, and well-being of America”—is how confidently he distorts the basics of health, safety, and well-being.
In his short stint as health secretary, Kennedy has touted cod-liver oil as a valid measles treatment (it’s not), said that Americans are being “poisoned” by seed oils (they’re not), and claimed that “many” vaccines are not adequately safety-tested (they are). And he has readily cherry-picked and exaggerated findings to suit his own needs: “There’s a scientist at Harvard now who is curing schizophrenia with a carnivore diet,” he said at a press conference in March (it’s not a carnivore diet, and it’s not a cure).
The secretary also seems to think he knows what causes autism, a topic that scientists have been looking into for decades without producing a simple, clear-cut result, M. Daniele Fallin, a genetic epidemiologist at Emory University, told me. Kennedy, however, is adamant that a series of new investigations by his department will reveal at least “some of the answers” by September. “And we will be able to eliminate those exposures,” he said at a recent Cabinet meeting.
Once again, conservatives want clear, simple answers to everything, in a world that is apparently complex beyond their comprehension.
Among scientists who study and treat autism, the consensus has long been that “there is no ‘one cause’” of autism, Neelkamal Soares, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician in Michigan, told me. Genetics are likely to play a role; researchers have also explored the possible contributions of factors such as parental age; labor and delivery conditions; and exposures to certain chemicals, medications, or infections during pregnancy. Experts also generally agree that much of the growing prevalence of autism can be attributed to increased awareness and diagnosis—an explanation that the CDC, an agency Kennedy oversees, cited in its report.
And much more.
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Quickly noted.
The Guardian, Melody Schreiber, 24 Apr 2025: Autistic people and experts voice alarm at RFK’s ‘terrible’ approach to condition, subtitled “Health secretary is planning wide-ranging monitoring of autistic people’s health record and cuts to disability services”
