Latest news with #whataboutism
The Verge
26-07-2025
- Politics
- The Verge
Online MAGA cope is now Congressional strategy
When it comes to defending Donald Trump from the worst accusations, the MAGA influencer-industrial complex, whether out of loyalty or self-preservation, often defaults to whataboutism, arguing that the Democrats are just as guilty as Trump, or (ideally) worse. This principle has held true with the current Jeffrey Epstein saga, and as their audience's anger against the Trump administration skyrockets, the MAGA influencer world is trying a new tack: blame the Democrats, not Trump, for keeping the 'Epstein Files' under lock and key. Trump, the person who could feasibly order the release of said documents, has spent the past few weeks trying to smother the drama from a few different angles, ultimately only fanning flames every time he attempted to deemphasize Epstein. He tried dismissing it during a Cabinet meeting ('Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?'), downplaying it on Truth Social ('Let's … not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about'), and criticizing a reporter for asking about Epstein ('Are people still talking about this guy?'). But there's no indication that the MAGA-influencer complex will ever stop talking about Epstein, or that their audiences will ever let it go. But over the past week, the influencer class, and subsequently the GOP, has started to maneuver Trump's spin into a more acceptable talking point, inspired by a recent Wall Street Journal bombshell reporting that the Justice Department had told Trump back in May that his name was in the pile of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. 'Of course there's going to be mentions of Epstein, who was a member of Mar-a-Lago until Trump kicked him out' over a decade ago, said Alex Jones, the Infowars host who'd spent the past several days raging about the Epstein Files. But while he had been calling for the head of anyone in the administration for failing to deliver, it was much easier to circle the wagon around Trump the moment that a mainstream publication tied him to bad behavior. Laura Loomer, another prominent influencer who'd been criticizing the administration for its underwhelming response, also took the opportunity to try coming home by questioning where exactly Trump's name appeared in the files, while also glazing Trump. 'Are they trying to say that a file is somebody's name in an address book?' she rhetorically asked Politico Playbook on Thursday, adding that she, too, had a large address book. 'Some of those people in my address book have committed crimes. Does that mean I'm implicated in their crimes? President Trump is not a pedophile. And I look forward to seeing him sue every journalist and publication that is trying to imply that he is one.' Either cater to their audience's demand to keep asking what the elites are hiding about Epstein, or maintain their relationship and standing with the White House In the days and weeks since the Trump administration released their brief memo about the Epstein files, the MAGA influencer world — specifically, those who built their careers 'just asking questions' about Epstein while also cozying up to Trump — has grappled with a difficult choice: either cater to their audience's demand to keep asking what the elites are hiding about Epstein, or maintain their relationship and standing with the White House. Some have chosen their audiences, gambling that their following is loyal beyond Trump, and that their influence isn't contingent on their White House access. (Tucker Carlson, for instance, published a two-hour episode that was entirely focused on the Epstein conspiracies — one week after he implied that Epstein was a Mossad agent.) Others have completely flipped back to Trump, such as the influencer Catturd, an onetime Epstein truther who began implying that 'the podcast bro 'influencers'' now criticizing Trump may have taken Russian money to do so. (In 2024, US prosecutors indicted two employees of RT for illegally funneling money to spread Kremlin propaganda, alleging that they had put $10 million into a Tennessee-based media company whose description matched up with Tenet Media, which worked with Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and others.) Catturd then tweeted that he was 'never abandoning Trump', and spent the subsequent week calling for Barack Obama's indictment and posting memes of press secretary Karoline Leavitt. But for everyone else, it's been difficult to have it both ways. Loomer's attempt to pin the blame on Attorney General Pam Bondi, for instance, failed when Trump refused to fire Bondi, while influencers who attempted to convince their audience to move onto different topics saw their audience revolt (particularly if those influencers, such as Benny Johnson, cited their conversations with government officials as reason enough). Normal, everyday constituents also hold deep suspicions about the entire Epstein matter And before you dismiss it as sturm-and-drang on the internet, the very same dynamic can be seen in Congress, where the Republicans are trying their best to satisfy the base while appeasing the President — a task made difficult because their normal, everyday constituents also hold deep suspicions about the entire Epstein matter. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found that the vast majority of voters — including a majority of Republicans — believe that the government is hiding information about the infamous 'client list'. And tellingly, only 35 percent of Republicans believed that the Trump administration was handling it well. (30 percent said Trump was not, and 35 percent were unsure.) On Wednesday, a House Oversight subcommittee voted to subpoena the Department of Justice for the Epstein Files, with a majority composed of five Democrats and three Republicans. The two Republicans who opposed the subpoena ended up tacking on other requests for Epstein-related communications from Biden officials and the DOJ. Per ABC News, the 'officials' included the Democratic subjects of MAGA's most enduring conspiracy theories: 'Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller, William Barr, Jeff Sessions and Alberto Gonzales.' In other words, no one seems to be able to run with Trump's assessment that Epstein is 'somebody that nobody cares about.' Unable to quell the belief that there's a conspiracy afoot, the only thing to do is try to implicate Democrats. Even Speaker Mike Johnson, who abruptly called a five-week recess last Thursday to prevent his Democratic counterparts from voting to release the Epstein files, leaned in on a potential conspiracy. 'One of our concerns is, of course, that it was held in the hands of the DOJ leaders under the last administration, the Biden-Harris administration,' he told a Newsmax reporter on Wednesday. 'And we all know how crooked and corrupt so many of those officials were, how they engaged in lawfare against President Trump. He has a concern, and I do as well, that things could have been doctored in those records.' When it comes to right-wing talking points based on sordid, unproven allegations, it's best to start winking early — and in sync with the president, too. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Tina Nguyen Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Whataboutism Is Rotting Our Brains, Our Consciences, and Our Politics
BEFORE WE CAN ADEQUATELY RESPOND to the frontal assault Donald Trump has launched on our way of life, we need to grapple with whataboutism. It is destroying our capacity to make rational judgments. In the face of an unprecedented defiance of law, tradition, and the Constitution, too many of us find ourselves so mired in polarized thinking that we can't see straight. Humans have always been beguiled by black-and-white thinking. Something is either good or bad. You are either with us or against us. Greek or barbarian. Saved or damned. Sigmund Freud coined the term 'Madonna/whore complex' to describe the mindset of men who relegate women into one of two categories: pure or sullied. A related error in logic is called 'tu quoque' (you too), a form of the ad hominem fallacy because it attacks the person rather than disproving their argument—which should sound familiar to anyone who's lived through the past few years of American politics. The tendency to engage in polarized thinking is hardly new, and yet, it seems that we've regressed in recent years. We live in an age of overflowing information and knowledge, and yet we seem more inclined now than in the recent past to succumb to whataboutism. It's perfectly clear why Trump and his many enablers rely on whataboutism. It's the easiest deflection. What is the proper response to Trump's iniquitous treatment of women? What about Bill Clinton? How can one evaluate his pardons of the January 6th insurrectionists? What about all those who rioted in protest of George Floyd's murder and were never prosecuted? (They were.) Was Trump's refusal to return highly classified documents a serious breach? What about Joe Biden keeping files in his garage? (Biden returned them when asked.) Is Trump corrupting the rule of law with his pardons of friends, donors, and political allies? What about Joe Biden's pardons of Hunter and his entire family? We don't do whataboutism at The Bulwark. We don't have partisan loyalties or ulterior motives. We just tell you what we really think. Join us. This game can be played endlessly, and it has been played aggressively for the past decade. It's important to dwell on the consequences. Some people who are caught in a lie, betrayal, or other transgression admit their guilt and seek to repair the damage. That's how mature people and societies stay civilized. Truly depraved people don't take that route. Trump uses whataboutism not just to change the subject or disarm the accuser ('tu quoque' was pretty much the theme of the 2016 presidential race) but also to breed cynicism. If 'everybody does it' then it's unfair to hold him accountable. And because people who constantly transgress can't function with the knowledge that they are immoral, they must believe—and teach—that everyone is just as corrupt as they are; that the standards themselves are flawed or at least universally flouted. Does a mafia don tell his daughter that he's a criminal, or does he explain that the world is composed of killers and losers and that you must choose one or the other? Though Americans are sometimes perceived as idealistic, there are other strains in our character that demagogues can tap into, such as cynicism about politics. A line perhaps inaccurately attributed to Mark Twain has been a staple of after-dinner speeches for more than 150 years: 'America has no native criminal class, except Congress.' Or as a more modern wag put it: 'Politics comes from the Greek 'poly' (many) and 'ticks' (small, annoying bloodsuckers).' A certain amount of skepticism about politicians is healthy. But cynicism is corrosive because it invites the very thing it scorns. Once you elect a sociopath and agree with his jaundiced view that everyone is corrupt, you've lost any chance of upholding basic values. If you treasure honesty, integrity, the rule of law, and decency, you must be prepared to reject whataboutism and to risk mockery by insisting that no, not everybody does it, and we don't want to accept the kind of society in which that is assumed. As David Frum outlined in the Atlantic: Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship. Trump's corruption is so off the charts (a Qatari luxury jet, hundreds of millions in memecoins and tokens, bidding wars to dine with him as his club) that it defies comparison. Through the memecoin, anyone anywhere for any reason can put hundreds, or thousands, or millions of dollars directly into Trump's pocket. Not into a campaign fund, not into a political party, but into the hands of the president. And as we witnessed on his Middle East trip, eager foreign leaders and businessmen are lining up to do so. Vietnam, hoping for relief from tariffs, is in talks to help Trump build a luxury golf course. Due almost entirely to his crypto holdings, Trump has, by one estimate, doubled his net worth in just four months. Share The Constitution could not be clearer. Article I, Section 9 reads: 'No title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.' Are we so cynical that we cannot summon outrage at a flagrant disregard for our founding document? In keeping with the current grab-everything-that-isn't-nailed-down ethos, the Trump administration announced last month that it was disbanding the Justice Department unit devoted to ferreting out crypto crime, and the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped an investigation into one of Trump's largest donors—the one who donated top dollar (or memecoin) to have dinner with Trump at his country club outside D.C. Yes, Biden's pardons of his family were grubby, but they were a few pebbles compared with Trump's avalanche of corruption. The current president is signaling with his pardons that anti-democratic violence is encouraged if undertaken on his behalf, and that no action, not even murder, is beyond redemption if you are in his camp. He has pardoned a corrupt thief who happened to be the son of a big donor, granted a 'FULL AND Unconditional Pardon' to a Virginia sheriff who was convicted of selling government offices but who was redeemed by his Trump loyalty. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who violently stormed the Capitol and was shot by police, received a generous payout from the Trump-controlled government. Murderers, politicos on the take, swindlers, thieving reality TV stars, gangsters—all have been pardoned by Trump in the past few weeks. If you're a Trump supporter, you have an honest-to-goodness get-out-of-jail-free card. The Department of Justice's watchword is no longer 'Equal Justice Under Law,' but, in the words of Ed Martin, Trump's newly minted pardon advisor, 'No MAGA left behind.' We must disenthrall ourselves from the whataboutism mindset. There are honorable politicians. There are honest businessmen. There are police and soldiers and teachers and programmers and athletes and judges of integrity. Millions of Americans are appalled and deeply embarrassed by the kakistocracy we've elevated. Hold on to that outrage. It's the road back from this disaster. Share
