If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here. The president’s advisers stink. That’s not the problem.
Given President Trump’s habitual insistence that he’s a victim — of partisan prosecutors, incompetent pollsters, the Federal Reserve, Norway — it’s a tribute to him that Republicans are identifying yet another clique of malefactors doing him wrong: He’s being undermined by his own accomplices. They’re doling out “bad advice.” That was the precise phrase — the exact verdict — rendered by Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma in an interview on CNN about the killing of Alex Pretti and the brutality of ICE agents in Minneapolis. Stitt acknowledged “deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability.” But he also insisted that the president’s priorities regarding immigration and border security were right. It’s just that Trump was “getting bad advice right now.” Other Republicans delivered the same message by focusing intently on the sins of Kristi Noem, the nation’s homeland security secretary, and the callousness of Gregory Bovino, the senior Border Patrol official who egged on the government’s masked gunmen — until he was given a timeout last week. They botched the mission. Debased the president. What a joke. You can’t dishonor someone who has no honor to begin with. You can’t humiliate someone who so consistently and thoroughly humiliates himself. But that’s just the start of the “bad advice” bunk. “Bad advice” is a plausible excuse only if the person you’re trying to excuse had little to no part in picking his advisers or had reason to believe they weren’t who they turned out to be. In Trump’s case, the opposite is true. He ended up with such a wretched crew of cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials because a wretched crew is what he was after; that way, he’d have underlings who owed their lofty titles and fancy perks entirely to him, sycophants who wouldn’t try to saddle him with scruples or tether him to sense, not so much a council for counsel as a font of praise. During Trump’s first administration, he had minders. For his second, he wanted a pep squad. Its members exist not to make him smarter but to validate his grievances and mirror his mood. Nick Catoggio put it well in a recent article in The Dispatch, explaining why Stephen Miller, who so quickly and falsely slandered both Pretti and Renee Good, won’t be purged in Trump’s attempts to move on from the Minneapolis mess. “He’s less an adviser than a spirit animal for the president, a sort of human operating system for Trumpism.” Catoggio wrote. “Firing him would amount to uninstalling the postliberal ideological software on which the entire administration runs.” “Bad advice” implies that Trump isn’t calling the shots, but Trump is constantly telling us otherwise. He can’t be vulnerable to bad advice if he needs no advice in the first place. Take it from him: He’s omniscient. Omnipotent. Behold him as he summarily imposes tariffs, hastily erases them, orders the bombing of Iranian bunkers, directs the sinking of Venezuelan boats, deposes one autocrat, pardons another, deploys federal troops, ends (or at least claims to end) foreign wars. He’s a presidential superhero the likes of which America has never seen! How do you fit “bad advice” into that fable? “Bad advice” inadvertently and hilariously turns Trump into his caricature of the former President Joe Biden. Trump’s favorite knock on Biden is that he was a hollow figurehead, a marionette without the presence of mind or energy of finger to sign his own name. But “bad advice” implies a similar enfeeblement. It gives Trump an autopen of his very own. But above all, it demonstrates Republicans’ keen awareness of his insecurities and their fear of offending him and being punished for that. If they direct their qualms and complaints at those lesser mortals beneath and beside him, maybe they’ll avoid his wrath. And maybe that’s the best way — the only way — to get him to change. No, no, there’s no flaw in you, your majesty. It’s that awful, infernal advice. When Senate Majority Leader John Thune recently questioned Trump’s proposal for a 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates, he was careful to speculate that the president “may be getting advice on some of these issues” and to imply that the advice was bad. Even Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who has been increasingly critical of the Trump administration since he decided not to seek re-election this year, lets the president at least partly off the hook. Discussing Trump’s recent threats about seizing control of Greenland, he told NBC News: “The president has been given bad advice, and whoever gave him bad advice should probably not be in that role.” I’m all for different deckhands, but they won’t right or rescue this ship. Trump built it. He set it on its course — with all the ugly words that he has spoken about so many Americans, all the steps that he has taken to sideline and silence anyone who countermands him, all the bullying and cruelty he has modeled, all the criminality he has sanctioned. Pretti and Good aren’t dead because of bad advice. They’re dead because of bad men acting out the script that a bad president wrote for them. Forward this newsletter to friends … … and they can sign up for themselves here. It’s published every Monday. For the Love of Sentences
In The Daily Kos, Michael Taylor presented the funniest final word on Trump’s surreal performance in the mountains of Switzerland: “Davos is usually a place for polished platitudes, carefully manicured optimism, and the occasional nervous billionaire pretending to care deeply about the planet. Into this alpine shrine to seriousness strode Trump, carrying not policy, not vision, but vibes. Strong vibes. Tremendous vibes. Possibly the best vibes anyone has ever brought to Switzerland.” Also, on Trump’s speech: “The pauses came in odd places, as though the teleprompter was quietly begging for mercy. Sentences began bravely, only to collapse halfway through, abandoned like half-built resorts.” And: “CEOs blinked slowly, recalculating their life choices. Somewhere in the Alps, a cow likely stopped chewing.” (Thanks to Darin McNelis of Marble Falls, Texas, for nominating this.) In The Atlantic, Adam Serwer analyzed Vice President JD Vance’s statement that Americans reasonably want neighbors whom they “have something in common with” and not “families of strangers.” Serwer wrote: “Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.” Referring to the ICE officers flooding Minneapolis’s streets, he added: “These agents, and the president who sent them, are no one’s heroes, no one’s saviors — just men with guns who have to hide their faces to shoot a mom in the face, and a nurse in the back.” (Denise Showers, Janesville, Wisc., and Paula Mackey, St. Paul, Minn., among others) In The New Yorker, Susan Glasser expressed skepticism about suggestions that Trump was genuinely concerned about his administration’s management of Minneapolis: “Does anyone remember now that, on January 7, 2021, he denounced the ‘violence, lawlessness and mayhem’ committed in his name, while accusing the rioters whom he would later pardon of having ‘defiled the seat of American democracy’? Trump, in damage-control mode, will do or say anything to get through a crisis — and his words at such a moment have about as much long-term value as a diploma from Trump University.” (Lynn McCloud Dorfman, Hickory, N.C., and Stan Shatenstein, Montreal) In The Times, Peter Baker underscored the contradiction between images from Minneapolis and federal officials’ proclamations: “One of the central questions in American life today is whether a picture is worth more than a thousand of Mr. Trump’s words.” (Madeline Bauer, Victorville, Calif.) Also in The Times, Maureen Dowd measured the president: “The depth of his shallowness is infinite.” (Jay Kraker, Houston, and Holly Rubin, Ewing, N.J., among many, many others) And Megan Craig anticipated a big winter storm: “After snowfall, for a moment, everything is different than it was the day before. Each shape softens, as if the world has been converted from all caps to lowercase.” She added: “The muddy footprints and paw prints and the mangy doormat on the front step are buried, as if erased. A blanket of forgiveness.” (Barbara Olwig, Richmond, Va., and Mitch Kardon, Pittsburgh, among others) In The Times Magazine, Kwame Anthony Appiah parsed a husband’s acquiescence to his wife’s affair, for her sake, and her subsequent abandonment of it, for his: “Beneath the velvet of sweet reasonableness lurked the edged steel of unspoken ultimatums.” (Steve Kallish, Elkins Park, Pa., and Joe Weinstein, Bedminster, N.J., among others) In The Times of London, Giles Coren sketched some fast-food history: “Kentucky Fried Chicken launched its first UK outlet in Preston in 1965 and the rest, as they say, is obesity.” (Sid Chatterjee, Austin, Texas) In The Guardian, Catherine Shoard endured the new documentary “Melania,” directed by Brett Ratner, so that we don't have to, and recounted the first lady’s gushing over the music of Michael Jackson: “Her favorite songs are ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Thriller,’ she adds, before she and Ratner briefly duet on the former, like Carpool Karaoke on the highway to hell.” (Rosemary Wright, Wichita, Kan.) Also in The Guardian, Stuart Heritage made a prediction: “You’ll probably end up skipping ‘Melania’ to watch something less depressing, like ‘Die My Love’ or a documentary about asbestos inhalation.” (Mark Rasmussen, Sacramento) Additionally in The Guardian, which will apparently count for a significant fraction of the eventual “Melania” viewing audience, Xan Brooks quibbled with the movie’s classification: “I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.” (Dorit Suffness, Dallas) And in Smithsonian Magazine, Cheryl Katz observed Falkland Islands penguins returning to their colonies after rounding up food for their offspring: “I watch these intrepid mamas ride the churning surf below, porpoising over surging waves to shore, then blasting belly-first onto jagged, seaweed-slicked rocks. Some land, pop up on their feet and make a mad dash out of the way of the next wave. Most, however, wipe out and get swept back to sea. They’ll have to try again and again.” (Laura Rushton, Strongsville, Ohio) To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence. Bonus Regan Picture!
I plodded through the snowy forest. Regan pranced. The cold weighed me down. It perked her up. She has a big chunk of Siberian husky in her (along with a greater measure of Australian shepherd), so I rally for walks even during winter storms, knowing how much she likes to sniff the frigid air and lick the fresh snow. But I indulge her only so much. I have my own reddening nose and stiffening toes to consider. And left to her own heedless devices, she’d turn herself into a pupsicle. Retire These Words!
This occasional feature of the newsletter is usually somewhat lighthearted. I’m serious about the words and phrases I’d like to exile, but I’m playful with the case I make against them. Not this time. Not after recent weeks. Not after the whole Greenland madness, during which President Trump junked American ideals, embraced the laws of the jungle and roared — well, bleated — in a fashion as incoherent as it was offensive to allies who deserve better from us and whose friendship really does matter. Not after the savagery he has sanctioned in Minneapolis and other cities that are terrorized by his exuberantly violent goon squad. Not after how he and his abettors slandered Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Not after the little boy with the bunny-ears hat and the Spiderman backpack. In light of that, I’m feeling dark, so no playful notes today. Just this: I never, ever want to hear the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome” again. There is no derangement among those of us horrified by Trump. There never was. There was simply honest recognition of a spectacularly dishonest and disgraceful bully who showed his colors from the start, before his first election to the presidency, when he mocked John McCain’s years of confinement and torture as a prisoner of war, when he mused about some gun enthusiast taking a shot at Hillary Clinton, when he commenced the refrain of his political life — “rigged,” “rigged,” “rigged” — before his Electoral College victory proved the opposite. He was as ready then to lay waste to democratic traditions and institutions as he is now. He was the same aspiring autocrat, just with less practice and power. “Derangement syndrome” itself should go away. It’s a glib, hyperbolic dismissal of substantive concerns. People on the right who repeatedly raised alarms about Biden’s cognition and health were accused of “Biden derangement syndrome,” but beneath the exaggerations and gracelessness in which some of them indulged were rational observations. “Derangement syndrome,” like so much else these days, shuts down meaningful debate, turning it into so much mud slinging. With Trump, language has been challenging. There was the period of respectful, reflexive disinclination to use “lies” or “lying,” until the growing tower of euphemisms and synonyms toppled under its own absurdity. “Fascist” was a red line that’s now receiving something of a green light. “Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump,” Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Atlantic about a week ago, later adding: “Reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.” How I wish I could label that assessment deranged. “Retire These Words!” is an occasional feature about overused, oddly used, erroneously used or just plain annoying locutions. The pervious installment, on “pearl clutching,” is here. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Send me a note at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.
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