I mentioned earlier this month that we had this panel at our 25th anniversary event that I simply loved, an oral history of TPM. We published the audio of the panel as last week’s installment of the podcast. I have my own reasons for enjoying it, but I think you will too. In any case, one thing I was reminded of in listening to the discussion is that in recent years I’ve shifted toward analysis and away from my own reporting. Not as an absolute, of course. And in the spring I was reporting on a lot of stuff at once. But certainly over this year, I’ve written a lot of big-picture looks at what I think is happening in the country, what the Trump administration is trying to do, what people can and are doing to resist those efforts, what the big global story is. Listening to the panel discussion made me a bit hungry to do more of the thread-collecting and yanking of nitty gritty reporting, the grabbing on to a story and getting everything of out it, finding and introducing the key characters, finding the arc of their story.
This is all very meta and internal to myself at some level. I wouldn’t normally write a post about it. But I note it here because it connects to something more general, more grounded in the news moment. I’ve written a number of pieces in November about how Trump looks increasingly weak. He doesn’t look like the strong horse anymore. And that perception is creating a penumbra of weakness and disorder around him. People don’t fear him as much. Some are rejecting his demands. Others are using that lassitude or vacuum at the hub of the MAGA universe to build their own fiefdoms and take over policy.
Take Kristi Noem and her official friend, assistant and advisor Corey Lowendowski at DHS. I certainly don’t think Trump is against the stuff they’re currently doing. Stephen Miller certainly makes sure DHS and ICE and staying on track with his goals. But my sense is that as the reins slacken from the center, they’re a bit more focused on building up their own operation, their own ownership. When centrifugal pressures become dominant in a regime, fief-building becomes the order of the day.
Or consider this bizarre chain of events over the weekend in which the administration couldn’t get its story straight or perhaps even find out itself whether the “peace plan” it had been bullying Ukraine into signing was its plan or Russia’s — seemingly couldn’t figure out who even authored it. This kind of incompetent nonsense is hardly new for the Trump world. It’s par for the course. But where was Trump in this confusion? He cares about the Russia portfolio a lot. Like a whole lot. Where was he?
Where this comes full circle is that a lot of the kinds of corruption stories, crazy bad acts stories and more that we at TPM and I myself have always been attracted to like magnets in a way haven’t mattered for most of this year. If a bribe is made in the forest and there’s no DOJ, did the bribe really happen? There’s this weird dynamic in news media. The outline of a public corruption story — the first clues, the hunt, the putting the pieces together— presumes eventual investigations and indictments. You may or may not get there. But that you might is the nature of the arc and the interest. Did he or she do it? And if they did, is there enough evidence for them to get in trouble? If consequences are ruled out in advance, it’s like a detective thriller where the detective and the evil mastermind get together on page 20 and have dinner and decide to call it a day. The tension and possibility vanishes. It’s still important. But it’s more like a nature documentary, how the lion eats the gazelle.
But this is beginning to change. It’s certainly not that the DOJ is springing back to life. Pam Bondi is as corrupt and subservient as ever. But as the center yields we’re seeing more fighting between the fiefdoms and that seems to be changing the equation at least to a degree. This occurred to me when I saw the investigation into Ed Martin and Bill Pulte out of a U.S. Attorney’s office in Maryland. In that case, it doesn’t appear that Martin and Pulte are in trouble — if they are — because they improperly used their positions to do retribution operations against Trump-enemy elected officials. They being investigated because their methods were so clownish, unprofessional and off the rails that they’ve endangered those retribution operations. That’s quite different. But it gives you a sense of how the cracks in the White House juggernaut, the lassitude at the center or perhaps the rest of the country finally getting a chance to catch up is somewhat changing the equation.
There’s so much corruption afoot in the federal government. As Trump no longer looks strong enough or perhaps even interested enough to protect everyone, the dynamic is beginning to change. There’s lots of sleuthing to do.