In the waning days of the 2024 presidential campaign, Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos became the target of widespread and deserved disgust for nixing The Washington Post’s policy of endorsing presidential candidates to avoid antagonizing Trump. As I wrote at the time, it’s not that there’s anything magical or even necessary about newspaper endorsements. The whole concept strikes me as a bit dated. The issue was why they were being dropped. Bezos wasn’t being paranoid. There is abundant and persuasive evidence that Trump used the levers of government to punish Bezos through Amazon and his Blue Origin space delivery company during his first term. The phrase many people used to describe this behavior is “anticipatory obedience.” (I’ve been told the phrase might originate with Timothy Snyder. I don’t know if he coined it or simply brought it to wider use.) But there’s another kind of anticipatory obedience I’ve seen like a torrent in the days since Trump won the election, and it’s more paradoxical because it comes from people who feel they are the most intense of opposers.

During harrowing times some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It’s not a one-way progress. Almost everyone has their moments. But there’s a particular kind of militant doomerism afoot at the moment. Any discussions of next steps in the battle against Trumpism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or strategies, are met with a chorus of, “don’t you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin!!?!” Or “don’t you know rules don’t matter to Donald Trump!?!?!”

I’ve been mulling a post on Trump’s Cabinet appointments and had planned to share some thoughts about them this afternoon. Today’s appointments, which not surprisingly are of a different character, allow me to add a bit more.

Let’s start with everything up until today. I said the first-thing announcements were different from what many expected. They were mainly not ideologues. They were mostly ride-or-die Trumpers. They had shown Trump they’re 100% loyal and up for anything. In many cases, they had shown little or no Trumpiness before Trump came on the scene. And they were people who if you watch closely don’t actually show that much today that is coming from them organically. They’re just 100% on board for anything Trump tells them to do. There are a few who are ideologues but they’re mainly hawks. Some of those you wouldn’t have been surprised to see in a Mitt or Jeb administration. So in a very Trumpy way, those choices all appear to be totally about loyalty. The White House makes the call to this or that department and it’s “You got it, boss” from any of these people. Yes, some of them are true believers. But they’re true believers in Trump.

Today is the anniversary of this site, founded 24 years ago today.

It’s always been one of the features of TPM’s history that these anniversaries come right on the heels of elections — so either another milestone amidst the reverie and relief of good results or a reminder of the long view in the daze of bad ones. And it’s no accident. The site literally began as an effort to cover an election that was already over, or that was supposed to be over. That wasn’t the only reason the site began. I had it hazily in my mind to do something like it. There were even a few false starts at it in the few months before I did. But the election was the trigger. I had planned to spend a week with my then-girlfriend in New Haven after the 2000 election was concluded. But it turned out not to be over. The story was fast-moving, couldn’t wait on daily publishing schedules, let alone the weeks-long ones at my day job at The American Prospect, where I wasn’t going to have free rein in any case. So I just dove in and it never stopped.