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For weeks, Donald Trump has been exerting influence on events in the Middle East. After winning the 2024 election, he dispatched his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region to help the Biden administration get the cease-fire and hostage-release deal over the finish line. Now, a little more than 24 hours into his presidency, Trump has already begun to undo much of President Joe Biden’s decision making from the past four years, including on foreign affairs. I spoke with my colleague Yair Rosenberg, who covers both Trump and the Middle East, about the new president’s goals and approach to the region.
Isabel Fattal: What moves has Trump made on the Israeli-Palestinian front since taking office yesterday?
Yair Rosenberg: Shortly after inauguration, Trump rescinded Joe Biden’s February executive order that erected an entire sanctions regime against extremist Israeli settlers. This order allowed the administration to impose stiff penalties on violent settlers in the West Bank and anybody who supported them, and—as I reported in March—could have eventually applied not just to individual actors and organizations on the ground but also to members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Israeli army.
Biden’s executive order was seen as a sword of Damocles hanging over the settler movement. It effectively cut off some importantpeople on the Israeli hard right from the international financial system, because if you’re under U.S. sanctions, a lot of institutions cannot touch you. The settler movement was so concerned about this that they pressed Netanyahu to lobby against the sanctions in Washington, and some members even took the Biden administration to court in the United States. All of that now goes away: not just the sanctions, but the executive order that created the entire regime. Trump is also reportedly expected to end the U.S. freeze on 2,000-pound bombs that Biden put in place during the war in Gaza, and impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court over its attempted prosecution of Israeli officials—something Biden resisted.
Isabel: Trump told reporters last night that he is “not confident” that the Gaza cease-fire will last, adding that “it’s not our war; it’s their war.” How durable is the cease-fire deal right now?
Yair: Trump is right to be skeptical. It’s not at all clear whether this is actually going to hold. The first of the agreement’s three phases, which we are in right now, is 42 days long. Israel is releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including convicted mass murderers, in exchange for 33 women, children, and elderly hostages in Gaza held by Hamas, some of them living, some of them dead. That part of the deal seems likely to continue according to plan.
But partway through this period, the two parties are supposed to negotiate for the release of the remaining male hostages, for whom Hamas is demanding a much steeper ransom than this already steep price. And if those negotiations don’t bear fruit, it’s entirely possible the war will resume, especially because hard-right politicians in Netanyahu’s government have already vowed to press on until Hamas is eliminated.
The question becomes: How committed are Israel and Hamas to actually getting this done? And how committed is Trump to keeping the cease-fire on the rails? From his comments, it doesn’t seem like he knows. He’s speaking like a spectator instead of an actor. So we have no idea what he intends to do.
Isabel: What would it look like for Trump to truly commit to keeping the cease-fire on track?
Yair: It would require his administration to make it more worthwhile for both sides to compromise and stick to the deal rather than capsize it. Most Israelis support the current deal, but the accord’s most bitter opponents are the hard-right politicians in the current Netanyahu government, making the cease-fire harder to sustain as time goes on. But the Israeli far right is also hoping to get many items on their wish list over the next four years, much like they did during Trump’s previous term. Among other things, they seek U.S. support for Israeli annexation of the West Bank, the removal of the sanctions we discussed, and backing for Israel in its ongoing war with Iran and its proxies. If Trump is committed to the continuation of the cease-fire—an open question—he could make clear that some of these benefits come with a price, which is calm in Gaza. And Trump, both in his previous term and in recent weeks, has shown that he is willing to offer incentives that Biden would not.
Hamas is even harder to influence, because they’re a messianic terrorist group. Fundamentally, they don’t seem to care about not just how many of their own fighters they’ve lost but also how many Gazan civilians have been killed in this war. For them, every casualty is either immaterial or an asset in a gruesome PR war against Israel. But they do have sponsors abroad—like Qatar, which hosts some of the group’s political leaders. The Qataris want to be on the right side of the next Trump administration, like any other state in the Middle East. And so Trump has the ability to put pressure on the Qataris, who can then push Hamas to compromise on what they’re willing to accept in the next hostage exchange.
These methods aren’t guaranteed to work. It’s true that the U.S. has some sway over events, but these countries and actors have their own national interests and make decisions based on their own internal politics. Americans on both the right and the left tend to overestimate the U.S.’s role in world developments. Frankly, if there were a magic button here, Biden would have pushed it already.
Isabel: What can we learn about Trump’s second term from how he has handled this cease-fire situation thus far? What does it tell us about how he might relate to the region?
Yair: The thing to understand about Trump’s approach to politics, as I’ve written, is that he has few if any core beliefs, which means that he is both incredibly flexible and easily influenced. Both domestic and international actors know that if they can give Trump something he wants, he might give them something they want. It doesn’t matter if they are a traditional U.S. ally or not. It doesn’t matter if they’re a democracy or not. It’s entirely about whether you are in his good books. So everybody is now scrambling to get on Trump’s good side, to make down payments on the things they hope the most powerful person in the world will then pay them back for. In a real sense, that’s what this cease-fire is—for Israel, for Qatar, for Egypt, it’s all jockeying for advantage by trying to give Trump a win now so he’ll give them a win later.
Expect the next four years to look a lot like this, with international actors such as Saudi Arabia and Israel and domestic actors such as American evangelicals and Republican neo-isolationists all playing this game of thrones, hoping to curry favor with the ruler now holding court.
Attorneys general from 22 states sued to block Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to ban birthright citizenship.
The former leader of the Proud Boys and the founder of the Oath Keepers have been released from prison after Trump signed an executive order yesterday that pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,500 January 6 defendants.
Former President Joe Biden issued numerous preemptive pardons yesterday, including for members of his family, General Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, and members of the January 6 House select committee.
Dale Carnegie, the self-made titan of self-help, swore by the social power of names. Saying someone’s name, he wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People, was like a magic spell, the key to closing deals, amassing political favors, and generally being likable … “If you don’t do this,” Dale Carnegie warned his readers, “you are headed for trouble.”
By Carnegie’s measure, plenty of people are in serious jeopardy. It’s not that they don’t remember what their friends and acquaintances are called; rather, saying names makes them feel anxious, nauseated, or simply awkward. In 2023, a group of psychologists dubbed this phenomenon alexinomia.
Watch. The comedian Dave Chappelle took a break from punching down to deliver a timely and sincere message on Saturday Night Live (streaming on Peacock), Hannah Giorgis writes.
Scroll. TikTok went dark in the U.S. on Saturday night, only to be resurrected on Sunday. Steffi Cao details the chaotic moment for the most controversial app in America.
Did Elon Musk actually toss off a Sieg heil! at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally today?
A lot of people online seem to think he did, based on data from their eyeballs. Freeze-frame images of Musk on social media show the world’s richest man at a podium in Washington, D.C.’s Capital One Arena engaging in what could definitely be construed as a Nazi salute. Video clips of Musk’s speech support this conclusion. Musk stands at the podium, graced with the presidential seal, and thanks the crowd. Then he forcefully slaps his right hand to his chest and rather violently extends his arm outward diagonally to the audience. Multiple historians have backed the idea that Musk’s gesture was indeed a Nazi salute. “Thank you,” Musk says. He makes the gesture to the crowd, turns 180 degrees, and repeats it to the rest of the crowd behind him. “My heart goes out to you,” he adds, placing his hand back on his chest.
What’s left out of much of the discussion is that Musk is supremely, almost cosmically, awkward and stilted. All close observers of Musk—and I am one—know this.
So which one is it? A mask-off full-Nazi moment or just a graceless tech baron not in full control of both his arms and his feelings? (It wouldn’t be the first time he’s embarrassed himself onstage using his limbs.) I would urge you to watch the video for yourself.
Musk has not yet commented publicly on what he did, and he did not respond to my inquiry about what, exactly, he thought he was doing up there. (It’s worth noting that the video Musk posted of his speech did not show Musk performing the gesture head-on—it cut away to the crowd; a C-SPAN clip shows it in full, though.) Eventually, he will almost certainly deny that he Sieg heiled. If history is a guide, he will post on X, scoffing at the accusations. He could make a self-deprecating joke about being so excited that he wasn’t aware of his body. He could act like a troll, like he did when a German magazine likened him to a member of Hitler’s cabinet, and he responded, “I did Nazi that coming.” The most disturbing response might be if he says nothing at all. So far, he has posted several times on X today without addressing the matter.
Musk’s X has given a megaphone to bigots and restored the accounts of banned racists. I’ve argued that Musk has turned X into a white-supremacist website. Musk himself has spent recent weeks enthusiastically endorsing Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD. Members of the party have had documented ties to neo-Nazis; in 2018, the co-leader of the AfD downplayed the significance of the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi regime. Musk has endorsed posts about the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Even those inside the MAGA movement have voiced concerns about Musk. This month, the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called Musk “a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” He used the word racist to describe Musk and others in Trump’s Silicon Valley inner circle who have South African heritage: “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
All of this informs how one might interpret Musk on the stage today. Above all else, Musk is a troll, an edgelord. He delights in “triggering” his ideological enemies, which includes the media. And his gesture—whatever the intent—has done just that. In a way, the uproar online over Musk is reminiscent of an incident in the first months of the first Trump administration, when two pro-Trump influencers were photographed in the White House press room making the “OK” hand gesture. The photo was interpreted by some media members as a white-power symbol. Reporters and organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League traced it back to racist message boards like 4chan’s /pol/ board. Eventually, however, the gestures appeared to be part of an attempt, by 4chan, to trick the mainstream media into overreacting and turning the handiwork of a few trolls into national news. The whole affair was exhausting and difficult to follow. A message board that trafficked in hate speech created a fake hate-speech symbol to try to trick the media into calling something racist. (The ADL, it is worth noting, has extended Musk the benefit of the doubt, issuing a statement that Musk made an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” and encouraged everyone to “give one another a bit of grace.”)
None of that is to suggest that Musk’s salute wasn’t genuine. A practiced troll consistently crosses redlines because they want to offend and trigger. They also swaddle their actions in enough detached irony and cynicism that allow them to relentlessly mock or harass anyone who dares take them seriously. There is every reason to take a right-wing troll at face value, and yet doing so often means giving them what they want: an intense reaction they can use against you.
For now, all anyone has to understand Musk’s motives is a damning video, his past words and actions, and plenty of circumstantial evidence about his beliefs. What is undeniable is that watching Musk do that onstage while thousands stood on their feet cheering was more than ominous. Across the internet, Wiredreports, neo-Nazis are thrilled at what they believe is a direct signal from the centibillionaire. In many ways, it is a fitting spectacle to begin the second Trump administration: a bunch of people arguing endlessly over something everyone can see with their own eyes.
In the hours after Donald Trump returned to power, Jacob Chansley, already in a celebrating mood, became exuberant. Chansley, who is also known as the QAnon Shaman, a nickname he earned for the horned costume he wore during the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, did what any red-blooded MAGA American might have done in his situation. “I GOT A PARDON BABY!” Chansley posted on X last night. “NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!”
In the lead-up to Inauguration Day, Trump had spent a lot of time talking about getting revenge on his political enemies. But in one of his first moves as president, Trump decided to treat his supporters to some forgiveness. Last night, he pardoned all of the nearly 1,600 people who had been convicted for their involvement in the Capitol riots. He commuted the sentences of 14 insurrectionists who remained in prison, allowing them to go free. Paired with his order for the attorney general to dismiss “all pending indictments,” Trump has effectively let everyone convicted for their actions in the January 6 attack off the hook.
In Trump’s telling, the people he pardoned were viciously and unfairly punished for what happened at the Capitol. Yesterday, he called the rioters “hostages.” Some of those pardoned included goofy characters, such as Chansley, who seemingly did not arrive at the Capitol intending to overthrow the government but got swept up in the moment. Chansley wasn’t exactly going out of his way to avoid the chaos of the day, however: He left a note on then–Vice President Mike Pence’s desk that said, “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.” Among those pardoned was Adam Christian Johnson, otherwise known as “lectern guy”: On January 6, he carried then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium around the Capitol, smiling and waving in a now-viral photo. “I’m ashamed to have been a part of it,” he said to a judge in February 2022, before he was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and sentenced to 75 days in jail. “Got a pardon … now … about my lectern,” Johnson wrote on X before later asking Trump to free the men imprisoned for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Among the rioters granted clemency by President Trump there are also longtime militia leaders who planned carefully for the riot. They have been implicated in actively conspiring to violently overtake the Capitol and attack police officers. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, and Kelly Meggs, who led its Florida chapter, were among the 14 people whose sentences were commuted. Meggs allegedly participated with his wife in weapons training to prepare for the attack. Before the president intervened, both were slated to spend more than a decade in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy. According to the Department of Justice, Rhodes and Meggs had organized “teams that were prepared and willing to use force and to transport firearms and ammunition into Washington, D.C.,” and tried “to oppose, by force, the lawful transfer of presidential power.”
Of the 14 people whose remaining prison sentences were commuted by Trump, nine were affiliated with the Oath Keepers and five with the Proud Boys, another violent far-right group. At least one other militia leader was outright pardoned: Enrique Tarrio, a former head of the Proud Boys, is now free long before the end of his 22-year sentence. Though he wasn’t in Washington during the insurrection, Tarrio egged on Proud Boys who entered the Capitol, posting on social media that he was “proud of my boys and my country” and telling his supporters, “Don’t fucking leave” moments after rioters entered the Capitol. In private messages, he took credit for the attack: “Make no mistake,” he wrote, “we did this.” Some of the Proud Boys, including top members Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl, went inside the Capitol, where they “overwhelmed officers,” according to the Department of Justice. Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Rehl to 15.
Of course, it wasn’t just militia members who seemingly arrived at the Capitol with violence in mind. Also among those pardoned was Eric Munchel, who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison after entering the Capitol clad in a tactical vest and carrying zip ties, with which he intended to “take senators hostage,” according to the judge who heard his case. The most important part of the pardons isn’t specifically who is released from prison, but the meaning of Trump’s gesture: Radical militias are free to act with impunity—as long as they’re loyal to Trump. Should an extremist on the right break the law, he can reasonably hope for Trump to pluck them out of the justice system. This is one of the key ingredients to the perpetuation of political violence across society—a belief among those who might carry it out that they can do so, and that they’ll get away with it.
In that sense, the pardons mark what’s to come. The insurrection was the culmination of increased militia activity during the first Trump administration. But after the riot, as law-enforcement agencies began to prosecute those involved, the militias went underground. Groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys continued to operate while many of their leaders and members were in prison, but in a less publicly visible way than before. Even without militia groups operating at their peak levels, political violence, particularly by the right, has been ascendant over the past several years. Now, after the pardons, right-wing extremists no longer have to hide.
*Lead-image credit: Illustration by Allison Zaucha / The Atlantic. Sources: Mark Peterson / Redux; Anna Moneymaker / Getty; Evan Vucci / AP; Getty.
Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.
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Dear James,
I have a longtime friend who has recently been going through a string of hard times: Work, relationships, family, friends, you name it—it’s been a bunch of tough episodes stacked one after the other. I’ve always wanted to be there for my friends, especially when they’re struggling, and it’s no different with this person. I’ve been seeing her frequently, talking her through a lot. Over the past few months, however, she wants to talk only about herself. Every conversation comes back to her, and she manages to turn even the most pleasant interaction into something grim, cynical, and self-pitying. It’s getting to the point where I don’t want to be around her, even though I’m sympathetic to what she’s going through. How can I be there for her while being honest when I think she’s feeling too sorry for herself—and trying to protect my own mental health?
Dear Reader,
It sounds like your friend is depressed. And one of the truly terrible things about depression is its power to turn you into a bore. I’m speaking from experience here. When I was depressed, I was an unbelievable bore. I bored the pants off plenty of people, including myself. I bored the universe, and it turned away in search of better company. So painfully confined was I in my own misfiring subjectivity that I had trouble feeling—had trouble imagining—the reality of anybody else. Me and my dilemma, that was all I could think about—and, consequently, all I could talk about. Not a condition in which much courtesy is extended to the listener.
However: It takes two not to tango. You have both created this thing, this faintly noxious dynamic whereby she moans and groans and curses, and you sit there inhaling secondhand depression. So what can you do to shake it up?
I think some wild gestures might be in order. Surprise her with a gift. Take her somewhere unexpected. Make things interesting. Crank up the gallantry, crank up the generosity: Send a spark of love and novelty into the black cloud. Don’t expect gratitude, or at least not immediately. And don’t give up. What you’re after is a micro-shift in the mood, an opening through which she can see, however narrowly or briefly, the world outside—which of course includes you. Do that for her, and you’ll be an amazing friend.
Through ruptured patterns,
James
By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.
During Donald Trump’s first term as president, critics used to ask, Can you imagine the outcry if a Democrat had done this? As Trump begins his second, the relevant question is Can you imagine the outcry if Trump had done this eight years ago?
Barely 24 hours into this new presidency, Trump has already taken a series of steps that would have caused widespread outrage and mass demonstrations if he had taken them during his first day, week, or year as president, in 2017. Most appallingly, he pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 rioters, including some involved in violence. (Of course, back then, who could have imagined that a president would attempt to stay in power despite losing, or that he would later return to the White House having won the next election?). In addition, he purported to end birthright citizenship; exited the World Health Organization; attempted to turn large portions of the civil service into patronage jobs; and issued an executive order defining gender as a binary.
Although it is early, these steps have, for the most part, been met with muted response, including from a dazed left and press corps. That’s a big shift from eight years ago, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington, and Americans flocked to airports at midnight to try to thwart Trump’s travel ban.
The difference arises from three big factors. First, Trump has worked hard to desensitize the population to his most outrageous statements. As I wrote a year ago, forecasting how a second Trump presidency might unfold, the first time he says something, people are shocked. The second time, people notice that Trump is at it again. By the third time, it’s background noise.
Second, Trump has figured out the value of a shock-and-awe strategy. By signing so many controversial executive orders at once, he’s made it difficult for anyone to grasp the scale of the changes he’s made, and he’s splintered a coalition of interests that might otherwise be allied against whatever single thing he had done most recently. Third, American society has changed. People aren’t just less outraged by things Trump is doing; almost a decade of the Trump era has shifted some aspects of American culture far to the right.
Even Trump’s inaugural address yesterday demonstrates the pattern. Audiences were perplexed by his “American carnage” speech four years ago. George W. Bush reportedly deemed it “weird shit,” earthily and accurately. His second inaugural seemed only slightly less bleak—or have we all just become accustomed to this sort of stuff from a president?
One test of that question is Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, which attempts to shift an interpretation of the Constitution that has been in place for more than 150 years. Now “the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States,” Trump stated in an order signed yesterday. Lawyers are ready; the order was immediately challenged in court, and may not stand. In any case, the shift that Trump is trying to effect would have a far greater impact than his 2017 effort to bar certain foreign citizens from entering the U.S. Birthright citizenship is not just a policy but a theoretical idea of who is American. But Trump has been threatening to do this for years now, so it came as no surprise when he followed through.
In another way, he is also trying to shift what is seen as American. Four years ago, almost the entire nation was appalled by the January 6 riot. As my colleagues Annie Joy Williams and Gisela Salim-Peyer note, UN Ambassador-Designate Elise Stefanik called it “un-American”; Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it “anti-American.” Yesterday, Republicans applauded as Trump freed members of that mob whom he has called “hostages.” That included not just people who broke into the Capitol but many who engaged in violence. Just this month, Vice President J. D. Vance declared, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Even Vance has become desensitized to Trump. (Heavy users become numb to even strong narcotics.)
But the percentage of Americans who say they disapprove of January 6 has also gone down as distance from the events has grown and propaganda has taken hold. Support for immigration has decreased as well. The WHO exit might have raised more of a fuss before the coronavirus pandemic; now the failures of public-health authorities and insistent attacks on them from politicians including Trump have convinced many people not just that these bodies need reform but that they aren’t needed at all. It’s not just Silicon Valley titans who have acquiesced to Trump and taken up his ideas. Although many people still oppose the president’s agenda, the 2024 election was the first time in three tries that he was able to win a plurality of the popular vote.
In recent weeks, Trump has embarked on a baffling crusade against Panama’s ownership of the Panama Canal. He claimed (incorrectly) that the canal is under Chinese control and suggested the U.S. should go back on the treaty that gave Panama control over the canal zone. Initially, this produced confusion. People were even more surprised when he refused to rule out military action (caveat lector). Still, one couldn’t be sure whether Trump was messing around or serious. Then he brought it up again during yesterday’s inaugural address. By the time Trump sends an expeditionary force to seize the canal, will anyone even raise an eyebrow?
Donald Trump promised his supporters that if he won the presidency again, he would pardon at least some of the January 6 rioters who have been prosecuted. “Tonight I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages pardons to get them out,” he told the crowd at Capital One Arena on Monday night. “And as soon as I leave, I’m going to the Oval Office, and will be signing pardons for a lot of people.”
Many prominent Republicans seem to agree with Trump’s view that the January 6 insurrectionists, including men convicted of assaulting police officers, are government “hostages.” The view seems to be that Democrats are using the events of January 6 as an excuse to carry out what Trump calls a “witch hunt.”
Prominent Republicans weren’t always blasé about January 6. Immediately following the attack on the Capitol, and even into the following year, many leading Republicans condemned the attack on the Capitol and the police officers assigned to protect it.
As an antidote to amnesia, here is an incomplete compilation of remarks about the January 6 violence made by Republicans who now are seeking Cabinet-level positions in the new Trump administration, or are otherwise in Trump’s inner circle.
Elise Stefanik, United Nations Ambassador-Designate, January 6, 2021 (press release now deleted): “This is truly a tragic day for America. I fully condemn the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today at the United States Capitol. Americans have a Constitutional right to protest and freedom of speech, but violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable and anti-American. The perpetrators of this un-American violence and destruction must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Marco Rubio, Secretary of State nominee, January 6, 2021: “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.”
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary nominee, January 6, 2021 (tweet now deleted): “We are all entitled to peacefully protest. Violence is not a part of that. What’s happening in the Capitol right now must stop.”
Doug Burgum, Interior Secretary nominee, January 6, 2021: “We support the right to peacefully protest. The violence happening at our nation’s capitol is reprehensible and does not represent American values, and needs to stop immediately.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, Department of Government Efficiency co-leader, September 13, 2022: “It was a dark day for democracy. The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”
Kevin McCarthy, then–House Minority Leader, January 13, 2021: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action from President Trump—accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure that President-Elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. And the president’s immediate action also deserves congressional action, which is why I think a fact-finding commission and a censure resolution would be prudent. Unfortunately, that is not where we are today.”
Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator, January 6, 2021: “Those who made this attack on our government need to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Their actions are repugnant to democracy.”
Mike Lee, Utah senator, January 6, 2021: “The violence at the United States Capitol is completely unacceptable. It is time for the protesters to disperse. My staff and I are safe. We are working to finish our constitutional duty to finish counting votes today.”
Ted Cruz, Texas senator, January 5, 2022: “A violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women of law enforcement … risk their lives to defend the men and women who serve in this Capitol.”
Nikki Haley, 2024 presidential candidate, January 12, 2021: “We need to acknowledge [Trump] let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and 2024 presidential candidate, January 6, 2021: “Violence or rioting of any kind is unacceptable and the perpetrators must face the full weight of the law.”
Steve Scalise, Louisiana representative, now–House Majority Leader, January 12, 2021: “Like many Americans, I am deeply upset and outraged over the domestic terrorism we witnessed last week in our nation’s Capitol. It is clear that tensions in our country are dangerously high. It is incumbent upon leaders to be focused, first and foremost, on uniting our country and ensuring a smooth transition of power to the Biden administration over the coming days.”
John Barrasso, Wyoming senator, now–Senate Majority Whip, January 6, 2021: “This violence and destruction have no place in our republic. It must end now.”
Tom Emmer, Minnesota representative, now–Majority Whip of the House of Representatives, January 6, 2022: “One year ago, we saw an unacceptable display of violence that runs counter to everything we stand for as a country. Those responsible for the violence must continue to be held accountable, and Congress must focus on providing our men and women in law enforcement around the Capitol—and across the nation—with the resources, training, and support they need to ensure something like this never happens again.”
Lisa McClain, Michigan representative, now–chair of the House Republican Conference, January 6, 2021: “Today was an atrocious day for Democracy. What started out as Members of Congress following a sacred and Constitutional tradition, quickly was overcome by violent protestors. I wholeheartedly condemn the violence and vandalism at the Capitol and all who participated in such evil behavior. These vile acts are a slap in the face to peace-loving Americans.”
Kevin Hern, Oklahoma representative, now–Chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, January 7, 2021: “Our Capitol building has been a symbol of American freedoms and democracy around the world, yet it was invaded by law breakers seeking to undermine our republican form of government and erode those ideals. There is no excuse for the violent actions witnessed in the halls of Congress. This summer, when Antifa rioters burned American cities to the ground and held Portland hostage for over 100 days, I called for the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those involved. I consider the crimes committed at the Capitol today to be of the same magnitude, and I support the investigation, arrest, and prosecution of those involved in the violent acts to the full extent of the law.”
Mario Díaz-Balart, Florida representative, January 6, 2021: “The Capitol building is the center and sacred symbol of democracy. Today’s violent actions undermine the principles and values that our nation was founded on. Individuals who broke into the US Capitol or assaulted our law enforcement should face the full consequences of the law.”
Dan Crenshaw, Texas representative, January 7, 2021: “On Wednesday the Capitol of the most powerful nation the world has ever known was stormed by an angry mob. Americans surely never thought they’d see such a scene: members of Congress barricaded inside the House chamber, Capitol Police trampled, and four Americans dead. A woman was shot near the elevator I use every day to enter the House floor. It was a display not of patriotism but of frenzy and anarchy. The actions of a few overshadowed the decent intentions of many.”
Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming senator, January 6, 2021: “Call it what it is: An attack on the Capitol is an attack on democracy. Today we are trying to use the democratic process to address grievances. This violence inhibits our ability to do that. Violent protests were unacceptable this summer and are unacceptable now.”
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, then–Washington representative, January 6, 2021 (press release now deleted): “What happened today and continues to unfold in the nation’s capital is disgraceful and un-American. Thugs assaulted Capitol Police Officers, breached and defaced our Capitol Building, put people’s lives in danger, and disregarded the values we hold dear as Americans. To anyone involved, shame on you. We must have a peaceful transfer of power. The only reason for my objection was to give voice to the concern that governors and courts unilaterally changed election procedures without the will of the people and outside of the legislative process. I have been consistent in my belief that Americans should utilize the Constitutional tools and legal processes available to seek answers to their questions about the 2020 election. What we have seen today is unlawful and unacceptable. I have decided I will vote to uphold the Electoral College results and I encourage Donald Trump to condemn and put an end to this madness.”
Rick Scott, Florida senator, January 6, 2021: “Everyone has a right to peacefully protest. No one has a right to commit violence. What happened today at the Capitol is disgraceful and un-American. It is not what our country stands for.”
John Thune, South Dakota senator, now–Senate Majority Leader, January 6, 2021: “I hope that the types of people who stormed the capitol today get a clear message that they will not stop our democracy from moving forward.”
Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee senator, January 6, 2021: “These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable. While I am safe and sheltering in place, these protests are prohibiting us from doing our constitutional duty. I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. We are a nation of laws.”
John Kennedy, Louisiana senator, January 6, 2021: “I condemn this violent assault on the democratic process & will not be intimidated by a mob that confuses chaos & destruction with strength & wisdom. I’ll continue to work for LA.”
Steve Daines, Montana senator, January 6, 2021: “Today is a sad day for our country. The destruction and violence we saw at our Capitol today is an assault on our democracy, our Constitution and the rule of law, and must not be tolerated. As Americans, we believe in the right to peaceful protest. We must rise above the violence. We must stand together. We will not let today’s violence deter Congress from certifying the election. We must restore confidence in our electoral process. We must, and we will, have a peaceful and orderly transition of power.”
Tim Scott, South Carolina senator and 2024 presidential candidate, January 6, 2021: “The violence occurring at the United States Capitol right now is simply unacceptable, and I fully condemn it.”
This article originally misstated Kevin McCarthy’s title as of January 2021.
Donald Trump never misses a good brand opportunity. You can buy collectible Trump trading cards, limited-edition autographed Trump guitars, $499 “Trump Won” low-top sneakers, and Trump-endorsed Bibles. Long before he got into politics, Trump peddled liquor (Trump Vodka), education (Trump University), and meat (Trump Steaks). But Trump’s latest enterprise—a new cryptocurrency token named $TRUMP—might be his most brazen yet.
After his team launched the token on Friday evening, the price per coin shot from $6 to more than $70 within about a day. Because two of Trump’s affiliate companies own 80 percent of the total supply of the coin, Trump essentially manifested more than $10 billion in a single weekend. At one point this weekend, Axiosestimated that $TRUMP momentarily accounted for about 89 percent of Trump’s net worth, making him one of the richest people in the world. And last night, Melania Trump announced her own coin, $MELANIA.
Throughout Trump’s long history of cashing in on his personal brand, there has never been such a dramatic injection of artificial value. Both $TRUMP and $MELANIA are so-called memecoins. There are no business fundamentals under the hood, no practical use cases to speak of. Memecoins are typically spun up in a matter of minutes, whisked to massively overinflated valuations on social media, and promptly dumped on the suckers who bought in a few moments too late. It’s an incredibly efficient, incredibly predictable, and incredibly predatory playbook.
The arc of a memecoin’s market cycle almost always bends toward zero: A coin inspired by the “Hawk Tuah” girl was worth $500 million just after it launched late last year and swiftly lost 99 percent of its value. Other silly tokens, such as the inauspiciously named $BODEN (an unofficial, unsanctioned riff on President Joe Biden’s lame-duck era) have experienced similar collapses. It’s the same story in each case: Insiders and early adopters turn a quick profit at the expense of latecomers. And although it’s definitely possible that Trump’s position of global influence gives $TRUMP more staying power than the typical memecoin, it’s arguably even more volatile than cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, that are not exactly stable in their own right. The value of $TRUMP has already dipped by more than half and is now worth less than $8 billion.
In a sense, the $TRUMP token represents a natural move for the president. He has made an enormous effort to position himself as a powerful ally of the crypto industry: Trump has said he plans to create a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” and promoted another crypto business with his three sons just weeks before the election. Trump announced the coin on Truth Social on Friday night at the same time as the pre-inauguration “Crypto Ball,” a ritzy celebration emceed by David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur and podcast host whom Trump has tapped as his crypto czar. It was meant as a kind of debutante ceremony: After four years of what the industry has interpreted as targeted sanctions and harassment from SEC Chair Gary Gensler and other steely regulators, crypto is finally free to become the fullest version of itself.
Whether memecoins are even legal is a matter of dispute. Biden’s SEC regularly went after crypto companies for issuing coins that appeared to violate existing securities laws. But Trump himself is picking the next SEC chair. There’s also the question of what Trump’s new tens of billions of dollars on paper end up amounting to in the real world, because most of the total token supply hasn’t actually been issued, and because any attempt to start cashing out would no doubt tank the price. Still, even after Trump has promised a new golden age for crypto during his second administration, his new hypothetical billions practically cement his interest in a more hands-off approach to the industry. Keep in mind: Trump called bitcoin a “scam” just a few years ago, when crypto didn’t seem to suit his interests. Trump is far less likely to level those kinds of judgments in the future.
Another potential issue is that because memecoins are so lightly regulated, anyone can buy them, whether they are 12-year-olds with a parent’s credit card or North Korean hackers looking for leverage over the global economy. Some of the available supply of Trump’s official cryptocurrency might already be controlled by foreign interests. There’s also the chance that Trump’s memecoin gambit could inspire other world political and cultural leaders to release similar coins. (Lorenzo Sewell, the pastor who administered today’s inaugural prayer, has already announced a $LORENZO coin.) If foreign actors get their hands on Trump’s supposedly America-first economic initiatives, the administration’s promise to turn the country into a “bitcoin superpower” starts to feel a little hollower.
Although much of the crypto world has been eagerly awaiting Trump’s return to the White House, a new sense of unease has settled over some of the industry’s biggest defenders, who recognize that memecoins don’t exactly reflect well on crypto. Memecoins are “zero-sum,” the investor Balaji Srinivasan, typically aligned with Trump, reminded his followers on X over the weekend. “There is no wealth creation … And after an initial spike, the price eventually crashes and the last buyers lose everything.” Nic Carter, a prominent crypto investor and Trump supporter, reasons that the unease is indicative of a broader panic, a slow-growing sense that Trump can’t be controlled in the way the industry might want. $TRUMP “exposed the worst parts of the crypto industry to the public eye in a way that really didn’t need to happen, right when we were on the cusp of legitimacy,” he told me today.
A Trump Steak might not be the juiciest cut you’ve ever eaten, but at least it’s a piece of real meat—something you can see and touch. $TRUMP enthusiasts won’t even get that much.
The first great image of the second Donald Trump administration emerged last night at a Washington, D.C., basketball arena, where the soon-to-be-inaugurated president danced with the Village People. After Trump finished one of his classic stem-winding speeches, he was joined by five hunks of disco infamy: the bare-armed construction worker, the denim-crotched cowboy, the chaps-wearing biker, the befringed Native American chief, and the vinyl-booted cop. With his suit and pendulous red tie, Trump looked like he was in the band, like just another shade in a rainbow of satirical American masculinity.
The president’s affinity for the Village People’s music used to seem trollish, but now it’s just logical. The band formed in the 1970s when two French producers, one of them gay, put out a casting call that read “Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance and Have a Moustache.” Today those founders are dead, but the band’s frontman, Victor Willis, is alive to deny, at every chance, that “YMCA” is a queer anthem. Over the past few years, he’s also moved from condemning the Trump campaign’s use of the song to embracing it, in part because, as he recently explained on Facebook, “The financial benefits have been great.” The Trumpified Village People now project what seemed to be the greater theme of this past inauguration weekend: a strange new dream of American unity, washed of anything but cosmetic difference, joined in spectacle and opportunism.
At his previous inauguration, Trump had trouble booking performers to celebrate the results of a brutally divisive, closely contested election. Headliners included the faded rock band 3 Doors Down, a drummer famous for a cameo in The Matrix Reloaded, and the late, game-for-whatever Toby Keith (who told me in 2017, “The president of the frickin’ United States asks you to do something and you can go, you should go instead of being a jack-off”). The festivities felt confused and limp.
This inauguration, by contrast, followed an election in which virtually every demographic had moved to the right. Trump now has a big tent, so he’s going to put on a circus. The rosters for the inaugural galas weren’t quite A-list in terms of musicians who matter right now, but they did feature recognizable names across a range of genres and constituencies—the rapper Nelly; the reggaeton star Anuel AA; various right-leaning, country-aligned stalwarts such as Jason Aldean and Kid Rock. The greatest reversal was for Snoop Dogg, who once made fun of rappers who palled around with the president but now seemed happy to DJ for tuxedoed bros celebrating the first crypto president.
The Capitol Rotunda, where the inauguration ceremony was moved because of freezing weather, made the big tent feel intimate. As the faces of America’s past looked down from busts, the ceiling painted with E Pluribus Unum, various oddities of the present—such as Melania’s sleek, eye-hiding Hamburglar hat—instantly looked historical. The chamber was so small that much of the audience watched from an overflow room; the Democrats (including four previous presidents and their spouses, sans Michelle Obama) were scrunched up close to the Republicans, as if at a courthouse wedding. Behind Trump stood the most important new members of his coalition: the tech moguls Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
“The entire nation is rapidly unifying,” Trump said in his speech, before listing the many demographics—Black, Latino, old, young, and so forth—who’d helped deliver his victory. The speech had its dark passages, but it was no redux of 2017’s “American carnage” rant. Rather, Trump strung together positive, forward-looking statements about the country’s oncoming golden age—an endless summer on the “Gulf of America,” without crime or conflict, and our flag waving on Mars. He was followed by a bar joke’s worth of benedictions—from a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Black evangelical pastor. The latter, Lorenzo Sewell, spoke with rumbling flamboyance, calling for freedom to ring “from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire” to “the curvaceous hilltops of California.”
As pageantry, the ceremony was effective. The opera singer Christopher Macchio bellowed “Oh, America” over military drums, with a hint of ’80s-metal righteousness. The repetitious nature of the president’s speech, stating and restating visions of prosperity and peace, served to distract from the various groups that may soon suffer: millions of immigrants he vowed to round up; trans and gender-nonconforming people navigating the government’s strict new definitions of gender; the “radical and corrupt establishment” whose leaders were sitting inches away, politely squinting at a man who’d vowed retribution against his rivals.
The spell created by pomp and circumstance broke a bit for one performance during the ceremony. Carrie Underwood, the 41-year-old American Idol star and country hitmaker, walked out to sing “America the Beautiful.” Something went wrong with her backing music, and she smiled in silence for nearly two minutes. Was this an omen? Would Trump’s promised golden age immediately turn out to be glitchy and underwhelming? But then Underwood told the Rotunda to just sing the words along with her. Everyone obliged—including Joe Biden and, by the end of the song, Kamala Harris. Democracy, it’s well understood, has been undergoing a trial. But, begrudgingly or not, the country’s still together.
The beginning of I’m Still Here is a careful trap. In the first 20 minutes of his new film, the director Walter Sallesintroduces the Paiva family, a vibrant Brazilian clan based in Rio de Janeiro. It’s 1970, and we watch the seven family members—Eunice (played by Fernanda Torres), Rubens (Selton Mello), and their five kids—eat, chatter, hit the beach, and go dancing. Their bond feels palpably warm and realistic, a comforting lull that Salles is tempting the audience into. Despite knowing that the story is based on wrenching, real-life events, I started to hope against hope that maybe nothing too plotty would happen—that instead, I would just get to spend a couple of hours with this lovely, buzzing unit.
But the vaguest sense of political instability hums in the background of the Paivas’ sandy idyll. In 1964, a military coup overthrew Brazil’s populist democracy, in which Rubens had served as a left-wing congressman. Nearly seven years on, the country is still under martial law. One day, as Eunice and Rubens are playing backgammon and sorting through old photos, the police knock on the door; they curtly take Rubens away for questioning. “I’ll be back for the soufflé,” he tells his wife calmly. In retrospect, it’s the most devastating line in the movie: He won’t see her or their children ever again.
What happened to Rubens Paiva is well known in Brazil. Rubens was one of many citizens disappeared by the country’s military dictatorship over the 21-year regime—suspected Communists the military whisked away, never to return. The government admitted to Rubens’s death at its hands only decades after the fact, and his body still hasn’t been found. His case became particularly notorious because of Eunice’s years-long efforts to draw attention to it: She became a well-known human-rights lawyer, campaigning for victims of political repression. But what happened to Rubens is still a matter of controversy in a country where far-right politicians, until recently, held power.
Salles could have taken a blunt, agitprop approach to rendering these events, primarily devoting the film’s screen time to Eunice’s fight for recognition. But the director avoids framing I’m Still Here as an “inspirational true story” focused on Eunice’s legal career; plenty of good articles and books have been written about it. Instead, he confines that information to a few title cards that roll before the end credits. Salles’s take on the Paivas’ saga is subtler and, in my opinion, more successful than this manner of biopic. He creates a quieter sort of historical drama that lives in the aftermath of Rubens’s disappearance, a situation that sometimes feels eerily ordinary. By highlighting Eunice’s role as a parent, Salles pushes viewers toward considering the mundanity of living under a dictatorship—and the gnawing nightmare of lacking control in the face of obvious evil. The years roll on for Eunice and the children, but their everyday bickering or meal prep becomes defined by an absence.
That unsettling feeling is communicated by Torres’s devastating, genuine performance. She won a surprising but well-deserved Golden Globe earlier this month—a shocker not only because I’m Still Here is relatively small-scale, but also because Torres’s work is light on the histrionics that often draw in awards votes. Following their initial visit, armed men then take Eunice and her second-eldest daughter to a mysterious location, where they’re interrogated about both Rubens and their own Communist ties. Eunice remains imprisoned for almost two weeks before she’s released without much explanation; she returns home and immediately tries her best to project an air of normalcy. All the while, Eunice is looking for answers as to her husband’s whereabouts. The kids are old enough to be aware of their family’s ordeal, but their shared anxiety doesn’t affect the restrained atmosphere. Much of what occurs from then on feels sweetly, almost dully relatable.
I’m Still Here’s thoughtful perspective has resonated in Brazil, where ithas become the highest-grossing domestic film since the coronavirus pandemic. Acclaim for Salles’s diligent, low-key filmmaking dates back to his international breakthrough, 1998’s Central Station; its star (and Torres’s mother) Fernanda Montenegro received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Salles has continued to favor a muted tack throughout his career—even when making a Hollywood horror movie, such as the largely forgotten (and somewhat underrated) Dark Water.
Perhaps adding to the local hype for I’m Still Here is that it marks the end of Salles’s directorial hiatus. His last effort, an underwhelming adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, premiered back in 2012. I’m Still Here is a very worthy comeback, and certainly his strongest work since 2004’s The Motorcycle Diaries,a portrayal of Che Guevara’s early years touring Latin America. That film, like this one, wore its political message on its sleeve without overdoing it. Salles hasn’t always nailed this delicate balance (again, his rather limp On the Road), but in this case, it pays off beautifully.
I’m Still Here’s most impressive magic trick, though, is a piece of meta-casting near its conclusion. The timeline leaps forward to the year 2014, introducing the 95-year-old Montenegro as the older version of Eunice. What happens during theseclosing moments is as tempered and straightforward as everything that precedes them: The action boils down to a few feelings vaguely flickering across Eunice’s face—but that’s all Salles needs to deliver a final emotional hammer blow.
Of all the people who might come to mind while watching Donald Trump deliver his inaugural address, the French postmodernist thinker Michel Foucault would not seem obvious. But it was Foucault who theorized about how “discourse” expresses power and shapes what we think of as truth. And there is no more bludgeoning use of discourse than the decision to rename the tallest mountain in America or the ninth-largest body of water in the world.
Long before the French postmodernists, the Bible made clear what the act of naming could do; it literally created the world. But Foucault understood how this power was exercised in the hands of human beings as they jostled to establish whatever reality benefited them most.
In our current culture wars, the left gets accused of playing loose with language that is supposedly eternal and universal, distorting the meaning of words in order to suit its ideology. Wish someone “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and what you’re really trying to do, or so Fox News would argue, is erase the birth of Christ. “I’ll tell you one thing: I get elected president, we’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again,” Trump said on the stump in 2016.
But if the charge against renaming Fort Bragg or the Washington Redskins is that history can not just be waved away with a wand, then it’s notable that Trump’s first executive orders include two such discourse-altering flourishes. He is not just putting something back the way it was. He is affirming the fungibility of language, and indicating that what MAGA world wants is not so much to defund the PC police as to empower its own sheriff.
“A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said in his speech. “And we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.” These were the more obvious acts of naming; others were more subtle and also more pervasive. He asserted that “there are only two genders: male and female” and that he was creating an “External Revenue Service,” a nifty Orwellian shorthand meant to assure Americans that instead of taxing them, Trump was going to use tariffs to tax everyone else.
The case of Mount McKinley offers a particularly telling illustration of how power shapes language—and how Trump is not just defending tradition, but happily rewriting it.
The mountain was first dubbed McKinley by a gold prospector named William Dickey in an 1897 article in The New York Sun. Dickey had a good, if selfish, reason. McKinley had just become the Republican nominee for president and supported the gold standard, which would keep the value of gold high—and Dickey’s prospecting lucrative. McKinley himself had never even visited Alaska. The name was made official in 1917. But the mountain already had a name, Denali, which was how the native Athabaskan people had forever referred to it—Denali meaning “the high one.” Alaskans continued to use the old name, and in 1975 the state’s legislature and governor requested a change back to Denali, which the federal government denied. Forty years later, President Barack Obama decided to make Denali the mountain’s official name in recognition of these facts (and as a way of rewarding the Native populations in his political coalition). Now, even as Trump looks to honor one of his favorite presidents by reverting to Mount McKinley, it’s worth noting that the two Republican senators from Alaska are opposed. The office of Dan Sullivan, one of those senators, told a reporter that he “prefers the name that the very tough, very strong, very patriotic Athabaskan people gave the mountain thousands of years ago.”
Whether Trump realizes it or not, with his name game, he is following the same playbook he has accused progressives of abusing when they have sought to change the record. The “Gulf of America” is an even more blatant example, because the new name seems to have emerged out of the whole cloth of Trump’s mind (which is probably also why Hillary Clinton couldn’t suppress her laughter at its mention). What could this be other than a symbolic vanquishing of Mexico—a malignant force in Trump’s cosmology—without having to do more than change one word? He is affirming the magic of language to affect perception, and he is changing perception to rearrange the truth. As Foucault put it in one of the interviews collected in the anthology Power/Knowledge, “Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true.”
From his dais inside the Capitol, in a speech meant to set the tone for his next four years in office, Trump blew the whistle on a new phase in the culture war. He confirmed something we should already know: He is postmodern. Trump and his allies might profess an allegiance to a way of thinking that is older and more foundationally American (they say they want a return to greatness), but really he is interested in writing his own new reality, using a Sharpie to draw the lines in whatever ways rebound to his power.
After Trump first announced his intention to rename the gulf at a press conference earlier this month, a meme went around mocking his magical thinking with the suggested name “Gulf of How Does This Lower Grocery Prices?” Part of the right’s anti-woke argument has always been that progressives deploy language in ways that twist natural and self-evident meaning—say, by expanding categories of gender beyond a long-accepted binary. The argument posits that this is a kind of trickery, and that people already know what they know. Trump might discover the same thing. He can call things by different names, and hope that this changes the way people think. But in the end, they know what they know. And if the price of eggs is still high, he could call it the “Gulf of Oz” and it won’t matter a bit.
