by | Jan 21, 2025 | The Atlantic
Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET on January 21, 2025
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.”
[Peter Wehner: No one will remember Jack Smith’s report]
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.”
[Read: What I saw on the January 6 committee]
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.”
[Listen: January 6 and the case for oblivion]
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.
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by | Jan 21, 2025 | The Atlantic
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, Axios estimated 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.
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by | Jan 21, 2025 | The Atlantic
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.
[Read: The Gilded Age of Trump begins now]
“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.
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by | Jan 21, 2025 | The Atlantic
The beginning of I’m Still Here is a careful trap. In the first 20 minutes of his new film, the director Walter Salles introduces 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.
[Read: The Golden Globes got a little weird with it]
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 it has 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.
[Read: A novel in which nightmares are too real]
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 these closing 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.
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by | Jan 21, 2025 | The Atlantic
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.
[Read: How the Village People explain Trump]
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.
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