The fad began with a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest in New York City on a beautiful day last month. Thousands of people came and caused a ruckus. At least one of the Timothées was among the four people arrested by New York City police. Eventually, the real Timothée Chalamet showed up to take pictures with fans. The event, which was organized by a popular YouTuber who had recently received some attention for eating a tub of cheeseballs in a public park, captured lightning in a bottle. It didn’t even matter that the winner didn’t look much like the actor, or that the prize was only $50.
In the weeks since, similar look-alike contests have sprung up all over the country, organized by different people for their own strange reasons. There was a Zayn Malik look-alike contest in Brooklyn, a Dev Patel look-alike contest in San Francisco, and a particularly rowdy Jeremy Allen White look-alike contest in Chicago. Harry Styles look-alikes gathered in London, Paul Mescal look-alikes in Dublin. Zendaya look-alikes competed in Oakland, and a “Zendaya’s two co-stars from Challengers” lookalike contest will be held in Los Angeles on Sunday. As I write this, I have been alerted to plans for a Jack Schlossberg look-alike contest to be held in Washington, D.C., the same day. (Schlossberg is John F. Kennedy’s only grandson; he both works at Vogue and was also profiled by Vogue this year.)
These contests evidently provide some thrill that people are finding irresistible at this specific moment in time. What is it? The chance to win some viral fame or even just positive online attention is surely part of it, but those returns are diminishing. The more contests there are, the less novel each one is, and the less likely it is to be worth the hassle. That Chalamet showed up to his look-alike contest was magic—he’s also the only celebrity to attend one of these contests so far. Yet the contests continue.
Celebrities have a mystical quality that’s undeniable, and it is okay to want to be in touch with the sublime. Still, some observers sense something a bit sinister behind the playfulness of contest after contest, advertised with poster after poster on telephone pole after telephone pole. The playwright Jeremy O. Harris wrote on X that the contests are “Great Depression era coded,” seeming to note desperation and a certain manic optimism in these events. The comparison is not quite right—although the people at these contests may not all have jobs, they don’t seem to be starving (one of the contests promised only two packs of cigarettes and a MetroCard as a prize)—but I understand what he’s getting at. Clearly, the look-alike competitions do not exist in a vacuum.
The startling multiplication of the contests reminds me of the summer of 2020, when otherwise rational-seeming people suggested that the FBI was planting caches of fireworks in various American cities as part of a convoluted psyop. There were just too many fireworks going off for anything else to make sense! So people said. With hindsight, it’s easy to recognize that theory as an expression of extreme anxiety brought on by the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, some were also feeling heightened distrust of law enforcement, which had in some places reacted to Black Lives Matter protests with violence.
Today’s internet-y stunts are just silly events, but people are looking for greater meaning in them. Over the past few weeks, although some have grown a bit weary of the contests, a consensus has also formed that they are net good because they are bringing people out of their house and into “third spaces” (public parks) and fraternity (“THE PEOPLE LONG FOR COMMUNITY”). This too carries a whiff of desperation, as though people are intentionally putting on a brave face and shoving forward symbols of our collective creativity and togetherness.
I think the reason is obvious. The look-alike contests, notably, started at the end of October. The first one took place on the same day as a Donald Trump campaign event at Madison Square Garden, which featured many gleefully racist speeches and was reasonably compared by many to a Nazi rally. The photos from the contests maybe serve as small reassurance that cities, many of which shifted dramatically rightward in the recent presidential election, are still the places that we want to believe they are—the closest approximation of America’s utopian experiment, where people of all different origins and experiences live together in relative peace and harmony and, importantly, good fun. At least most of the time.
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Members of Donald Trump’s inner circle understandably wish to interpret the election results as a mandate for the most extreme right-wing policies, which include conducting mass deportations and crushing their political enemies.
But how many Trump supporters think that’s what they voted for?
Many seem not to—persisting in their denial of not only Trump’s negative qualities and the extremism of his advisers, but the idea that he would implement policies they disagreed with. There were the day laborers who seemed to think that mass deportations would happen only to people they—as opposed to someone like the Trump adviser Stephen Miller—deemed criminals. There was the restaurant owner and former asylum seeker who told CNN that deporting law-abiding workers “wouldn’t be fair,” and that Trump would not “throw [them] away; they don’t kick out, they don’t deport people that are family-oriented.” There are the pro-choice Trump voters who don’t believe that he will impose dramatic federal restrictions on abortion; the voters who support the Affordable Care Act but pulled the lever for the party that intends to repeal it.
This denial suggests that voting for Trump was not an endorsement of those things but a rebuke of an incumbent party for what voters saw as a lackluster economy. The consistent theme here is that Trump advisers have a very clear authoritarian and discriminatory agenda, one that many Trump voters don’t believe exists or, to the extent it does, will not harm them. That is remarkable, delusional, and frightening. But it is not a mandate.
During the last weeks of the campaign, when I was traveling in the South speaking with Trump voters, I encountered a tendency to deny easily verifiable negative facts about Trump. For example, one Trump voter I spoke with asked me why Democrats were “calling Trump Hitler.” The reason was that one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff, the retired Marine general John Kelly, had relayed the story about Trump wanting “the kind of generals that Hitler had,” and saying that “Hitler did some good things.”
“Look back on the history of Donald Trump, whom they’re trying to call racist,” one Georgia voter named Steve, who declined to give his last name, told me. “If you ask somebody, ‘Well, what has he said that’s actually racist?,’ usually they can’t come up with one thing. They’ll say all kinds of things, and it’s like, ‘No, what?’ Just because the media says he’s racist doesn’t mean he’s racist.”
This is consistent with Trump voters simply ignoring or disregarding facts about Trump that they don’t like. Democratic pollsters told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that “voters didn’t hold Trump responsible for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, something Trump openly boasted about during the campaign.” Sargent added, “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency—even if they saw these things negatively—were his fault.” One North Carolina Trump voter named Charlie, who also did not give me his last name, told me that he was frustrated by gas prices—comparing them with how low they’d been when he took a road trip in the final year of Trump’s first term. That year, energy prices were unexpectedly depressed by the pandemic.
Many Trump voters seemed to simply rationalize negative stories about him as manufactured by an untrustworthy press that was out to get him. This points to the effectiveness of right-wing media not only in presenting a positive image of Trump, but in suppressing negative stories that might otherwise change perceptions of him. And because they helped prevent several worst-case scenarios during Trump’s first term, Democrats may also be the victims of their own success. Many people may be inclined to see warnings of what could come to pass as exaggerations rather than real possibilities that could still occur.
Watching Trump “go from someone who’s beloved in the limelight to someone who’s absolutely abhorred by anybody … in the media is completely—I don’t understand it. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” another Georgia Trump voter, who declined to provide his name, said to me. “And generally, the things that don’t make sense are solved by the simplest answers.”
This speaks to an understated dynamic in Trump’s victory: Many people who voted for him believe he will do only the things they think are good (such as improve the economy) and none of the things they think are bad (such as act as a dictator)—or, if he does those bad things, the burden will be borne by other people, not them. This is the problem with a political movement rooted in deception and denial; your own supporters may not like it when you end up doing the things you actually want to do.
All of this may be moot if Trump successfully implements an authoritarian regime that is unaccountable to voters—in many illiberal governments, elections continue but remain uncompetitive by design. If his voters are allowed to, some may change their minds once they realize Trump’s true intentions. Still, the election results suggest that if the economy stays strong, for the majority of the electorate, democracy could be a mere afterthought.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), once on the shortlist to be attorney general under the incoming Trump administration, suggested Sunday that Justice Department employees who investigated
A panel discussion on ABC’s This Week, on Sunday, got heated after former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus blasted criticism of President-elect Donald Trump as “hyperbolic nonsense.”
The fireworks started after host Jon Karl questioned Priebus about past criticism of Trump by Tulsi Gabbard — who is Trump’s pick to be Director of National Intelligence. Karl noted comments from former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley — who called Gabbard a Russian “sympathizer.”
“You wouldn’t rise to a rank of… lieutenant colonel if our intelligence agencies thought that somehow she was some kind of Russian asset,” Priebus said. “Which, if people are going to level those charges, they better be darn sure that they’re accurate.”
“Nikki Haley didn’t say that,” Karl said. “She said she was a sympathizer.”
“But it’s all insinuted, OK?!” Priebus shot back. “It’s this cutesy, hyperbolic nonsense coming out of the media and the Democrats who refuse to accept the fact that almost a majority or a majority of Americans have accepted Donald Trump and Trumpism. I think it’s time to give this guy a month of peace and let the process play out.”
The comment elicited laughs and gasps from several this week This Week panelists.
“I don’t know about giving him any peace, child,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), a fellow panelist. She added, “You signed up to be the President of the United States, and we are definitely at a precipice in this country. And people were hurting and they believe in him. So, no, there should not be any peace over the next four years.”
“You’ve got to give peace to get it,” former New Jersey governor Chris Christie added. And I think what the president needs to show is… that he’s not going to be on the attack constantly against everybody, that he should bring some Democrats in, start to talk to them about the things where they agree, because there are places where they agree. I mean, he and Bernie Sanders agree on a lot of things. So I’m all for having some peace because I think we’re all tired of all the other stuff. But you got to give peace to get it.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) told CBS News Sunday morning she would “absolutely” support confirming some of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.
Duckworth has slammed some of Trump’s picks, but she told Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan there are a few names she might be eager to help confirm.
Brennan noted polling has shown most Americans support Trump’s handling of his transition to a second term and asked Duckworth if she would work with the incoming president.
“Our polling shows that there is a desire among the American people to see Democrats and Republicans work together in this future Trump administration,” Brennan said.
Brennan noted Trump’s Labor Department pick, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), had drawn support from some pro-union progressives.
She asked, “Could you see yourself supporting her or any of the other nominees?” Duckworth replied:
Absolutely. You know, what I would need to do is have a chance to sit down and talk with each one of these nominees and listen to them and hear what they have to say. I think that Congressman Collins over at VA, he’s the nominee for VA, is another person I can talk with. In fact, I worked with him when I was in the House a few years back.
I am going to evaluate each one of these candidates based on their ability to do the job and their willingness to put the needs of the American people first and not be on a retribution campaign for Mr. Trump. So it’s about what they’re willing to be independent and do the job that they are being nominated to do. And are they competent and qualified for the position?
The senator has slammed Trump’s Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth, who has expressed his opposition to women serving in military combat roles.
Duckworth lost her legs in combat in Iraq while serving in the Army.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) claimed that her congressional oversight role with the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) won’t leave room to “care about people’s feelings,” as she’ll be too busy rooting out institutional waste and doling out “pink slips” to government employees.
Greene appeared on Sunday Morning Futures with Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo to talk about the yet-to-be created subcommittee that will work with Trump-appointees Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to “eliminate government waste.”
“We’ll be looking at everything from government-funded media programs like NPR that spread nothing but Democrat propaganda,” Greene began. She continued:
We’ll be going into grant programs that funds things like sex apps in Malaysia, toilets in Africa. All kinds of programs that don’t help the American people. I want to talk t the people at the Pentagon and ask them why they can’t find billions of dollars every single year and why they fail their audit.
But not just that, Maria, I’d like to talk to the governors of sanctuary states and the mayors of sanctuary cities and have them come before our committee and explain why they deserve federal dollars if they’re going to harbor illegal criminal aliens in their states and their cities. We’re going to look in every single aspect. And, we don’t care about people’s feelings; we’re going to be searching for the facts and we’re going to be verifying if this is worth spending the American hard-earned, the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars on.
Kentucky Rep. James Comer (R) appointed Greene last week to lead the subcommittee he’s been tasked with organizing.
Greene told CNN, “I’m excited to chair this new subcommittee designed to work hand in hand with President Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the entire DOGE team. Our subcommittee’s work will expose people who need to be FIRED. The bureaucrats who don’t do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon, and don’t know where BILLIONS of dollars are going, will be getting a pink slip.”
