Special bonus newsletter today from Tim, who went to Arizona to hang out with TPUSA and MAGA Nation—and who got yelled at by Kari Lake for his trouble. It’s a banger of a piece. Enjoy. —JVL
I was standing beside the step-and-repeat at James O’Keefe’s annual AmFest afterparty nursing a bourbon and coke when out of the corner-of-my-eye emerged a face that was mostly familiar, minus the signature sepia blur. The face was approaching fast. Wide TV anchor smile. Caked on make-up. Main-character energy. I quickly realized I was in its sights. Immediately I’m greeted with the familiar booming, midwestern-announcer voice. Knowing that I was on enemy turf I attempted a pleasant return greeting, hoping to disarm and signal that I came in peace. “DON’T TOUCH ME,” Kari Lake screams in my face, I assume in reference to a bit of discomfort with mid-interview physical contact that I had expressed in our last encounter. “YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT.” The face briefly collects itself and appears to look back and see if her husband was taping the exchange. One of the many observers of the scene—and let me tell you, it was a SCENE—later told me that they thought Cameraman Lake had missed the approach, possibly the cause of Kari’s decision to double back for more. She turns back around. “You are a piece of shit!” she repeats over, and over, and over, and over, and over, staring up at me with increasing rage in her eyes and at times pinching my arm like an angry grandmother.¹ Lake goes on to make a series of other accusations about my integrity. Among them: That I don’t care about “fentanyl mothers,” that I am a “fake news” “liar,” and that I was hiding my signature pearl necklace underneath a button up shirt. (On this last count, at least, I can conclusively say that she was incorrect. ) The attack subsided when an unlikely peace-maker emerged from the growing crowd of onlookers: The right-wing conspiracist Laura Loomer, who you may recall as the Trump hanger-on who briefly became a lightning rod during the 2024 campaign. Loomer made her way through the crowd of onlookers, stood next to Lake and echoed her assessment that I was a lying POS, but in a tone that was more appropriate for a public gathering. Loomer’s calm-disdain-mixed-with-curiosity about my presence seemed to cause Lake’s manic rage to peter out. Throughout Kari’s tirade, I think I mostly smiled awkwardly. Though who can say. Unless she releases the video, I can’t be sure what I looked like. I remember looking around at my surroundings with low-grade anxiety and trying to assess whether this was real life or if I had mistakenly taken a hallucinogenic gummy. A few times I attempted to congratulate Lake on her new role as the nominee to be the director of the Voice Of America. At first I was trying to de-escalate, but eventually I confess that I was mocking her. Right now you’re probably asking yourself, “How did I wind up in this situation?” Well, for three years now I’ve spent the days before Christmas with these people at AmericaFest, TPUSA’s annual Gathering of the MAGAalos. I listen to strangers rant about how JFK Jr. is still alive (Yes, this happened yesterday, he even took out his phone to show me evidence). I meet characters like “The Deep State Marauder.” I slog through speeches and listen to insights from the MAGA svengalis. All of it to better understand the challenge our country faces and bring you a few laughs. Even if it means letting Trumpy Looney Tunes call me a piece of shit. Are you not entertained? So if you are a long-time reader of these dispatches and want to see them continue for years to come, this Christmas season your gift to me would be becoming a member of Bulwark+ and supporting our work. Anyway, back to Kari and me. The Lake exchange, while frivolous and a quite a bit cray, was telling. Her behavior was the most unhinged—by far—of anyone I encountered. But it reflected the broader vibe I got from the attendees: People just didn’t seem as happy and fulfilled as I expected. Take Lake. You would think that a person who went from local TV anchor, to failed gubernatorial candidate, to failed Senate candidate, to director of the Voice of America in a few short years—based on no actual accomplishments— would be . . . happy? Or self-satisfied? Or that they would at least want to gloat. But instead it was wine night goes wrong on Bravo. Telling, no? Now I know what some of you might be thinking: Maybe it’s not telling. Maybe I just have this effect on people. Certainly that would be in the back of my father’s mind if he were to read this. “I’m surprised you’ve never been punched,” he told me when I came home for holiday break during college. (I had, but I didn’t want to spoil it, and it was hard to dispute the underlying truth of his observation.) Maybe there’s something to that. But in that case it should also be noted that nobody else at this gathering of fine confederates attacked me. In fact a few viewers of Steve Bannon’s War Room, where my clips are frequently featured, greeted me fondly and tried to win this lapsed Republican over to their cause. But overall the mood at Amfest was was not the celebration I expected. It was decidedly mid. In fact the organizers of the event and the assembled were already looking forward to their next battles:
Then there were the speeches from the main stage, where the crowd reaction was tepid compared to last year. You could sense the speakers searching for material that would generate some heat. Many settled on talking about how this year proved that God was on Trump’s side and that His hand had emerged from the heavens to protect him on that field in Butler. (This bit was well received.) But in years past the real juice had come from defining foes. The crowd would get rabid as speakers railed against the deep state, and the election thieves, and Dementia Joe. Kamabla. The Never Trumpers. Kevin McCarthy. The Establishment RINO Cucks. The Muslims. The Killer Migrants. The Trans people who worked in the Biden Administration. Etc. Etc. The problem for speaker’s this year is that most of their enemies have been defeated and are down bad. And sure, some of us got kicked around a bit on stage to standard applause. But the rabidity was missing. Turns out that it’s hard to get it up for kicking the wounded donkey. There were a few moments where you could feel real energy. Bannon talking about the “criminal Zelensky” was the most noteworthy among them. But without the acute foes, it just wasn’t the same. And beyond the lack of juice, the speeches from the new MAGA establishment didn’t make up a coherent vision. There was Ben Shapiro sounding like 2012 Paul Ryan, if he had thought Donald Trump was a prophet from Yahweh. Tucker sounded like a Marxist revolutionary. Patrick Bet-David gave a rambling mess of a speech with no discernable theme whatsoever. Michael Knowles focused on young people not succumbing to porn and drugs as a key component in saving western culture. Several speakers tried to stir up rage over Congress but there was confusion about who the actual bad guy there was. DJTJ was mad at the 30-odd Republican congressmen who opposed the CR deal. Bannon was mad at Mike Johnson. Others just lashed out at the swamp in general. Outside the venue I witnessed a scene that encapsulated the mood. A crowd of 20-something MAGA youth were skipping the speeches and brandishing their camera phones as they gathered around a small man. I wondered what the fuss was about and walked up to find their victim: a single elderly protester carrying a sign that said “Dementia Don.” And let me tell you, that guy was getting OWNED. (At least the kids thought so.) The overwhelming sense I got throughout the weekend: This crowd wants to go to war, not to Washington. In the lobby of the Hyatt Regency across the street I bumped into the human proof point for this theorem: Matt Gaetz. Unlike Lake, Gaetz was affable. Standing next to his wife he seemed almost chastened, some of the shine having worn off the brashness of our other recent encounters. We talked a bit about his defenestration and how the couple will get to spend more time in his wife’s home state of California. He was adamant that it was important Trump have an AG in place on Day One so the deportations can get started. But the conversation was cut short. He was off to a media hit, and didn’t seem unhappy about it. There are two major caveats to the notion that all the winning might result in MAGA becoming purposeless, grasping around the desert in an existential search for meaning. (1) The TPUSA AmFest event itself continues to be a marvel; 21,000 devotees, young and old, making a pilgrimage to Arizona a few days before Christmas? This is objectively a sign of grassroots potency and mission-focus that’s missing right now for Democrats. It may not be pleasant to admit, but it’s hard to think of someone in the broad anti-Trump coalition who could do what Charlie Kirk has done without the program becoming rife with division and nitpicking. While the discourse has focused on progressives needing a Rogan, maybe the institutional left should be focused on creating a Kirk. (2) There is no need for MAGA to find meaning because they have their Spiritual Leader and it is he who provides the purpose and the bounty. He is the alpha and omega of the movement—and the festival. In the venue’s halls massive pictures of Trump from the moments after his assassination attempt towered over us at every turn. Pyongyang by way of Vegas. Maybe someday Trump will be gone and MAGA will have to figure out what it’s for, instead of just what it’s against. But until that time, just having the Dear Leader is enough. But when God has blessed you with the world, you must then decide what to do with it and how you will leave it for your descendants. During my interview with Bannon he bragged about the way that he had baited the media with his high-octane trolling about “Trump 2028.” But underneath the intentional mischievousness there was an admission. That even, he, the MAGA Rasputin, didn’t know how MAGA would manage all this winning. How they would survive the burden of responsibility—especially with a president who now has an expiration date. He told me:
Listening to Bannon, I couldn’t help thinking about Hans Gruber’s lament: “And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer.” Liberals have a philosophical advantage in the sense that, when your mission is progress, there’s never an endpoint. Progress is like fashion. It’s never finished. But MAGA’s entire mission was destructive. The Trumpian promise was that he would destroy the old order and vanquish the Bad People. And he did it. The final victory is here and we will not again hear from Barack Obama, or Paul Ryan, or Hillary Clinton, or George W. Bush, or Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris. They’ve all been consigned to history. So now what? 1 At this point I should admit that I did not tape this exchange and my body immediately went into fight or flight mode, so it is possible that my recollection of the exact language she used is slightly off. Given that Lake taped the exchange, I suspect we might get to see it in full. You’re a free subscriber to Bulwark+. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and ad-free and member-only podcasts, become a paying subscriber. Did you know? You can update your newsletter preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here.
|
Maybe You Can Get Tired of All the Winning?
December 22, 2024
0
