Brace Yourself for … Full. Blown. Panic.The president is feeling cornered and lashing out. It will get ugly—and dangerous.
The craziest thing about Trump’s slowly weakening grip over Republicans in Congress isn’t that it’s happening. It’s that some Republicans are even starting to say it’s happening, right out loud. “He’d be the outlier if it didn’t happen,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told the New York Times yesterday. “The closer you get to the midterms and then beyond, everybody is measuring their own state or congressional district, and maybe people are a little more independent.” We’re sure Trump will take that well. Happy Friday.
A Panicking Trump Is a Dangerous Trumpby William Kristol On Tuesday of this week, Donald Trump was loving life. In the Oval Office, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, an autocrat Trump admires and envies, was laying the flattery on thick. At that evening’s White House state dinner, American elites were striving for new heights of shameless sycophancy. Cristiano Ronaldo was hanging out in the Oval. Elon Musk was singing his praises. What was not to like? And then, 24 hours later, Donald Trump had to sign the Epstein Files Transparency Act. This was something not to like. Trump tried to put on the best face he could. In a long post on Truth Social Wednesday evening, he took credit for the bill’s passage. He predicted it “would backfire on the Democrats” because of their “associations with Jeffrey Epstein.” And he urged one and all not to let any of this…
One thinks the man doth protest too much. Trump must not have slept well Wednesday night. Because when he woke Thursday he unleashed no less than sixteen frenzied posts and reposts accusing Democratic members of Congress of treason and sedition. Six Democratic lawmakers, all of whom had served in the military or in the intelligence community—Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Jason Crow (D-CO)—had on Tuesday released a video reminding military and intelligence officers that they should not obey illegal orders. First, Trump reposted comments from others accusing the veterans of “TREASON!” among other things. Then at 9:08 am, Trump explained matters in his own voice:
An hour later, Trump elaborated, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” This was too much even for Senate majority leader John Thune, who acknowledged when pressed that he disagreed with the president’s call for the execution of his colleagues. And it provoked a rebuke from National Review and Fox News legal analyst Andy McCarthy: “There is no insurrection or sedition without the use of force. Disobeying a lawful order is insubordination, not insurrection or sedition. Disobeying an unlawful order is required. That is all.” Even Trump’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, had to sort of walk back Trump’s statement a few hours later, leading to the remarkable spectacle of a breaking news alert informing the public that, no, the president did not want members of the opposition party killed. It’s obviously beyond irresponsible for a president to call for death for members of Congress who had the temerity to restate the law of the land. It’s also dangerous. Rep. Houlahan’s office filed a threat complaint to the Capitol Police against “the president,” and she was right to do so. In a normal political world such behavior by a president would call for censure by Congress, if not impeachment, and would provoke talk about invoking the 25th Amendment. We don’t, alas, live in a normal political world. But we do still live in a world in which Trump can’t simply suppress dissent. We do still live in a world in which Trump doesn’t simply get his way. Much to his disappointment, President Trump is no Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. And so Trump lashed out. And it’s surely not an accident that this explosion came in the immediate wake of signing the Epstein files legislation. Trump really does not want those files released. He knows it’s not going to be so easy for Attorney General Pam Bondi to refuse to release them, or to release them only selectively. Such an effort would be very difficult to cover up, and would lead to further controversy. The prospect of either the files’ release or further disputes about their release will hang over Trump for quite a while. That makes it all the more likely that a cornered and angry Trump will lash out not just in speech but in deed, with deployments of ICE and the Border Patrol to additional cities, with an attack on Venezuela, with further attempts to purge the military, and with new moves to intimidate dissent and attack opponents. Presidential panic isn’t pretty. It’s also a danger to the republic. In 1974, as the Watergate crisis came to a head, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered military leaders that he be informed of any attempt by the Nixon White House to give unauthorized orders to military units. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also tightened the reins on foreign policy decision making. They both worked with White House chief of staff Al Haig and to some degree even with Vice President Gerald Ford to contain the effects of Richard Nixon’s panicked meltdown. Needless to say, Pete Hegseth is no Jim Schlesinger, Marco Rubio is no Henry Kissinger, Susie Wiles is no Al Haig, and JD Vance is no Gerald Ford. We have a president in panic surrounded by weaklings who will submit to his diktats and sycophants happy to egg him on. And so we enter a period more dangerous than the last months of Nixon. The Trump presidency won’t end well. The question is whether the harm to the nation can be contained. All honor to Senators Slotkin and Kelly and Representatives Crow, Goodlander, Houlahan, and Deluzio for taking a step to try to limit the damage. A Funeral From a Different Timeby Tim Miller State funerals carry with them a politics of their own. Some resemble a symbolic passing of a torch to a new generation. Others are thinly veiled excuses for power players to rub elbows. In the past, they have offered opportunities for political rapprochement or steely eyed snubs. In certain cases, a political funeral can be a galvanizing moment—even in grief—for an entire movement that sees itself as ascendant, as we saw in Arizona earlier this year. Thursday’s celebration for the life of Richard Bruce Cheney was none of those things. It had the setting of a state funeral. The Navy Sea Chanters echoing through the National Cathedral, the patriotic regalia, the secret service, past presidents and vice presidents. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was the recessional. But there was no active politicking, or passing of the torch, or sense of generational change or political ascension. Because the political movement Cheney was a part of no longer exists. In his book This Town, Mark Leibovich starts his seminal documentation of Washington culture at another D.C. vigil. The prologue begins: Tim Russert is dead, but the room was alive. At Cheney’s funeral—in the same place as Russert’s—the room was cadaverous. The back of the cathedral was dotted with late middle-aged, increasingly gray GOP operatives who came of age in the Bush-Cheney aughts and have mostly left political life for corporate pastures. When, in hallowed Washington tradition, I inquired about the current work of past colleagues, the phrase I heard most was about how they are trying to “stay out of all of this.” The “this” being, of course, the world of politics; the life’s work of the man we were there to memorialize. Toward the front were the politicians and the honored guests. There were far more former-Republican elected officials there than current ones. It was a who’s-who of Never Trumpers and Bush-era operators who have been pushed from the Washington powers centers. Of present-day Republican elected officials, only a retiring Mitch McConnell and fellow Wyomingite Sen. John Barrasso caught my eye. There was nary a notable official from the current administration. Not the current VP. Nor the leaders of either chamber in Congress. Lindsey Graham tweeted that he had been present. The talk of the tabernacle was the presence of Rachel Maddow, the lefty polemicist who spent years haranguing Cheney, and dedicated her first book—”Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power”—to him.¹ She told me that she had spent the week perusing the Bush-era torture memos to get her soul right for the event. There was no sign of her Fox News counterparts, only the retired Chris Wallace, long past getting run out of Murdoch-land for offending Mr. Trump’s delicate sensibilities. Leibovich himself was there. And as we walked out together I tried to squeeze even a drop of juice out of the sharp-eyed chronicler of D.C. excess. The only gossip we could muster was about Politico’s Jonathan Martin choosing to wear a tan suit. In the alcove, I stumbled upon a man who once would’ve commanded a mob of attention at an event such as this. But on this day, Karl Rove was standing alone. He greeted me warmly saying he was feeling guilty that the party and country he once orchestrated were in shambles, while he was doing well on the outside. The only intrigue that could be detected was around John Bolton, unabashed in public in the midst of being targeted by the Trump regime. I gave him a little punch on the shoulder and he offered an uncharacteristically wide grin, with thanks for the support. The present state of affairs in our nation’s capitol was a matter largely avoided. From the lectern, there were a few light jabs at the man who displaced Bush and Cheney atop the party. But there was no sense that a battle was ongoing, as there had been at the McCain funeral a few years ago. In the eulogy for the man he entrusted with finding his vice president before deciding to dispense with the search and give him the role, former President Bush itemized the various qualities that made Cheney special. Among the traits that caught my ear: rectitude, mature judgment, courteousness, being without airs, having a disciplined mind, orderly, unexcitable. Needless to say, these are qualities that are not inhabited by our current political leadership, nor valued by our current political culture. In many ways, they are seen as vices by a party and a president that achieves power by maxing out on airs and vulgarity. And even if it wasn’t explicitly expressed, everyone in the room knew it. From the eulogistic odes to the strong, silent men of yore to the painfully waning power of those in attendance, the gathering felt not just like a funeral for a man, but for a time in Washington that is gone forever. Very few seem to miss it. Alas. AROUND THE BULWARK
Quick HitsEAT PRAY VAX: Bill Cassidy isn’t the kind of guy to live with regrets. Sure, the GOP senator and doctor might have gotten totally hosed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the latter’s confirmation hearings, during which Kennedy gave Cassidy all sorts of vaccine-related assurances that turn out to have been complete lies. But come on, man—that’s all in the past. Asked in a Punchbowl News interview yesterday whether he regrets voting to confirm Kennedy, Cassidy grew zen: “Life is lived forward,” he replied. “What I have to do is do my best to reassure the American people that vaccines are safe, that the president believes in vaccines—Operation Warp Speed is one of his crowning achievements. . . . We have to work against unfortunate attempts to undermine faith.” One can certainly imagine some ways Cassidy might live his life forward—by making it his mission in the Senate to take down the lunatic he helped put atop America’s public-health ministries in the first place. Somehow we don’t think that’s quite what he has in mind. Also, it’s starting to get a little odd, this idea—based on one policy initiative from five years ago—that Donald Trump is some sort of vaccine champion. Maybe Cassidy can remind us who Kennedy’s boss is today. MIKE WEIGHS IN: House Speaker Mike Johnson has been a helpful ally to Donald Trump this year, assuming Mike Pence’s vacated role as the guy who puts a folksy, Evangelical-tinted spin to the president’s more insane outbursts in order to keep America’s social conservatives feeling comfortable. But even Johnson struggled to explain away Trump’s violent rants yesterday calling for the death of Democratic lawmakers. The speaker told reporters that Trump was merely “defining the crime of sedition.” “That is a factual statement,” Johnson said, before pivoting to denouncing the conduct of the Democrats who released the video that prompted Trump’s ire. “For a senator like Mark Kelly or any member of the House or Senate to behave in that kind of talk is to me so just beyond the pale.” That’s right, folks: to Mike Johnson, looking into a camera and saying that military personnel are under no obligation to follow unlawful orders is morally repulsive behavior. Calling for the immediate arrest, trial, and execution of people who say such things—hey, that’s basically just reading the dictionary. Later in the day, Johnson would clarify that of course he doesn’t agree with the idea that those Democrats should be hanged. But he pleaded again for reporters to recognize that those Dems were the real villains in this saga. OPEN COMMUNICATION: Earlier this week, Donald Trump snapped at a female Bloomberg reporter who asked him a question he didn’t want to hear: “Quiet, piggy.” Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked: What did he mean by that? “Look, the president is very frank and honest with everyone in this room,” Leavitt said with a smile. “I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration, where you had a president who lied to your face and then didn’t speak to you for weeks and hid upstairs and didn’t take your questions.” She’s right about one thing: Nobody could accuse Trump of keeping his intrusive thoughts to himself—a fact that even the manosphere is starting to take notice of. Shane Gillis, a comedian with a significant MAGA fanbase, pointed to the “quiet, piggy” comment this week as evidence that Trump’s mind is short-circuiting with age: “He’s definitely not at Biden brains yet,” Gillis said on his show Matt & Shane’s Secret Podcast, “but he’s circling the drain.” Cheap Shots
1 Maddow had wanted to interview Cheney for the book, but he did not sit down with her. You’re a free subscriber to The Bulwark—the largest pro-democracy news and analysis bundle on Substack. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and to access ad-free and member-only shows, become a paying subscriber.We’re going to send you a lot of content—newsletters and alerts for shows so you can read and watch on your schedule. Don’t care for so much email? You can update your personal email preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here. Having trouble with something related to your account? Check out our constantly-updated FAQ, which likely has an answer for you.
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Brace Yourself for … Full. Blown. Panic.
November 21, 2025
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