Where Are All the Pro-Trump Newspaper Columnists?

Trumpism is a clenched fist, not an argument.

A few years back, an editor at a large American newspaper contacted me to ask if I knew of any pro-Donald Trump writers that wanted to write op-eds for their paper. As with most legacy publications, their paper had a handful of traditional conservative voices, but they were all passionately opposed to the Trumpism of the Republican Party. 

This fact no doubt irritates Team MAGA, providing more fodder for its members to argue the media is biased against them. If, day after day,  I went to the New York Times and saw there was no voice supporting a guy who had once been president and may well be again, I would consider it deliberate political sabotage.

But therein lies the rub: There aren’t many pro-Trump columnists at major papers because there aren’t many pro-Trump columnists anywhere. 

In past years, it hardly seems possible that a major publication wouldn’t have a supporter of Ronald Reagan on George W. Bush on its staff. That is why in 2024, newspapers would love nothing more than to have an in-house columnist on Team Red Hat/Tie.

But Trumpism is a visual medium - it cannot withstand the scrutiny of a written column. Trump supporters can go on Fox News or Newsmax or OAN and say whatever they want in the moment without being fact-checked beforehand. But writing a column means having editors and fact checkers verify the claims you’re making. 

And because no editor will rubber-stamp a claim like “the 2020 election was stolen,” someone who tries to argue Biden didn’t win the last election or that the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were “political prisoners” will never be able to make their way to a legacy print outlet. A columnist that wanted to say, for instance, Vice President Mike Pence had the ability to choose his own electors in 2020 would be like a columnist earnestly arguing a woman is safer if she encounters a bear rather than a human man in the woods.

This phenomenon is glaringly obvious any time Trump goes on a network like CNN for a town hall or a debate. The falsehoods come so fast out of his mouth, the moderator can’t keep up, leaving 90 percent of his claims unchallenged. If the reporter stopped Trump to correct him on every lie he told, the event would be more moderator than candidate.

That is because being a Trumper is based almost solely on emotion and doesn’t rely on facts. Trumpism is a clenched fist, not an argument. And newspapers print arguments.

Sure, there is the occasional Trump-adjacent voice at a legacy newspaper. Radio Host Hugh Hewitt literally wrote a book on how Trumpism was a positive development that could usher in a new era of Reaganism (how’s that going?) But it has been a few years since Hewitt has penned an outright Trump defense in his Washington Post column. As is the case with other columnists on the right, the most he can do is attack Democrats or progressives, as backing Trump explicitly often requires bending facts beyond recognition.

Occasionally, someone like the New York Times’ Ross Douthat will jump in and write something Trump-friendly, but it frequently ends up being embarrassing. Take Douthat’s 2020 claim that “There Will Be No Trump Coup,” which has gained a place in the Bad Takes Hall of Fame (next to former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s Wall Street Journal piece, “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully.”)

And, of course, there are always pro-Trump sites like The Federalist and Breitbart that crank out Trump fan fiction on a daily basis. But they are losing steam; one recent analysis showed traffic to these types of sites has been dropping sharply.

Further, a lot of these sites flinch from defending Trump outright, stopping short of arguing that every president probably has sex with a porn star and pays her hush money to keep it quiet. Instead, the playbook is far more predictable: they engage in whataboutism (other people have done things just as bad, right?), they hammer away at loony liberals and their “woke” agenda, and  they attack the media’s anti-Trump double standards.

And those double-standards include the complete absence of full-throated Trump defenders on editorial staffs. But, again, someone who could take Trump’s incoherence and craft it into the occasional understandable, sensible column would be the most valuable writer in America. Any legacy outlet would snap them up in a second, just to buttress themselves against claims they are overtly leftist.

But no such columnist exists because there is no philosophy to Trumpism aside from “whatever Trump does is good and righteous.” MAGA-ism only exists in the spoken word. When its claims are vetted beforehand, they die before publication.

Nonetheless, I recently heard from a second editor of a legacy publication looking for a Team Trump columnist to defend the former president. So if you are the one pro-Trump scribe in America who can wrangle the former president’s bag of contradictions and incoherencies into a compelling argument, congratulations. Have I got a job for you.

ALSO: DIANA TAURASI IS A QUEEN

As Iowa women’s basketball player Caitlin Clark was leading her team to the national championship game earlier this year, her future WNBA competitors were already warning her about what awaited her at the professional level.

“Reality is coming,” Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi said when asked about whether Clark’s unprecedented ability to score will translate to the pros. “There’s levels to this thing.”

“And that’s just life, we all went through it,” Taurasi added. “You look superhuman playing against some 18-year-olds but you’re going to come [play] with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time. Not saying it’s not gonna translate, because when you’re great at what you do, you’re just gonna get better. But there is gonna be a transition period, where you’re gonna have to give yourself some grace as a rookie.”

Taurasi’s point seemed more about the quality of play at the WNBA level than it was Clark’s ability to adapt. Nonetheless, Taurasi suffered a torrent of criticism from people calling her a “hater.”

But if anything, Clark’s first week in the WNBA has shown Taurasi’s prediction to be correct. Clark is now being guarded by grown women who need to succeed on the basketball court in order to feed their kids, not by 18-year-olds. As a result, Clark has had a string of games in which we have seen her struggle more than she ever did in college. (I pointed out on social media that defenders in the WNBA were much better, for which I was called “sexist” and “misogynistic.”)

Further, Taurasi has standing to say whatever she wants because she is arguably the best women’s player of all time. This is not someone talking out of her ass.

“The new fans are really sensitive these days, you can’t say anything,” Taurasi later said. “It’s kind of like when you go from to kindergarten to first grade, there’s a learning adjustment — and then when you go from high school to college, there’s a learning adjustment.”

This doesn’t mean Clark isn’t supremely talented or that she won’t adjust to the pro game. It just means that it is going to take some time.

But in the meantime, we should all appreciate Taurasi for being salty and competitive. In men’s sports, there are all sorts of superstars known for trash talk, and they are revered for it. But Caitlin Clark joins the league and competitive verbal jabs are suddenly hate speech? Rivalries are one of the things that fuels the popularity of sports - let Taurasi and Clark have one, the same way Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had one.

Trust me, the women can handle it.

ALSO:

For my National Review column last week, I discussed the worthlessness of political endorsements and how crazy it is that people are mad at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for saying he wouldn’t be endorsing Joe Biden this year:

But here we are in 2024, when everyone is dying to tell you not only whom they are voting for but for whom you should vote. It is now accepted that it is your civic duty to overshare, broadcasting what was once a secret between you and the levers inside the voting booth.

In the social-media age, celebrity politicking — by every reality star, sports legend, and musician — has gotten so ubiquitous, some famous people face condemnation for choosing to be nonpolitical.

A few weeks ago, former professional wrestler and current movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson announced that he wouldn’t be endorsing any candidate in the 2024 presidential election. (Imagine how that sentence would look to someone in, say, 1980.)

The Rock told Fox News’ Will Cain that he regretted endorsing Joe Biden in 2020. “The takeaway after that was it caused an incredible amount of division,” he said. “I realize now going into this election, I will not do that. My goal is to bring this country together. I believe in that. There will be no endorsement. At this level of influence, I will keep my politics to myself.”

Johnson further decried “cancel culture” and “woke culture,” saying that those things “bugged” him.

Predictably, The Rock was castigated by those who feel that the world needs a human protein shake to tell them how to vote. MSNBC contributor Ja’han Jones accused Johnson of throwing “Black people under the bus,” linking him to Trump-friendly business interests. The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill derided Johnson’s “political cowardice.”

…

The reporters and columnists telling you whom to vote for are really just frustrated political operatives dying to feel that they’re making a difference. Like Oscar Wilde’s contention that only the poor think about money, only those without real influence concern themselves with telling others how to vote. They can’t accept that the only responsible path is to express their views on politics and culture honestly. If that inspires people to vote a certain way, so be it.

Otherwise, discussing whom you’re voting for is just crass. It’s too much exposure, like taking your pants off at a nice restaurant during a first date. Better to leave a little mystery before the more intimate business takes place.

Read the full thing here.

ALSO:

The Wasn’t That Special: 50 Years of SNL podcast is chugging along. Yesterday we released the Season 23 episode, in which we discuss how the show lit up after the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal broke, how Will Ferrell came into his own in the second half of the season, whether Norm Macdonald deserved to be fired from the Weekend Update news desk, and how painful it was to watch Chris Farley host an episode just two months before his death.

You can subscribe and listen here.

Also, if you sign up for a free account, we will add your name to an end-of-the-week drawing in which the winner will get a free full subscription. So join us and get your name in the sweepstakes!

FINALLY:

I’ve been a fan of Portland, Ore. singer/songwriter Laura Gibson for a long time. I went to see her play live in 2009 and again got to see her last weekend. Proof:

(I was able to keep my eyes open this time.)

In 2009, she was actually the first person ever to perform on NPR’s now-famous “Tiny Desk Concerts” series. Video is here, and well worth a watch.