Why write about Trump?

A response to a (former) reader/listener

A guy named Rick who emails from time to time sent me a note that I won’t copy and paste but basically said he doesn’t like reading my criticisms of Trump so he’s not going to read my Substack anymore.

He’s right that I’ve written more about Trump recently than in a long time, and perhaps talked about him a bit more on my radio show recently; I try to avoid talking about him too much even though he does suck all the oxygen out of much of domestic and international political and economic news, and now there’s a war too.

I took a couple of minutes to ask myself whether Rick is correct that I’m writing about Trump too much now. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that I think the answer is no.

I’m writing about Trump not because I despise him (though I do think he’s a man of low character) but because he’s forcing me to by making so many bad decisions. I don’t mean decisions I don’t agree with, though that’s certainly true lately, but decisions that harm the nation and, less importantly, the Republican Party. (I’m not a Republican and I don’t really care about them except as the only credible opposition to Democrats and in that latter framing I care quite a lot, at least to the extent of preventing Democratic control of both chambers of Congress, or state legislatures, etc.)

So here’s what I wrote back to Rick:

Do what you gotta do, Rick. I don’t take any of it personally.

Trump is making FAR more mistakes than in the past, and these are mistakes that are hurting the country significantly, and I have to talk about them.

If I have readers who can’t handle it, that’s OK with me. That’s more a thing for them/you to come to terms with than for me to worry about.

Truly, there’s nothing I’d love more than for Trump to do things that would cause me to never write about him again except in praise. I want him to succeed because I want the country to succeed. We’re at a time of tremendous peril for our nation, and I mean that in a long-term sense: national debt, America’s global influence, risks (and rewards) of AI, a current war, to name a few of the biggest things I care about. I’m deeply concerned that President Trump is making decisions that increase the likelihood of a bad outcome on all of these fronts (with the possible exception of AI where I think the government has very little influence). As a parent and as someone who loves America, these risks, and the feeling that Trump is increasing them, frightens and angers me.

So, please Mr Trump, make me stop writing about you.

But until then, to Rick and people like him, I hope you will keep reading but if not the only thing that troubles me about your leaving is what it says about the willful ignorance of American voters…a thing that’s been ever-present on both sides (though it used to be worse on the left) at least since the election of Barack Obama but which seems to get worse with each passing year.

Confirmation bias is not your friend. And your confirmation bias is not my purpose.

The less polite version of my message may be this: (And while I’m Jack Nicholson for these few seconds, he’s definitely not Tom Cruise, definitely not seeking the truth.)