Administration Rewrites Reality, Retreats from Global Leadership

Key Quotes

"On the one hand this is classic trump don't believe your eyes and ears believe only what I tell you but the sheer speed and scope of the rewriting of history here really strikes me as impressive I feel like it probably took at least a day or two for the trumpists to spin the January 6th riots into some kind of patriotic love fest but this was almost instantaneous I continue to think that the fracturing of reality is a problem we're going to be dealing with long after this particular pack of liars is out of power."

Michelle Cottle highlights the immediate and impressive speed with which the Trump administration rewrites events, contrasting it with previous instances. Cottle argues that this "fracturing of reality" is a lasting problem that will persist beyond the current administration.

"what you've done is you've put a situation where you are training ice agents for sort of maximum aggression you are putting them in places where you don't typically have ice agents you are doing it in a way that's deliberately inflammatory you're you're trying to stoke up rage or trying to stoke up anger and unless remember these are ice agents these are not beat cops for example this is not fbi so these are not people who are actually really trained all that much for the kinds of really tough public interactions that are the absolute and have always been the absolute norm if you're say you're a beat cop so these are not even like the police who are normally responsible for maintaining law and order"

David French explains that deploying ICE agents in unfamiliar and inflammatory situations, without adequate training for public interaction, creates a high risk for aggression and anger. French points out that ICE agents are not trained for the same public order responsibilities as beat cops.

"escalation is sort of built into this entire system like how how it's being set up you put ice agents in american neighborhoods places where they're not used to seeing that kind of presence detaining immigrants detaining in some cases american citizens people react in protest in concern and confusion and then terrible things like this happen and the the president and and kirstjen nielsen the secretary of homeland security further escalate and inflame the situation with the way they they respond to it"

Carlos Lozada argues that the system itself is designed for escalation, by placing ICE agents in neighborhoods where their presence is unusual and can lead to confusion and protest. Lozada states that the reactions of the president and the Secretary of Homeland Security further inflame these already tense situations.

"nationalism almost always leads to militarism it's a mistake to think of isolationism going hand in hand with nationalism that nationalism leads to militarism especially if you're talking about a person who is very concerned with greatness bigness legacy to sort of say well you know in trump's second term 30 40 years from now what happened then no this is not how these folks think about these things they think about greatness they think about legacy and domestically that's hard we have a system that makes it very difficult in the absence of a truly sweeping electoral victory to have a giant domestic legacy it's just hard but when it comes to foreign affairs and especially when it comes to the kind of donald trump style that we now have seen him kind of perfect to a degree over the five years or so he's been in the oval office is that he likes the big showy military strike that is done quickly overnight"

David French asserts that nationalism inherently leads to militarism, particularly for leaders focused on greatness and legacy. French explains that these leaders often pursue foreign policy through large, swift military actions, as it is a more accessible way to achieve a significant legacy compared to domestic policy.

"The the notion to me is that they're they're hunkering down around north and south america you know going from america first to well the americas first right that is that is where we are and and in a sense owning up to kind of the the sphere of influence model of the world like you know let china have its stuff let russia have its stuff this is our hemisphere this is what what we are doing at the end of the cold war you know when america is sort of like strutting around the world basking in the unipolar moment it would have been absurd to imagine that we would be so proud about limiting our sphere of influence to this hemisphere"

Carlos Lozada interprets the current foreign policy as a shift from "America First" to "The Americas First," signifying a retrenchment into a sphere of influence model. Lozada contrasts this with the post-Cold War era when the U.S. was a global leader, finding it absurd that the nation would now be proud of limiting its influence to a single hemisphere.

"The actual secrets of the trump administration is that they have very cynically in a way that i've never seen other administrations quite do hacked civic ignorance they realize how little attention most americans pay to political news and they've realized if they can get out there with a top line message very aggressively right away they can set the terms of the debate regardless of the underlying truth of the matter and so they do things all the time they say things all the time that are just designed to get them through the next news hour or the next news day with extreme confidence that all of this just fades away"

Michelle Cottle posits that a key strategy of the Trump administration is to exploit civic ignorance by delivering aggressive, top-line messages that control the narrative, regardless of factual accuracy. Cottle argues that this approach is designed to navigate immediate news cycles, with the confidence that the details will fade from public awareness.