How Do We Defeat This?

This week changed me. We knew so much about Donald Trump already—his corruption, his ignorance, his megalomania, his sedition, his Russian collaboration, and so on. But this week proved to me, once and for all, that he’s little more than the sideshow now. Our much bigger problem is what he has unleashed.

Two images from this week make my case.

This is Kristi Noem, a Cabinet member and a former Congresswoman and governor, recording a propaganda video at a gulag in El Salvador. It’s straight-up performative cruelty, which Noem has mastered over the last two months of Homeland Security cosplay. Coming from the MAGA right like I do, I used to engage in some of this myself back in the day. Why? Because it works. Which is why leading voices on the MAGA right keep on doing it. But I was a conservative radio guy then, not the Secretary of Homeland Security.

What makes it more disgusting? Some of these prisoners, maybe even most of them, aren’t criminals. We have no idea, because they never got their day in court. One prisoner is a baker from Dallas whose autism awareness tattoo landed him in an ICE detention center. Another is a gay makeup artist seeking asylum who was detained because of his tattoos. They were denied due process in a country where due process is utterly essential. This is not what liberal democracies do. It’s what dictatorships that don’t give a shit about your civil rights do.

Here’s another:

This isn’t a mugging. In Trump’s America, unidentified government agents are snatching legal residents off the streets and from their homes in the middle of the night for exercising their 1st Amendment rights. And the voters who’ve been obsessed with the “Deep State” and “free speech” for the past decade are somehow okay with it. Cheering for it even.

Having to watch what you say so you don’t get suspended from social media or fired from a job sucks, but that’s life. Deal with it. It’s quite different than having to watch what you say so you don’t get arrested or deported. That’s unconstitutional. Fuck this. We must not accept this in America.

The problem is, it ain’t going away.

I used to think Trump was a singularly unique politician, and that MAGA would collapse in his absence. That might have happened after Jan. 6, if the Republican Party and its fundraising apparatus had turned their back on him with unified resolve. But the exact opposite happened, and he grew more powerful as a result, gaining support from people who were previously opposed to him or had no strong opinion. So I no longer believe that MAGA is going away. Trump will remain a hero long after he is gone, but MAGA will go on, with new, well-funded idols taking his place.

All of this has got me thinking long and hard about 2026, 2028, and beyond. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day chaos, because it’s necessary for us to stay engaged. But we also need a long-term plan. I’ve always been a big believer in electoral reforms that open up the playing field to more parties. I still am. But I’ve been leery of them in recent years, because, like many Americans, I didn’t want to see the anti-Trump vote broken up. We need a strong united front to stand in opposition and to vote that way.

But we need to decide now. Are we all going to unify as Democrats—or, at the very least, as “temporary Democrats”—for as long as MAGA is a thing, knowing that it might be…forever? Or is the Democratic Party too weak and toxic to overcome MAGA?

This week brought signs of hope for the Democrats. An upset win in Pennsylvania. Fears about Republicans’ narrow House majority leading Trump to rescind his nomination of Elise Stefanik for UN Ambassador. And of course, those packed Bernie/AOC rallies.

So what’s the right way forward? Is there room for people like me in the Democratic Party? Is there room for policy differences under one big tent, as long as we are all committed to American democracy? If a Kennedy can become a Republican (if not formally, certainly in practice), can Joe Walsh become a Democrat? Or, do we need a new viable third party?

I’m asking you this question because I know my reader base is a politically diverse cross-section of America…

• Many of you are NeverTrumpers like me. You’re a Republican or right-leaning independent who strongly opposes Trump, but you haven’t made the jump to the Democratic Party—and you likely never will.

• Another big group of you are Democrats or left-leaning independents, either the moderate centrist type or the lefty progressive type. We probably have significant policy disagreements, but we 100% agree that the authoritarian Russian asset in the White House, and his entire movement, must be fully resisted.

• And a small but vocal group of you are MAGA. You may only stay here for the trolling, but I’m glad you’ve hung in anyhow. At least you’re seeing and hearing things here that you won’t see or hear on Fox News or Trump-fluffing podcasts.

Let me know what you think. I’m interested in your thoughts on this, no matter where on the political spectrum you land.

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Here are our Heroes of the Week…

• U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE JAMES BOASBERG. This guy deserves a medal. Not only did he block (or try to) Trump’s El Salvador “deportation” flights, but he also is overseeing the Signalgate case. Just today, he ordered the Trump administration to preserve the contents of the unbelievable unprofessional chat among top national security officials about military strikes in Yemen.

• ON THE HILL. Rep. John Larson, Rep. Melanie Stansbury, and Rep. Jim Himes (here too!) were just a few Congresspeople who showed their fight this week.

• VOTERS FOR BALLOT INITIATIVES. Some state legislators are trying to take away the right of citizens to put initiatives on the ballot. These voters are fighting back.

• PROTESTERS IN PHILLY. Trump, who was in Philadelphia for an NCAA wrestling championship last weekend, didn’t get a warm welcome from everyone in the City of Brotherly Love.

• HONORABLE MENTION. No Republicans are heroes if they stand by Trump, but it’s still good to see Rep. Carlos Giménez admit that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should not have shared U.S. military strike plans on a commercial messaging app. Well yeah.

Did we miss anyone? Send your heroes our way!

No Social Spotlight today, my friends, but look for “The Mafia White House” TOMORROW. Available only to paid subscribers.

Interested? Sign up now for a free 7-day trial. You won’t regret it!

It was obviously a RAW week!

• I joined my friend Michael Cohen for “Raw and Unfiltered” on Wednesday.

• And Raw Story quoted me today re: Attorney General Pam Bondi practicing partisan spin instead of law.

My friend Paul has this to say. Do you agree with him?

Joe,

I listen to your show most every day. And have been for at least a year. I enjoy your perspective on our politics and the issues that we are facing today. I don’t always agree with you, but respect you and always have. During Tuesday’s show, towards the end, you tackled the elephant in the room, the text-chain national security debacle.

During your talk about how all of us should admit that what they did was wrong, you made a false equivalency on how the other side (meaning the Democrats, the progressives, etc.) has done the same. I cannot disagree with that statement more. I cannot come up with one situation where anybody in any party has done worse. We can look at the Hillary Clinton email or the Joe Biden documents-in-the-garage cases, and they pale in comparison.

And NO, both sides do not do this!

I get the feeling that you and other talk personalities are insinuating that if they just admit that it was wrong, it would go away. In this case, that cannot happen. Somebody has to pay the price for this. Just as you said, there were lives on the line for this fuckup, and for that, heads have to roll.

I am a 27-year veteran of a large Fire Department that has been held to higher standards than these folks. If I were so much to have posted pictures or put something on social media, patient information or otherwise, I would probably lose my job or at the least be demoted, no questions asked.

Keep up the good work! —Paul Morales

Hey, I want to hear from you!

What do you think of The Social Contract with Joe Walsh? What are your thoughts about what’s happening this week? How can we fix the political mess we’ve created in our country? How do we mend our frayed social fabric and rebuild an America that works?

Tell us your story and share your ideas with us. Email our editor at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.