10 Things I Hate About Trump: The Sequel

As I contemplated the National Review's bold November, 2022 cover story pictured above, I could not help but be reminded of this quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore:

 The National Review's bold January, 2016 Special Edition cover story, in which:

...National Review and a group of conservative thought leaders took a strong stand against Donald Trump on Friday.

In a special issue titled "Against Trump," the 65-year-old magazine founded by William F. Buckley railed against Trump's "unmoored" and "opportunistic" populism. The editors published a scathing editorial on the GOP front-runner, while 22 conservative thinkers weighed in on why they think Trump poses a threat to American conservatism.

You might remember that shortly after Trump mowed down all the "respectable" Republicans who were running against him in the 2016 primaries, won the nomination and won the 2016 election, this same National Review folded like a freshly laundered Klan robe.

You see, the editor-in-chief of the National Review, Mr. Rich Lowry, was rumored to be deeply embittered by the fact that, with the rise of Trump, The Breitbart Collective had replaced his National Review as America's leading journal of White Supremacy.  

Mr. Lowry had spent his entire career specializing in the kind of tasseled-loafer White Supremacy cloaked in a smirking, viperish ersatz-erudition that appeals to a small coterie of aging Republican gentry, while The Breitbart Collective -- with its blunt, front-page, in-your-face racism and conspiracy-mongering -- fed the debased and insatiable appetites of the massive, meathead base of the party.

And now the leader of the Breitbart clique, Steve Bannon, was seated at the right hand of President Stupid, while pretentious twats like Rich Lowry were forced to suck hind tit.  

It was rumored that this did not sit well with Mr. Lowry, which is why, barely eight months into the Trump administration, we find him on the Meet the Press panel doing good service to Donald Trump by trying to "both sides" the Charlottesville Fascist March while being side-eyed into a pillar of salt by Joy-Ann Reid.  

And thus, like the cornered rat he so eerily resembles, Mr. Lowry predictably scampered to the safety of the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism -- that well-fortified and amply-provisioned pundit safe-house which so many of Mr. Lowry's colleagues had labored so assiduously to create for occasions just like this (emphasis added):

RICH LOWRY:  I do think he, obviously, should've specifically denounced the white nationalists. But there are two sides to this now. This country now has a violent fringe on the right and on the left, both of whom, the white nationalists and the so-called anti-fascists who like violence, who thrill to violence, like the attention that comes with it. And this is going to get worse before it gets better.

...

RICH LOWRY:   Look, you have so-called anti-fascists who dress in black, wear masks.

JOY-ANN REID:  Were they beating clergy yesterday?

RICH LOWRY:  There was violence on both sides.

JOY-ANN REID:  There was certainly not.

RICH LOWRY:  Yes, there was.

JOY-ANN REID: Were they attacking clergy?

RICH LOWRY:  You didn't see the video?

JOY-ANN REID:  I spoke with clergy who were being beaten with brass knuckles by neo-Nazis.

RICH LOWRY:  Anti-fascists also beat people up, break things, and burn things. They both should be condemned...

If much of this sounds familiar, it might be because I wrote it up five years ago in this Sunday Morning Comin' Down post, in which I asked the question we all ask after every edition of Meet the Press: Why the fuck are hobgoblins like Lowry given any air time anywhere.

The answer, of course, is that hobgoblins like Lowry are to be found infesting every Sunday Show every week precisely because they are willing to look into a camera and smirk out bile like this.

And now, this:

Burn The Lifeboats