Kristen Welker, the anchor of the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” wanted to know if Vice President JD Vance thought the war in Gaza was really and durably over.
Vance wanted to proclaim the majesty of President Trump and shame her network for failing to recognize it.
That’s how their interview roughly a week ago began. That’s the first 75 seconds. Vance reprimanded NBC News for not reporting that at a rally in Israel the previous night, people cheered Trump and his diplomatic brilliance. Vance gushed: “He actually broke the mold.” After, apparently, breaking Vance’s dignity.
Trump, you see, is “brave.” Trump, you must understand, is “incredible.” How do I know? Kash Patel said so.
On Wednesday, the F.B.I. director participated in a White House news conference during which he interspersed a recitation of crime statistics with exultations of gratitude to — and reverence for — the president. That’s when and where the “brave” and the “incredible” came in, along with Patel’s declaration that Trump had already made inroads against violent crime that “would be historic for a four-year presidency.”
Trump stood just feet away, an emperor gorging on his encomiums.
He’s insatiable, and the prevalence of his attendants’ gooey hooey has not only turned it into something expected but also obscured its strangeness — and its cause for concern. There’s no team of rivals around Trump, no constructive dissent, no battle of ideas from which the best one emerges. There’s just flattery and more flattery. Tribute upon tribute. Hyperbole atop hyperbole.
Of course, telling bosses how effective, charismatic and visionary they are is a tried and true route to advancement. And telling all the world about a politician’s underappreciated gifts is a bona fide profession — and a lucrative one at that. To cover a political campaign is to have an armada of operatives whisper sweet superlatives about their candidates in your ear.
But the sort of fanboy fan dances that Vance and Patel routinely perform? That’s extreme. As was Attorney General Pam Bondi’s pathetic effort, during a Senate hearing in which she was fielding questions, to make Democrats on the panel answer for their supposed crimes against Trump. How, she wondered, could they be so mean to him? How, I wondered, does she keep a straight face?
I guess practice makes perfect, and she’s a veteran of those cabinet meetings and Oval Office events that are essentially television roasts turned inside out. The person at the mic doesn’t hurl insults at the guest of honor in the hopes of laughter. He or she lavishes the head of state with praise so overwrought it’s unintentionally hilarious.
If that lip service were merely the ceremonial price that Trump’s aides paid to be able to attend to the rest of their jobs in a serious manner, it would be little more than embarrassing. But it’s part of a broader servility, a more profound humiliation. Their deeds must match their diction.
So Bondi has either encouraged or indulged nuisance investigations and malicious prosecutions of Trump’s enemies, including James Comey and Letitia James. Patel expanded polygraph tests at the F.B.I. — to prevent pejorative portrayals of the administration from leaking out. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth channeled Trump’s contempt for independent journalists and emulated Trump’s attacks on the media by laying down new rules that essentially forced self-respecting reporters to hand in their Pentagon press credentials. The president was pleased: He wondered aloud about doing something similar at the White House.
Maybe Patel and Hegseth were always this paranoid and petulant. But Bondi seems to have grown crueler and coarser in direct relation to her time with Trump, and Vance’s cartoonish sycophancy is the convenient inverse of his past statements that Trump was “America’s Hitler” and an “idiot.”
He and Bondi are demonstrating a scary talent for deference, a spooky willingness to bend any which way to win and hold on to Trump’s favor. They want so badly to be in the room where it happens that they’re content to be throw pillows.
I’m stumped. If you owe your lofty station to your lax scruples and if your power hinges on your obeisance, what power do you really have? What pride?
And what’s next? Will I look up someday soon and see Patel feeding Trump grapes, one by one, while Vance, with a white linen napkin, wipes the corners of the president’s mouth? It wouldn’t shock me. But it would put me off fruit.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Atlantic, Fintan O’Toole questioned a line of thinking favored by America’s highest-ranking justices: “The originalist fallacy that dominates the current Supreme Court — the pretense that it is possible to read the minds of the founders and discern what they ‘really’ meant — in fact turns the founders into ventriloquists’ dummies. We express our own prejudices by moving their lips.” (Chris Leyerle, Union, Wash.)
Also in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum grieved the Trump administration’s abandonment of the sorts of program that promoted democratic values around the globe: “Instead of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, we now have the Conservative Political Action Conference, a kind of movable rent-a-troll event. Identikit nationalists anywhere — Hungary, Poland, Britain, Mexico, Brazil — can pay the CPAC team to come to their country and produce a MAGA show.” (William Finlay, Athens, Ga.)
And Helen Lewis reported from the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which paid big-name comedians big bucks to come to Saudi Arabia: “The festival is an outgrowth of Vision 2030, the grand Saudi project to prepare for the kingdom’s post-oil future. The old Saudi brand was ‘austere theocracy,’ but the new one is ‘fun, fun, fun, but still with beheading.’” (Harold Gotthelf, Fords, N.J.)
In her newsletter, Mary Geddry reacted to Pete Hegseth’s sloppily worded, unintended suggestion that the United States was allowing a Qatari military base in a Western state. “The incident had achieved the impossible: It made the Pentagon look both imperial and incompetent at the same time,” she wrote. “Still, there’s a certain poetry to it. After all, this administration has spent the past 10 months blurring the line between church and state, truth and fantasy, civilian and combatant, why not blur the line between Idaho and Doha while we’re at it?” (Sharon Gold, Manhattan)
Geddry separately mocked the Trump administration’s studiously blasé attitude about the No Kings demonstrations, pointing to one of his press aides: “Abigail Jackson’s entire statement on the protests was two words: ‘Who cares?’ Which is also the administration’s energy policy, health policy and general governing philosophy.” (Debby Rubin, Bethesda, Md.)
In The Times, Meher Ahmad assessed the reaction to Zohran Mamdani, the young politician favored to be elected mayor of New York City next month: “After two years of war in Gaza and nearly nine months into President Trump’s second term, the treatment of Mr. Mamdani, 33, has served as a black light, revealing the flecks of anti-Muslim bigotry that still dapple American institutions.” (Philip Fine, Montreal, and Joan Vohl Hamilton, South Hadley, Mass., among others)
Also in The Times, Erin O. White exposed the tyranny behind the insistence that all members of a household gather reverently toward the end of the day for a shared meal: “The messaging on family dinner is intense! I would like to get the P.R. machine behind family dinner working for the end of gun violence in America. Family dinner will make your children smart! It will keep your children off drugs! Your children will learn languages, turn away from vaping and join model U.N. if you just sit together at the table for 15 minutes every evening, a plate of food in front of you.” (Kathryn Racette, Kalamazoo, Mich., and Virginia Wise, South Woodstock, Vt., among others)
And Mark Robichaux inventoried the ale in his life: “I’ve chased beer across continents and dive bars, in every style and setting, from a divine dubbel brewed by monks in a Belgian abbey to the occasional late-night can of gas-station lager that tasted like aluminum and questionable decisions.” (Loretta Sheldon, Ferndale, Wash., and Bob Jenkins, St. Petersburg, Fla., among others)
In The Washington Post, Will Leitch described his passion for the St. Louis Cardinals by recalling his obsessive, exclusive focus on them during the season when they last won the World Series, in 2011. “My wife informs me that it’s also the year our oldest son was born,” he wrote. (Paul Neely, Chattanooga, Tenn.)
Finally, in The Athletic, Grant Brisbee gave Drew Gilbert, an outfielder for the San Francisco Giants, his due: “Every team needs a weirdo who’s willing to stand in the middle of a thunderstorm and challenge the clouds to a fistfight.” (Ellen Langille, Mount Dora, Fla.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Reading, Watching, Writing and Listening To
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Many of the tributes to Diane Keaton following her recent death spotlighted her work in “Annie Hall,” and understandably so: It’s unforgettable, it won her the Oscar for best actress and it catapulted her to a whole new altitude of fame. But her identification with that comedic role sometimes eclipsed her superb dramatic work, so I was delighted to see recognition of it in two appraisals in The Times that trailed her obituary. Manohla Dargis captured Keaton’s importance to the first two “Godfather” movies, while Alissa Wilkinson did justice to Keaton’s moving and mesmerizing work opposite Warren Beatty in “Reds.” Keaton could be as heartbreaking as she was hilarious. Versatility like hers is rare.
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Keaton never received sufficient praise for her performance in the 1982 drama “Shoot the Moon,” which cast her and Albert Finney as a couple whose marriage painfully falls apart. But the movie found a champion in Pauline Kael, the fearsome film critic for The New Yorker, who wrote: “Diane Keaton and Albert Finney give the kind of performances that in the theater become legendary.” Kael was especially keen on Keaton. “Very few young American movie actresses have the strength and the instinct for the toughest dramatic roles — intelligent, sophisticated heroines,” Kael decreed. “Jane Fonda did, around the time that she appeared in ‘Klute’ and ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ but that was more than 10 years ago. There hasn’t been anybody else until now.” “Shoot the Moon” is available for a modest rental fee on a few streaming services, including Amazon Prime and Fandango at Home.
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Last week I rejoined Bret Stephens for another edition of the Times Opinion feature The Conversation; you can find our chat — about Trump’s overreach, Gavin Newsom’s political makeover and more — here.
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Sweet validation! (Or is it vindication?) Several days ago I tripped across a headline from Far Out Magazine that promised to tell me “Thom Yorke’s single favorite song of all time.” Given Yorke’s musical genius — he was Radiohead’s lead songwriter and singer — my curiosity was piqued. I clicked. And I learned that Yorke had cited “Unravel,” by Bjork, not as his unrivaled No. 1 but as “one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.” He apparently said that back in 2006, though I had no idea when I singled out and shouted out “Unravel” in an edition of this newsletter five weeks ago. From the Far Out article, I also learned that Yorke and Radiohead performed a stripped-down cover of “Unravel” in 2007. Speaking of Radiohead and beautiful music, I rarely let a month go by without relistening to “Fake Plastic Trees,” from the album “The Bends.” Its gentle melody, its slow build, its climactic urgency and Yorke’s falsetto combine to create something sumptuous.
On a Personal Note
Like many pro football fans, I turn each weekend to the teams that promise the most excitement and the players who reliably dazzle. This season, that has often meant the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their gutsy quarterback, Baker Mayfield. Mayfield often completes throws that didn’t seem possible, evades sacks with acrobatic dexterity, engineers scoring drives precisely when they’re needed most. He has repeatedly pulled off come-from-behind fourth-quarter victories. All of that is noteworthy in and of itself, but it’s even more remarkable for this reason:
Many fans and coaches had counted Mayfield out.
After winning the Heisman Trophy in 2017, he joined the Cleveland Browns in 2018 for an impressive rookie season. But the Browns later soured on him. He was traded to the Carolina Panthers. Then to the Los Angeles Rams. And then to the Buccaneers.
Four teams in six years. That didn’t bode well. And it might have broken a lesser athlete.
But Mayfield, in his third season with the Bucs, is at his peak. And it shows — in his poise, in his ebullience, in his stats. There’s talk that he could wind up as the M.V.P. of the N.F.L. There’s talk as well that the Bucs could go all the way to the Super Bowl. If so, it will affirm not only Mayfield’s athletic talent but also his character and wisdom: He didn’t regard his setbacks as permanent ones. He didn’t take rejection as a definitive, binding verdict.
I mention this because we too often speak of success as a steady ascent. It’s just as frequently a jagged line. We too often hear people called winners or losers as if those are congenital labels, unchangeable fates, fixed categories. Most of us do a mix of winning and losing. We’re wrong to bask in our victories. But we’re just as wrong to stew in our defeats.
Mayfield didn’t stew in his. He learned. Regrouped. Improved. And when I watch him now, so joyous and indefatigable, I see something better than an invulnerable champ. I see someone who appreciates the roller-coaster nature of this ride we’re all on — and makes the most of his time at the top because of that.
Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Age of Grievance” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter. Instagram Threads @FrankBruni • Facebook
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