Frank Bruni: Bret, I can’t quite believe I’m asking you this question, but incredulity is a leitmotif of life under President Trump. Do you think James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, is guilty of incendiary seashell photography — incitement by exoskeleton — and deserved to be indicted (yet again!) this week?
Bret Stephens: It gives a whole new meaning to the word shellshocked.
You’re referring to the fact that Comey posted a photo last year on social media of seashells that spelled out the numbers “86” and “47” — the latter being an apparent reference to Trump as the 47th president, the former a term of art that can mean “ban” or “remove” but sometimes means “kill.” This was bad taste and worse judgment from Comey — someone whose nomination to lead the F.B.I. I opposed back in 2013 when I was at The Wall Street Journal, long before Trump came on the political scene. But the idea that Comey should be indicted over this is preposterous, dangerous and nakedly unconstitutional. And that Trump is going after him a second time is vindictive, reckless and characteristically self-defeating.
Frank: “Self-defeating” is the Trump epithet du jour. I thought I’d exhausted my capacity to be surprised by Trump, but his current behavior actually does stun me. In polling and in elections over the past seven months, Americans have been telling him that they’re not happy with a presidency consumed by grievance and self-adoration. They want gas prices lowered, not perceived enemies prosecuted. But he’s a tape loop made flesh: Glorify me! Avenge me! Really, does he have a political death wish?
Bret: What’s the Russian fable about the scorpion who convinces the frog to carry him across the river? The scorpion winds up stinging the frog — and drowning them both — because it’s in his nature. Well, that’s Trump: Petty grievances leading to self-inflicted harm is in his nature.
Frank: His nature is nurturing disaster for Republicans in November — if he and they play fair. But that’s a big “if.” To wit: On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission — under the direction of Brendan Carr, a peerless Trump sycophant who has been known to wear a lapel pin bearing the president’s visage — announced a review of all station licenses owned by ABC. It’s an act of utter malice and gross intimidation of a network with the effrontery to put Jimmy Kimmel on the air and with coverage Trump generally dislikes. It’s also of a piece with the barrage of litigation by which Trump tries to get journalists to back off, lest they face crippling legal bills. Bret, this is really, really chilling stuff.
Bret: Very true. Very bad. But by now we should be somewhat comforted by the fact that the administration’s threats rarely amount to much. Kimmel is still on air. Greenland is still part of Denmark. The Times and The Wall Street Journal still report fearlessly. Trump’s lawsuits and indictments still get thrown out of court. People continue to protest and organize against the administration. It’s not that the president’s instincts aren’t authoritarian. They are. It’s that our judicial institutions remain resilient and our democratic instincts remain strong. Come next year, when Democrats run one or both houses of Congress again, will you still be as anxious about the fate of the Republic?
Frank: First off, there’s no guarantee Democrats will prevail in the midterms, as I warned in my newsletter early this week. That uncertainty has only intensified with a Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that further gutted the Voting Rights Act and will encourage several more Republican-governed states to redraw or try to redraw their congressional maps. Second, your question baffles me: Should Democrats indeed prevail in November, of course I won’t be as anxious as I’d be if Trump continued his reign with the kind of preternaturally pliant Congress he alternately ignores and exploits now. Third, I worry about a strain of complacency in what you just said. That Trump routinely falls short of his dictatorial ambitions is no reason to shrug at them.
Bret: I’m not shrugging. But my head isn’t exploding, either. Sorry, go on …
Frank: I promise you that my head remains intact and anchored to my neck. I’m just weary of all these overly concerted stabs at measured, nonpartisan appraisal that bleed into a forced distribution of blame and a kind of moral laundering. In a column of yours this week about the unconscionable designs of the would-be assassin at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, you mentioned “relentless hyperbole about the president’s alleged destruction of democracy” as one of the problems in play. Much of what you call hyperbole isn’t. And the catastrophizing and doomsaying that do exist aren’t the most important subjects to discuss in this instance.
Bret: But much of it is hyperbole. And if a broad swath of people become convinced that the president is a tyrant, then someone out there is going to use that as justification for assassination on the principle of sic semper tyrannis. It’s for this same reason, by the way, that I predicted that Trump’s relentless efforts to delegitimize the 2020 election were so dangerous: It’s what led to Jan. 6. Unfortunately, too many liberals have played the same game by insisting Trump is fundamentally illegitimate. Not only are they playing with fire, but they’re also playing Trump’s game: His political fortunes always revive in tandem with liberal unhingement.
Frank: I don’t think most liberals are unhinged when it comes to Trump. I think they’re duly alarmed. And you can’t say liberals have “played the same game” when they haven’t mounted a comprehensive effort to overturn a presidential election — as Trump and his minions did in 2020 — and they weren’t breaking the windows of the Capitol, assaulting police officers and chanting for Mike Pence to be dragged to the gallows.
Bret: To be clear, I’m not saying that liberals are guilty of anything as monstrous as Jan. 6. By “Trump’s game,” I mean the effort not just to attack but also to delegitimize a political opponent.
Frank: I take your point, but I think we need to be careful about suggesting that strong condemnations of Trump must be tempered because they ipso facto result in violence. That’s his message — the convenient, cynical one of someone who’s trying to silence critics. Who would quash all dissent if he could (as Carr’s actions demonstrate). Who basically doesn’t seem to believe that a potentate of his majesty should have to suffer the scrutiny of lesser mortals at all.
We must consistently and unreservedly reject the spilling of blood in political disagreements. We must do our best to conduct disputes in the most constructive fashion possible. But we must not sugarcoat language when reality is bitter.
Bret: Totally. Like, when I call you an “ignorant slut” — hat tip to Dan Aykroyd — it doesn’t diminish my respect for your writerly chops.
Frank: There’s a part of me that considers that a term of endearment, studded with a few kernels of truth.
Bret: We’ll leave that to our readers’ imaginations. Let’s switch subjects to something a little more elevated: Has King Charles rescued the “special relationship” with his visit to the States this week?
Frank: Well, he sure did give it a valiant try. He was funny — and I never think “funny” when I think British royalty. (Maybe that’s just me). He wrapped his criticism in extravagant politeness, the roses far outnumbering the thorns. But in his speech to members of Congress, there were definitely thorns: the bit about excessive executive power, the obvious admonishment about failing to appreciate NATO. Did he play it right, Bret, and will it matter?
Bret: I don’t normally pay attention to the doings and sayings of British royals. But Charles’s speech was perfect — elegant, elevating and engrossing without being even remotely tendentious, warm and personal, bipartisan and badly needed at a time when our relationship with Britain is at its lowest ebb since the Suez Crisis of 1956. It was the king (of all people!) who reminded us of what democratic principles are all about. He did what Keir Starmer, his hapless prime minister, could not: repair the bridge. And he reminded the world why monarchy isn’t such a bad thing: It can safeguard and shepherd the inherent dignity of the state in periods of incompetent leadership. Something the United States could sorely use, by the way. “Yes, King” is my new motto.
Frank: Well, monarchy can play out in many ways, and the person who would most like to make “Yes, King” your new motto — directed at him — is Trump, who has all but coronated himself. I’m just not sure how a crown would work with his coiffure. It’s sort of redundant, and it seems to me a geometric or architectural challenge of the, um, hairiest order.
Bret: I’d go for our own King Charles: Charles Barkley. At least the hair wouldn’t be an issue.
Frank: Speaking of curious hair, Pete Hegseth headed to the Hill on Wednesday to take questions from members of Congress about the roughly $25 billion that he estimates we’ve spent on the Iran war so far and about his request for a more than 40 percent increase in the Defense Department’s budget. It’s hard to say which he did more lavishly and exuberantly: praise Trump or insult Democrats. His performance was preening, peevish — peak Pete. I kind of hoped he’d drop to the House floor before his departure and do 100 push-ups, just to punctuate the peacocking. Alas, no. Probably didn’t want to wrinkle his suit.
Bret: I know our readers will love me that much more when I say: We should increase the defense budget by even more than 40 percent, given the scale of the threats we face. And $25 billion is roughly what the U.S. government spends every 30 hours. A small price to pay if Iran is finally made to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for relief from sanctions.
Frank: Thus far, I don’t see Iran reliably abandoning anything at all. I just see Trump reliably abandoning all decorum in his social-media meltdowns about Iranians’ refusal to submit.
Bret: Frank, before we go, I have to steer readers toward my favorite recent piece in The Times: our former Opinion colleague Clay Risen’s deft and moving obituary for Semyon “Slava” Gluzman, the psychiatrist who was arrested by Soviet authorities in Kyiv in 1972 and sentenced to seven years of hard labor and three years of exile in Siberia for the crime of speaking truth to power. Specifically, Gluzman called out the Soviet practice of using bogus psychiatric diagnoses to imprison domestic critics who dared to criticize the system, as if opposition to Communist dictatorship was a mental disorder.
Gluzman’s life was a study in courage, never more so than near the end of it. “In 2022,” Clay wrote, “invading Russian soldiers came within about five miles” of Gluzman’s modest apartment in suburban Kyiv. One of his friends, Robert van Voren, urged him to flee.
“I called him, and he picked up,” Mr. van Voren recalled. “I hadn’t even opened my mouth when he said: ‘I know why you’re calling. If you ask me once that I need to leave this flat, I will never pick up again. This is my freedom. This is my home.’”
Sometimes, you have to be a little crazy to be wholly sane.
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