The Trouble with Trumpers

It’s not the MAGA faithful in their red caps who keep me up at night. It’s the ones with law degrees.

We all know the species of Trump supporter that Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart have made their cottage industry: the cousin at Thanksgiving who gets his news from a Facebook meme, the guy at the bar who thinks January 6th was a walking tour that got a little rowdy. These are not complicated psychological specimens. They are easy marks, low-hanging fruit, fish in a barrel of their own ignorance. God love them, they never had a chance.

But they are not who trouble me.

Who troubles me is the other kind of Trumper—the one with an education, the corner office, the club membership, the summers on the Vineyard. The one who can quote the Constitution when it suits him and memory-hole it when it doesn’t. The one who clerked for a federal judge and now pretends not to understand what “emoluments” means. The one who should know better and has made an elaborate, exhausting choice not to.

I have such friends. Yup, more than one. But today, I want to talk about Ted. Well, I’ll call him Ted. It is not h…