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We have to agree with the worst people we know now. Thanks, Trump! [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-18
There are many, many terrible things—actually, pretty much everything—about living during America’s rapid descent into authoritarianism under President Donald Trump. One of the most simultaneously galling and confusing things, though, is that some of the very worst conservatives from our past are now … on our side? Sort of?
Let’s start with the global war on terror architects and cheerleaders, shall we? These dudes dominated our days and nights in the early 2000s, forever on our television screens, displaying a bloodthirstiness that seems low-key and quaint by today’s standards. It says a lot of not great things about our present moment that these guys have chosen to take high-profile stands against the Trump administration’s actions.
ABC’s Wednesday decision to sideline Jimmy Kimmel brought out David Frum. Yes, that David Frum. Mr. Axis of Evil himself, the speechwriter who came up with the idea that somehow Iraq, Iran, and North Korea should be lumped together in a single … axis. Whatever that means.
But credit where credit is due. Frum was one of the first people to call out Kimmel’s firing, going on CNN and absolutely telling it like it is: “We don’t have to speculate about what comes next because President Trump, in his televised speech after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and his aide Stephen Miller have already told us what is coming next. …The suppression of Democratic Party speech is coming next.”
Man, Frum. When you’re right, you’re right. Of course, when you’re wrong, you are very wrong.
Can you believe we are now forced to say, on Al Gore’s internet, in the year of our lord 2025, that Karl Rove has some good points and is showing a backbone?
Uh-huh. Good old Turd Blossom, aka Bush’s Brain, somehow got the Wall Street Journal to let him write an opinion piece called “‘They’ Didn’t Kill Charlie Kirk,” about the right’s demonization of the left over Kirk’s death. Let’s see Rove spit some truth bombs while we all rock silently in the corner wondering how things got to this:
No. Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by “them.” “They” didn’t pull the trigger. One person did, apparently a young man driven by impulse and a terrible hate. If there were a “they” involved, law enforcement would find “them” and the justice system would hold “them” accountable. … Using Charlie’s murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it.
It’s patently unfair that this statement is both good and correct, and we have to credit Rove for it.
You know we were going to have to talk about Bill Kristol, right? The longtime conservative stalwart, once chief of staff to pudding-headed former Vice President Dan Quayle, founder of The Weekly Standard, John McCain's foreign policy adviser, and so on.
Kristol has actually been walking the walk for a while now, which, if you lived through the last 30 years of conservatives, is deeply painful to admit. But Kristol has been doing penance for quite some time now, and spent last weekend warning about Trump’s exploitation of Kirk’s death. The morning after ABC yanked Kimmel’s show, Kristol went on X to talk about legendary writer Umberto Eco’s warnings about the ghost of fascism and how that ghost is now embodied, a clear and present danger today.
x "Twenty years before MAGA, Eco captured it perfectly. He was able to do so because he had a deep understanding of fascism.
Eco warned of the ghost of fascism re-emerging to stalk the world. That ghost has become a clear and present danger today."
https://t.co/gbTLs8L1fV — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) September 18, 2025
Okay, we weren’t gonna do this, but it seems we must. There’s one politician who didn’t come out of the George W. Bush White House, but who is nonetheless responsible for some really heinous stuff. Dear readers, we give you former Vice President Mike Pence: “We gotta be careful about putting America on trial whenever we see evil overtake the heart of any individual. In this case, absent additional facts, there's one person responsible for Charlie Kirk's assassination.”
x Mike Pence: "We gotta be careful about putting America on trial whenever we see evil overtake the heart of any individual. In this case, absent additional facts, there's one person responsible for Charlie Kirk's assassination."
[image or embed] — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 18, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Look, you do not have to, under any circumstances, hand it to any of these guys. But if they want to do media hits and op-eds and yell on social media with the rest of us, and it moves the needle for anyone we can’t? We’ll take it.
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