Noonan and Fetterman on the reality of Trump

Surprisingly consistent wisdom, and worth listening to.

Peggy Noonan is a legend: she wrote Reagan’s soaring speech given the day of the Challenger disaster. For a quarter-century, Noonan has been a voice of reason and intelligence at The Wall Street Journal. Her instincts are on point. Sen. John Fetterman is a basket of contradictions. He’s a Democrat, because there’d literally be no place for him in the Republican Party. But he’s not a mainstream progressive Democrat kowtowing to the zeitgeist of self-blame and denial. Fetterman speaks his mind. Both Noonan and Fetterman have something to say about the reality of four more years of Donald Trump in the White House, and it’s worth listening to them.

Bari Weiss, erstwhile New York Times reporter, and now of The Free Press, interviewed Noonan, who, characteristically, “buried the lede” when the conversation turned to Trump. “I never met Trump until two or three weeks ago. Did I ever tell you that?” This led to a most interesting insight into both Noonan, and the target of her frequent vitriol.

Noonan said in 2015 and 2016, the Trump campaign had—as campaigns do—reached out to media for meet-and-greet time: “Come on in, meet the boss, have lunch.” Noonan demurred: “No I don’t want to.” Her reasoning is that she felt she needed to maintain distance from Trump. Her instincts told her:

I had a feeling that up close, he would be charming and funny. And that there would be something endearing and that it would mess with my swing as an observer. I didn’t want to see him up close. I didn’t want to see him far away. I wanted to see him at a middle distance. I felt I saw him clearly at a middle distance.

For six years, Noonan did battle, at a middle distance, with Trump. He attacked her, she attacked him. It was all very professional. Then Noonan learned Trump was coming to an editorial board meeting at WSJ, and she changed her mind. “And it would be so wrong if he came to my newspaper, and he couldn’t go there and take retribution or do whatever you wanted to do. It just struck me as the fair, right thing,” Noonan told Weiss. “And so I went.”

Trump showed up in his usual dramatic fashion: late, bursting on the scene with his entourage, and beelined to Noonan: “You are wonderful. You are the most remarkable woman.”

And then he sat down with us, and he went on and off the record, but off the record, he was hilarious. Rude. Inappropriate. Said things about foreign leaders that should not be said to a bunch of journalists. And I just sat back and thought by the end, Honey, your intuition was right. If you’d met him in 2015, you would have loved him and not seen him.

“Maybe I exaggerate,” Noonan added, “but I would’ve loved him for a while.”

And this is the essence, the core, of how transactional Trump operates when you get inside his gravity well. Seeing him up close, many people are taken by his ability to read a crowd, to pay the right compliment face to face, or to hurl the right insult that buys him rent-free space in their heads. From a far distance, either a person—a voter—is radicalized against everything Trump says or does, the a voter is MAGA to the core. There’s plenty of people in Georgia and other places who hate electric vehicles, wouldn’t own one if it was given away, but now have decided to love Elon Musk, because Elon Musk loves Donald Trump. That’s how it works. And when (I think inevitably) the break-up happens, those people will still love Donald Trump and go back to hating Elon Musk.

From the middle distance, it’s easier to be objective and see how people are radicalized both ways. And from up close, if Trump knows who you are, you get a totally different experience, that either leaves you smitten, or jilted. Just ask Gen. John Kelly, or John Bolton, or Mike Pence.

Trump is indeed hilarious, and he knows far, far more than a person of his character should know, about people in government, about foreign leaders, about America’s military secrets, and about how to get what he wants. You know, Mark Zuckerberg went to Mar-a-Lago for dinner. Facebook suspended Trump’s account the day after the January 6th riot. The suspension lasted two years.

And about the riot, and the massive character flaws Trump has, Noonan is a realist.

I don’t think they’re overlooking them. They are accepting them. Do you mean his mammoth flaws? They are accepting them. In my experience of Trump supporters, most of them—not all, but most—are not illusioned about him. They think he’s a brander. They think he’s a bullshitter. They think he’s a New York real estate guy. There is nobody in America who supports Donald Trump who thinks he didn’t pay off the hooker. They don’t have illusions in that way.

But the one illusion Trump has pulled off is that he cares about the people who support him. I agree with Noonan that “Donald Trump is that he is not on your side. He’s on Donald Trump’s side.” When it comes to Christians, Trump said he was on the side of pro-life, until it was transactionally beneficial to be his natural pro-choice self. When it comes to business, Trump will threaten all kinds of retribution, until leaders line up with what he wants in the moment. Most people operating at a high level of responsibility and intelligence can’t be that impulsive and hormonal in their interactions. Most people have some kind of guiding principle besides selling, selling, selling, all the time.

He’s having the time of his life. He has impulses and opinions that he acts on, but he also has a shrewd understanding of the views and wants of the audience, and he meets it. And the audience has given him a hit show. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but I think that is what drives him.

Trump is for the people who say stick it to the Man, and at the same time, he is the Man. It’s an amazing illusion to pull off. It’s the same illusion many progressive Democrats have been running for decades. Trump stole their thunder and he’s enjoying the spoils. As he does so, as National Review’s Jim Geraghty wrote, the resistance is running low on venom and steam. A CBS poll found “there seems to be a sense of exhaustion, as fewer than half of Democrats feel motivated to oppose Trump right now.”

After the 2016 election, Trump foes launched a serious last-ditch effort to convince the presidential electors to become “faithless” and change their votes, preventing Trump from becoming president. Celebrities and actors from The West Wing and Will and Grace appeared in commercials, urging electors to not vote for President-elect Trump. So far this year, there’s nothing like that. Democrats in and out of office are trudging in acquiescence toward Inauguration Day; Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman said he expects to vote to confirm Rubio as secretary of state, and he said he is open to voting to put his former rival, Mehmet Oz, in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The Senate will deal with Trump’s cabinet nominees, but I do believe that most of them, including some of the more controversial like Pete Hegseth, will be confirmed. Trump’s transition team seems to be both ready and professional. In 2016, Trump and his team were surprised they won, and the transition was chaotic and poorly managed. This time, things are moving smoothly, with a few notable exceptions. The Trump team refused to sign the by-rote GSA agreement to obtain federal funding for office space and IT support, because it contained an ethics pledge. They also did not sign the agreement to have the FBI provide background checks of Trump officials.

From a far distance, you could easily attribute the motives here to Team Trump wanting to both violate ethical responsibility and to bring in hardened criminals to run their efforts. But you can also see that signing both agreements would give the outgoing Biden administration lots of fuel to leak to the waiting media about defects in Trump officials past history, and to control the funding and pace of the transition. The Trump transition will fund itself, giving up $7 million in federal dollars. They have also published their own ethics plan, which officials will be required to sign.

In a signal that the Trump team is serious about ethics, the transition legal team is investigating Boris Epshteyn, a close adviser, who is accused of selling influence. The campaign called this “standard practice,” but others who have served in transition operations say it’s anything but standard. But Trump is not doing anything by what others say is the standard. He’s doing it his way. And millions of Americans have bought the goods that Trump’s way might have merit since the government’s “standard” way has not always worked out so well.

Another oddball who bucks the standards is Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who above noted he’d consider voting for Dr. Mehmet Oz to run CMS, controlling one of the largest pots of money in the federal government. Jess Bidgood at The New York Times did a series of interviews with Fetterman, and it’s also quite revealing. First, as a Democrat, Fetterman is willing to give a chance to right-wing media, because he feels it’s worth having a conversation and talking to “bros.”

Have a conversation. Have a conversation with anyone that’s willing to have an honest conversation. That’s always been the rule, and that’s what I’m going to continue. I’ve had conversations on Fox News, and they’ve played me straight. I’ve shown up on Newsmax, and they’ve played it straight. And Rogan. Rogan was great. He was cordial and open and warm.

Fetterman had some stinging words for the way Democrats deal with men.

It’s already migrated. In 2016, I was doing an event with the steel workers, across the street where I live, and I was noticing different kind of energy with this, with Trump. It was clear at that time that people were voting for Trump. And the Democrats’ response was, “Aren’t they smart enough to realize they’re voting against their interests?” And that’s insulting, and that’s, I mean, that’s, that’s just not helpful. It’s condescending. And if anything, that reinforces that kind of stereotype.

Telling them that “I know better than you do,” that’s not helpful.

He said “freaking out” over Trump is a symbiotic event: “One feeds off the other. The Democrats can’t resist a freakout, and that must be the wind under the wings for Trump.” I agree with Fetterman. Trump loves to stick it to people whose heads he knows will explode when he does truly stupid and dangerous things like nominate Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. He truly enjoys screwing with people that way, and doesn’t give a single thought to the real world consequences. Which is why serious people in government are so frustrated and stymied dealing with him close-up.

Fetterman says to Democrats:

I’m just saying, buckle up and pack a lunch, because it’s going to be four years of this. And if you have a choice to freak out, you know, on the hour, then that’s your right. But I will not. I’m not that dude, and I’m not that Democrat. I’m going to pick my fights. If you freak out on everything, you lose any kind of relevance.

In the end, Democrats, like many Trump Republicans, are too cloistered, too bubble-ensconced, to see things clearly. They get condescending and preachy, just like so many Christians have been over the past decades. And real people with real issues tune out. Fetterman nails this vibe.

Walk around in Scranton, tell me what an oligarch is. I think it’s like, “Whose argument is the closest match to the kinds of things that are important to me?” And I think some of them are rooted in gender and worldviews, and even backlash of things like cancel culture.

I witness people, now there’s specific kinds of clothing. They call it Blue Collar Patriots. I’m willing to bet you know who they’re voting for.

And why is that? I don’t think it’s because we haven’t talked enough about oligarchs, and how it’s rigged.

There’s a lot of Scrantons, around the nation. There’s a lot of radicalized people, but there’s also people tired of being preached at the condescended to. They are patriots, and they know their own issues. They are willing to buy one illusion over another. One last piece of advice Fetterman gives his party: “For a party that’s had way too many bad takes, we should take our time.”

I think that’s good advice for everyone. See things at the middle distance, not too close up, where cults of personality are born, or not too far away, where radicalization takes hold. Stop with the bad takes. Keep your feet on social media and quit running with the crowd to believe really horrendous and generally stupid lies. Be skeptical, but skeptical of the right things to question. Follow your instincts, but know when it’s time to change your mind because it’s the right thing to do. These are good pieces of advice from people who should be listened to.

We’re buckling in for four years of the King of Chaos and impulse. He wants us to freak out or to kneel in worship to him. We can refuse to do either. That’s the reality of Trump and we should prevail to remain true to it, one day at a time.

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