If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here. For Trump's enablers, Abrego Garcia's plight is just another feat to applaud
Other presidents have used televised meetings in the Oval Office to strike noble poses. President Trump is using them to strike sadistic ones. I'll never shake the scene of him and Vice President JD Vance taunting and berating President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in February for his inconvenient resistance to Russia's invasion of his country. But that horror has been paired with and maybe even usurped by what we all watched early this week, when Trump and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador bantered jovially about a Maryland man's wrongful deportation to a prison in Bukele's country that sounds pretty much like the 10th circle of Hell. The question hovering over their meeting was whether either would lift a finger to correct what a Justice Department lawyer admitted was an "administrative error." The context was the administration's apparent determination to ignore a Supreme Court ruling that, while vague in some ways, clearly sounded an alarm about the fate of that prisoner, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. The stakes were Abrego Garcia's freedom and safety, his family's welfare and — make no mistake — the rule of law. And yet Bukele and Trump laughed. And smiled. And traded compliments, Bukele cooing about what a strong leader Trump is, Trump babbling about Bukele's youthful glow, both of them making clear that they had no intention whatsoever to save Abrego Garcia or give him the due process he was denied. It was inane. It was grotesque. And it was witnessed by a gaggle of administration lackeys whom Trump had gathered around him in a perverse show of solidarity, by which I mean sycophancy. Their presence and their performances warrant special attention, because they underscore one of the most consequential dynamics of this second Trump administration: the enlistment and indoctrination of aides who will validate every fiction that Trump asks them to, obey all of his orders and shield him from any accountability. They're a breed apart from the team around him during his first presidency; they were specifically chosen, and have been carefully groomed, to be. That's what we saw during Bukele's repellently jocular visit to the White House. The group of senior administration officials beholding and praising Trump and Bukele weren't so much a murderers' row as a flatterers' phalanx. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, was there, and upon being asked by Trump if she could "maybe say a couple of words about the border," she went into adjectival and adverbial overdrive. "It's just been absolutely phenomenal what a great leader can do," she gushed, the absolute phenomenon being what a groveling follower like her will say. Rather than acknowledging the grave issues raised by Abrego Garcia's case, she celebrated the partnership by which Bukele accepts deportees — no questions asked — from the United States into his gulag. Attorney General Pam Bondi was up next, and she selectively and misleadingly characterized Abrego Garcia as a proven gang member whose deportation was by the book and whose fate at this point is beyond the Trump administration's control. Those statements were as ludicrous as her utterance of them was unsurprising. This is the same Bondi who traveled to Pennsylvania in 2020 to promote Trump's stolen-election lies. The same Bondi who indicated, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior administration officials breached national security by discussing war plans in a group chat, that she would probably not conduct any investigation or consider any charges. She has this obsequious thing down pat. Genuflection is her cardio. She sat on a gold couch with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose transformation into Trump fanboy was fitful at first but is now complete. Before Trump turned on Zelensky, Rubio repeatedly and emphatically urged steadfast American support for Ukraine. Immediately after that Oval Office atrocity, he took to social media to congratulate Trump: "Thank you @POTUS for standing up for America in a way that no President has ever had the courage to do before. Thank you for putting America First." That was a helpful warm-up for the Trump-Bukele lovefest, during which Rubio play-acted bafflement at the fuss that so many Americans were making about Abrego Garcia. "I don't understand what the confusion is," Rubio said. That's because understanding it would put him at odds with a boss who would make him pay dearly for that. Trump surely stages these exhibitions of flattery and fealty in part because the adulation and subjugation are a rush and because he believes that they make him look commanding, regal. But there's more at work than that. Every time he gooses Vance, Rubio, Bondi, Noem or any other key aide to endorse and expound on a questionable or downright reprehensible action of his, he binds them to it. They're now doubly, triply, quadruply committed. Any micro-possibility of dissent is gone. Especially given how they have seen Trump treat the dissenters from his previous administration. Right after his inauguration, he withdrew government security details from John Bolton, his former national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, even though Iran has made death threats against both of them. They were insufficiently subordinate. So they will be inadequately protected. A week ago, Trump directed the congenitally compliant Bondi to open investigations into two other officials from that first administration, Christopher Krebs and Miles Taylor. Both had the gall to take public issue with Trump, who has characterized that candor as treason. He's punishing them, of course. But he's also creating the climate of fear in which the members of his cabinet bow down to him. And, if they're smart, tremble. Forward this newsletter to friends … … and they can sign up for themselves here. It's published every Thursday. For the Love of Sentences
I promised a Trump-free collection of prose nuggets this week and I hereby deliver one, with apologies to journalists whose musings on our 47th president and his ragtag, reckless posse are missing as a result. Perhaps I'll have room for them in the next installment of this feature. Meantime, here's Dave Schilling in The Guardian on carmakers' determination to degrade driving: "I don't have any direct evidence of this conspiracy to rob us of the pleasure of the open road, other than the cacophony of beeps, blips, bloops and blops that greet us in the latest models. Oh, and the screens. Every year, they try to find a new place to glue a touch-screen in a car, like Pizza Hut hunting for more orifices to stuff cheese into one of their pies." (Thanks to Jan Beasley of Cortez, Colo., for spotting this.) On the subject of automobiles, here's Jason Gay in The Wall Street Journal deploying them as metaphors for Rory McIlroy's messy victory — after so many tries and so many fails — at the recent Masters golf tournament: "It was like watching a beloved but untrustworthy old truck, 270,000 miles on the odometer, tank near empty, bed rusted, bumper hanging, tires balding, snorting smoke, sputtering oil, conking out five times on the way home — somehow rumbling up the driveway and safely wheezing its way into the garage. In other words: beautiful." (Nelson Smith, Arlington, Va.) In The New Yorker, Justin Chang recounted a husband's odd treatment of his dead wife in "The Shrouds," a new movie directed by David Cronenberg: "Oh, and, before she was laid to rest, she was wrapped in a metallic shroud with a built-in high-resolution M.R.I.-like scanner, allowing Karsh to monitor her decomposing remains via a digital app he devised, called GraveTech. (Why the app isn't named A Tomb With a View is one of the story's more perplexing mysteries.)" (Bill Combs, Basye, Va.) Also in The New Yorker, Kyle Chayka recalled the early days of Bluesky and its attraction of refugees from a certain other social media platform: "X users in the media and progressive politics traded invite codes like passengers on a ship hijacked by lunatics, offering spots on the only lifeboat." (Rudy Brynolfson, Minneapolis) In The Times, Taffy Brodesser-Akner described a chapter of history's ambient, all-encompassing presence in her and many other Jewish people's childhoods: "The Holocaust was the water in which we swam, invisible to us but there we were, sopping wet." (Emily Huffman McLeod, Richmond, Va., and Kate Kavanagh, Concord, Mass.) Also in The Times, Margaret Lyons reviewed a daring new television show: "Oh how the body keeps the score in 'Dying for Sex,' an eight-episode FX dramedy, arriving Friday on Hulu, about a woman with terminal cancer. And if the big mort is near, maybe some petite mort is in order." (Tim Brophy, Jensen Beach, Fla.) Jesse Green marveled at Andrew Scott's performance in "Vanya," a new theatrical adaptation of a classic Chekhov play: "I hate to think why Scott is such a sadness machine, but the tears (and blushes and glows and sneers) lie very shallow under his skin. He only rarely raises his voice. As the feelings are evidently coming directly and carefully from his heart, he narrowcasts them directly and carefully at yours." (Annette Oxindine, Yellow Springs, Ohio) T Bone Burnett weighed in on a new book about two Beatles by Ian Leslie: "One plus one equals two unless you are counting, say, drops of water, in which case one plus one can equal one, or it can equal a fine mist. In 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,' one plus one equals eternity." (Jo Wollschlaeger, Portland, Ore.) And Dwight Garner noted a lacuna in "Sister Europe," by Nell Zink: "No real sex takes place in this novel, though it's gently pervy, like Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin." (John Jacoby, North Andover, Mass.) 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 Watching, Reading and Doing
On a Personal Note
So many words — too many words! — lavished on the third-season finale of "The White Lotus." What about the first-season finale of "The Pitt," which aired four days later? What about "The Pitt," period? Sure, that new Max series — whose 15 episodes envisioned 15 consecutive, preposterously varied hours in an overcrowded, understaffed Pittsburgh emergency room — got a significant measure of attention. But it didn't get enough, because "The Pitt" is the most necessary American television show right now. That's why I'm giving it its own space in this section of the newsletter. And here's my case for it (which includes a mild spoiler or two): Our country these days is an enterprise that seems to be perpetually on the precipice of disintegration. We lurch from one crisis to the next. We fashion impromptu, imperfect fixes without solving the underlying problems. We muddle through, barely managing our hurts, struggling to hold back our fears. It's tempting to crumple into a ball on the floor and babble. Which is precisely what, at one point, the main character in "The Pitt" does. I'm referring to the heroically dedicated physician played by Noah Wyle; when he breaks down, the moment crystallizes how "The Pitt," which flashes back to the worst days of Covid as a sort of origin point for the character's intensifying anxiety, works as mirror and metaphor. James Poniewozik, the chief television critic for The Times, addressed that in a critic's notebook last week. "The Pitt" sounds a warning about where we as a country are and what we as a country have become. But it also offers a consolation and issues a summons. For every patient in "The Pitt" who dies, many more are saved, and that happens because the innate talents and resilient empathy of the emergency room crew transcend structural limitations, frayed nerves, imperiled hope. Almost every character has at least one discrete flaw; almost every character travels a trajectory of addressing and at least partly and briefly overcoming it. We can decide, each of us, to be better. And when we do, we can be very good indeed. Thank you for being a subscriber Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here. Have feedback? Send me a note at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Skip to content
