Appearing on CNN on Monday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin found himself in an uncomfortable situation. Host Jake Tapper asked the governor whether he supported Donald Trump’s plan to use the military against people the former president labeled “radical left lunatics,” like California Rep. Adam Schiff.
Tapper tried to make it easy for Youngkin by reading exactly what Trump said during a Fox News interview on Sunday. “I think the bigger problem,” Trump said, “are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people—radical left lunatics. I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Despite hearing Trump‘s exact words, Youngkin insisted that those words didn’t mean what they clearly said. “What I want to just make very clear,” the governor said, “is that it’s my belief that what former President Trump is talking about are the people that are coming over the border…..”
Tapper tried again, directing Youngkin’s attention to what Trump said about Schiff. So Youngkin then tried to turn the tables by accusing the CNN host of “misinterpreting and misrepresenting (Trump’s) thoughts. I do believe, again, it’s all around the fact that we have had an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants come over the border in an unconstrained, unrestrained fashion….I don’t think that he’s referring to elected people in America.”
“I’m literally reading his quotes,” Tapper responded. “I’m literally reading his quotes to you, and I played them earlier so you could hear that they were not made up by me. He’s literally talking about ‘radical left lunatics,’ and then one of those ‘lunatics’ he mentioned was Congressman Adam Schiff.”
Youngkin asked his listeners not to take what Trump said literally and to not be persuaded by the truth laid out before them.
As Tapper grew exasperated, Youngkin simply repeated: “I don’t believe that’s what he’s saying.”
If Trump wins on November 5, it will be because people like Youngkin have the chutzpah to try to convince voters that “up is down” and “down is up” or that they should not believe what they hear. And it seems that many Americans are buying what Youngkin is selling.
One of the key devices through which authoritarians come to power is by getting the Glenn Youngkins of the world to join them in convincing people that they should not take what the leader says at face value. Youngkin’s performance on CNN exemplifies this assault language and the way it serves to curry favor with the authoritarian strongman.
As The Atlantic’s Tim Young notes, “Today’s Republican leaders are cowards, and some are even worse: They are complicit, as Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin proved… At least cowards run away…. Youngkin, however, smiled and dissembled and excused Trump’s hideousness with a kind of folksy shamelessness that made cowardice seem noble by comparison.”
Nine years after Trump burst onto the national political scene, the news media still has not figured out that highlighting lies does not shame the leaders of the MAGA movement or shake the loyalty of Trump’s followers. That is a failure with profound consequences.
Journalists like Tapper still act as if they can corral Trump loyalists into acknowledging even the most obvious truths. As Youngkin showed, they cannot.
But such loyalty comes at a great cost to those for whom lying is the proof of loyalty. As political scientist Jacob Levy argues “Being made to repeat an obvious lie makes it clear that you’re powerless; it also makes you complicit. You’re morally compromised. Your ability to stand on your own moral two feet and resist or denounce is lost.”
Of course, Youngkin is not alone in not taking Trump “literally.” JD Vance has made an art of it, most recently contending that if Trump is returned to the White House he will take politics out of the Justice Department.
Recall that on more than one occasion Trump has made clear that he has no such intention. As he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity last June. “Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them, and it would be easy because it’s Joe Biden. It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”
Nonetheless, Vance playing his role as the authoritarian’s running mate insists, like Youngkin, that those words don’t mean what they say. “We really want the American people to believe that we have a fair and equitable administration of justice,” Vance said, “If not, the entire sort of system falls apart. You need people to believe that if the attorney general prosecutes somebody, it’s motivated by justice and law, and not by politics.”
“I’d like us,” Vance suggested, “to just get back to a system of law and order where we try to arrest people when they break the law, not because they disagree with the prevailing opinion of the day, and there’s a fundamental difference here between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Donald Trump may … agree or disagree on a particular issue, but he will fight for your right to speak your mind without the government trying to silence you.”
But not taking Trump literally, the disease of denialism carried by Youngkin and Vance is now widespread in this country and not just among Trump’s surrogates and most devoted followers. This was amply demonstrated in a front-page New York Times story about Trump supporters who assume that when Trump says things that signal his intention to undo our constitutional tradition “it’s just an act.” They “rationalize his rhetoric, by affording him a reverse benefit of the doubt. They doubt; he benefits.”
The Times quotes one man who intends to vote for Trump who said, “’I think the media blows stuff out of proportion for sensationalism.’” Asked if Trump would purge the federal government and fill its ranks with election deniers, this man said “I don’t.” He explained that Trump said a lot of things “just be for publicity…just riling up the news.”
Summarizing the tendency of those who have now gotten used to Trump’s brew of outrageous threats and outright lies, the Times says that “people think he says things for effect, that he’s blustering, because that’s part of what he does, his shtick. They don’t believe that it’s actually going to happen.’”
As Corey Lewandowski, Trump's first campaign manager, explained after the 2016 election, the news media “took everything Donald Trump said so literally. The American people didn't.” Contra Lewandoski, that same year Masha Gessen urged people to “Believe the autocrat. He means what he says.”
This year lies like Youngkin’s, and his refusal to take Trump literally, may ease the way for millions of voters to cast their ballots for the former president. It would be tragic if Americans only came to understand the heavy price they will pay for not taking Trump literally after he is returned to The Oval Office.
