 Good night. Forty-year. Beautiful morning in... where am I? Overton, something like that, in North Sydney, about a couple of miles north of the Saginago Bridge, but it's kind of struck by how Trump has strictly avoided condemning their crimes and how Trump really isn't even possibly a man to avoid criticizing its supporters. So, like, when he was asked about David Duke about seven years ago, Trump said, you know, I don't know who David Duke is. Now he says, I don't know who Nick Fuentes is. And after Charlottesville, right, you know, Trump did everything he could to avoid singling out the alt-right, but Trump recognizes that he gets a lot of these votes. And so he's not going to alienate his supporters. And David Froome, actually, on the Atlantic, had a good column. And there's a great analogy here from China Watcher, that when someone's losing power, you look to blast them for doing wrong. And then people will say, oh, you know, they've lost power because they've done wrong. But no, when you lose power, they've lost you for doing wrong. When you have power, they make excuses. So, Republican condemnation of Donald Trump to the extent it exists is because they don't want him winning again. So, this is a pretty good up here in the Atlantic by David Froome on Nick Fuentes. A ploy, not a principle. So, he says, Republican criticism of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago dinner with the Holocaust in Ohio will be disavowed if Trump looks to be winning the party's 2024 election. Yeah, if people like you, if you have power, if you're in good with people, you're going to make excuses for you. Like, we tend, not just with political figures, we tend to make excuses for our friends. Like, if we see behavior by friends that we think is aberrant, like, we will excuse it. Because it's too complicated to think that now, our mates are child beaters, or wife beaters, or tax cheats, or people who commit felonies, or people who screw over innocent people. We don't want to think of that about our friends. So, we naturally make excuses for our friends and kind of dismiss or contrary evidence to our understanding of them. And usually, we only see our friends in, like, one sphere. So, you know, we may have friends that we meet up with at the park, or we may have friends that we meet up with at church, or at synagogue, or we may have work-related, professional-related, education-related friends. And so, we permanently see them in one area, and then we just generalize from that. And because they're our friends, we think, oh, you know, how kind-hearted they are. You know, how good they are. Well, your friend could very well be kind-hearted to you, kind-hearted in the one particular sphere that you see in them. But in business, you may be a son of a bitch. And with his family, you may be cruel. So, any character traits that don't mean specific, all right? The person who's honest with his family is not necessarily going to be honest in business. The person who's honest in business is not necessarily going to be faithful to his spouse. And so, people who want to align with Trump, they see it in their self-interest. They're not going to condemn him for dealing with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. Like, did you see those photos? Okay, everybody's photos of Nick Fuentes and Kanye West and Milo. Like, all hanging out. And they're all on a plane. And they're all, like, Milo's reading the Bible. And Richard Ananya tweets, Milo used to be very open about how much he enjoys certain body parts. I admire what Christ has done for him, allowing him to stay immersed in his Bible from mere inches away from Kanye. Let me show you this tweet. So, yeah, Richard Ananya can be quite the bitchy queen. Look at it. This is Milo and Nick and Kanye all on a plane together on their Christy's King tour. And here's Kanye telling Trump to put a guard in Israel first before Israel. Oh, I got my headphones on. That's why he got to go away from the dentist. Exactly. Kanye West. Nick Fuentes. Milo Yiannopoulos. I mean, these three guys who look, you know, really, really gay. And, wait, this is Bad Billy. It's the funniest stuff ever that people don't see. These three little, literal, I use the polite term, homosexual sitting together in this picture, laughing as Christians, because that's what this all is. Man, this is hilarious. Okay, it's David Froome says, for once, Donald Trump has a point. And Trump's point is that, you supported me before. If I get power, you're going to support me again because it's in your best interest, even if you don't agree. With who I'm having dinner with. So, some former Trump supporters have raised their voices against this meeting. Like, this time, Trump has gone too far. But here's Trump's point implicitly. Have these critics been in a coma since 2015? Like, Trump's been hanging around with some dubious characters for a long time, long before he even ended politics. So, keeping company with Nick Fuentes isn't even a Republican deal-breaker. So, at least two members of the House Republican caucus, Conference Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor-Green have done so. And the next speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, has promised both of them important committee assignments in the next session. So, if Trump endorsed candidates who have done better in the recent mid-term elections, if Republicans have run the Senate, if the party's donors were uniting behind Trump rather than DeSantis, then all you would hear from Republicans would be excuses. So, if you have power, if you have popularity, people are just going to find every reason to excuse your behavior. It's not just Trump that applies to you and me. And people kick you when you're down. And they think you can get away with it. But when you're in power, they don't kick you. And you're popular. This is a China watcher. They say that an official who has done wrong will lose power. What really happens is an official who loses power will be accused of doing wrong. So, compare two Wall Street Journal articles five years apart. At his yesterday's Wall Street Journal, a editorial about the Trump Fuentes dinner, it's a clear and forceful demand for personal responsibility. Mr. Trump has admitted his mistake. It's kind of interesting that Trump hasn't criticized Fuentes by hosting these men, by distancing himself from Fuentes. So, instead Trump portrays himself as an innocent who has taken advantage of Picané West. Then you look at the Wall Street Journal's editorial after Charlottesville. And the Wall Street Journal says, Demanding personal responsibility of Donald Trump is essentially to be avoided at all costs. The focus on Mr. Trump is a cup out, because it lets everyone duck the deeper and growing problems of identity politics on the right and the left. Donald Trump didn't create this identity obsession. He's more a symptom than a cause. So, in 2017, Trump was necessary, and so he had to be defended. 2022, Trump is inconvenient, so he can be condemned. So, the extent of Republicans are condemning Donald Trump for his dinner with Nick Fuentes is because Trump is perceived as having lost power and status. So, there's no condemnation of Kevin McCarthy, who is soon to be the Speaker of the House, for giving important committee assignments to Paul Dosar, Roger Taylor Greene, and close the area with Mr. Fuentes. Because Kevin McCarthy is regarded as absolutely essential by Republicans, therefore he has to be defended. But if Kevin McCarthy weren't regarded as essential, then he'd be condemned. So, Trump was caught on audio giving his court philosophy a scandal management. When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. But here's the corollary. When you cease to be a star, they stop letting you get away with it. So, if the big-dollar Republicans right now don't know Trump, he cease to be a star. So, there's this theory swirling around that Richard Spencer's pushing that the Nick Fuentes dinner was ordered from, but Ron DeSantis inspired dirty trick. So, I agree with David Froome. This is too complicated, too implausible. The idea that Milo Yiannopoulos who's made his way into the US underage is acting as a double agent for Ron DeSantis inviting Fuentes to dinner to create a public relations nightmare for Trump is unlikely. It sounds, again, much more like an excuse than an explanation. So, Republicans who once submitted to Trump are now looking for access. It's because they don't feel that Trump has the power now. So, Trump used to get a pass from these people. Now he doesn't. So, Republicans are trying to weaponize some sort of insincere objection for immediate political purposes. So, this Nick Fuentes dinner, once again, is another test of strength. Like, how much will someone let you get away with? Like, if you're dating someone, they let you get away with bad behavior. You're going to persist in more bad behavior. If you're an employee and your employer lets you get away with bad behavior, you're probably going to take in more bad behavior. Donald Trump has long benefited the last six years from the protection of the Republican Party because the Republican Party has felt like it needs Trump. Now, you've got rich and connected Republicans saying that they're better off without Trump and therefore you're getting some condemnation. So, the overall level of the criticism of Trump is really just a reflection of his power status within the Party. And we all have power status that goes up and down depending on our popularity and depending on our competence. So, you walk into a room one day and you're in a powerful state and you'll get a different reception than a different day when you're down in status. So, it's possible that Trump wins the Republican nomination again and then the GOP is just going to rally around it. So, I've been struck by the relatively muted level of Republican criticisms of Donald Trump. It seems to me that they haven't been particularly interested in going after him. So, Trump still commands a tremendous amount of power. So, having dinner with Nick Fuentes that made me consider a bad thing, but what about his election denial? Which I think was somewhat exaggerated. It's not so much election denial. It's just more that Trump is never a good loser. The public crew, Nick, Kanye, Milo, the three amigos. It's hilarious, man. This is going to be awesome. So, if Donald Trump's deal with the Republican Party is in danger now, it's not because Trump has done a bad thing. He's not exactly the same man as he was seven, six, five, four, three years ago. His party's the same. It's just that the political and power calculations have possibly changed. Okay, see you later.