What The Hell America!

Marcotte: Sometimes I wonder how his base reacts to this. I assume most of them aren’t watching this kind of thing, but it’s so obviously just for him. And I think there’s a secondary purpose, of course, which is to trigger the liberals like you and me who are like, Oh my God, that’s such an outrageous lie that it’s offensive. It’s gaslighting. They get a rise out of us—and that, I think, is part of the pleasure of this. But yeah, it’s quite wild how much to his narcissism is just … The neediness of it is just getting out of control. She got this job for two reasons. One, she looks the part. And two, she’s utterly shameless at feeding over-the-top praise to Donald Trump. Not just for her job—though especially her job—but it seems like that’s the main purpose of much of his cabinet.

Sargent: Well, speaking of being over-the-top, you had a piece recently for Salon in which you talked about the MAGA aesthetic and the degree to which it turns on wildly exaggerated imagery of all kinds—Trump’s gold-plated tastelessness, as you put it. Then there’s also the Mar-a-Lago face, the really crazy plastic surgery jobs and crazy makeup jobs on prominent MAGA women; the steroided-out bodies which are sometimes attached to Donald Trump, which I find funny because that guy is McDonald’s from top to bottom. This is not a fit guy and they just stick that body on him. And same with Pete Hegseth, right? They show him in the same way. It occurs to me that this Leavitt performance that we see regularly is a little similar to that. As you say, she looks the part. She got the job partly because of that. But it’s the exaggeration of the praise that’s the key, right? The over-the-top nature of it, that’s the key. Can you talk about that?

Marcotte: The thing that’s so fascinating is this is true about the MAGA aesthetic in every way. Every emotion is exaggerated to the maximum. They pretend to be angry at the loudest volume. They tend to be sad with the biggest droopy faces and wailing tears. Everything’s loud and garish and schmaltzy. After I wrote that piece, a lot of people on Bluesky pointed out that I overlooked the pro-wrestling angle of it, of which I kicked myself really hard because that’s exactly right. The aesthetic is borrowed directly from pro-wrestling where every emotion is both very one note and just completely over-the-top. And the way that people look is heavily exaggerated to cartoonish proportions. The plastic surgery isn’t about looking better, but about looking almost uncannily unhuman, just so exaggerated in your femininity. Then, the men, they like the roided out body. Most of them aren’t willing to put themselves through that kind of torture to get it—but you know, RFK loves to whip off his shirt in public to show off those totally natural muscles on a 70-year-old man.