What The Hell America!

The histrionics and projections of MAGA men.

This story originally appeared on Jill.substack.com, a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic.

Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, both key figures in the Trump administration, are having a little public slap fight. And while any other administration or workplace or group of sentient adults would be embarrassed by this series of public outbursts, the White House seems to think it’s fine—because “boys will be boys.”

After Trump slapped disastrous tariffs on friends and foes alike and sent global markets tumbling, his friend / shadow president / DOGE leader Musk tweeted that there should be “zero tariffs” between the U.S. and Europe. Navarro, an economist whose claim to fame is making up an alter-ego who he then quoted extensively in his books and who is widely believed to be the brains (lol) behind Trump’s tariff policy, went on CNBC and called Musk a mere “car assembler.” A car assembler! Musk was incensed, and responded by calling Navarro a “moron” who is “dumber than a sack of bricks.” He then apologized to bricks. 

Musk was, in my opinion, utterly correct about Navarro being a moron. But if we’re going to devolve to playground insults, we should probably submit that rarely has there been a clearer case of “takes one to know one.” 

Was the White House concerned about these two absolute sack-of-bricks morons publicly duking it out over the president’s policies? No. 

“Look, these are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs,” said White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. “Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue.”

The thing with people who brush off male bad behavior as boys who are just being boys, though, is that they rarely extend that patience to girls.

It should be totally fine for men like Musk to publicly break with Trump, and I frankly wish that more conservatives, Republicans and businesspeople would publicly disagree with the president’s most egregious decisions. It is embarrassing to have disagreements play out in public between members of the administration (even if Musk is not an official Cabinet member), and more embarrassing still to have those members publicly lob insults via social media (Navarro, to his credit, at least did the adult thing and said something passive-aggressive on CNBC). The American government shouldn’t be led by men who act like a bunch of middle-school boys fighting on Twitch.

But this administration is so radically immature—I’ve written before about Trump as the ultimately adolescent president—that this barely registers. Musk and Navarro’s little spat is brushed off as just boys doing their thing. You know how boys are. 

The thing with people who brush off male bad behavior as boys who are just being boys, though, is that they rarely extend that patience to girls. While Leavitt was noting that the White House would “let” Musk and Navarro’s “public sparring” continue, she—and the rest of the MAGA right—had no such forbearance for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who committed the cardinal sin of siding with the Constitution over the president in a recent Supreme Court decision, from which she dissented. The MAGA reaction was swift and ugly. Coney Barrett was a traitor. She was ungrateful. She was evidence that women are too empathetic to serve on the Supreme Court. She was evidence that no woman should ever again serve on the Supreme Court.

In Trumpworld, dissent is rarely tolerated. The exception, it seems, is when that dissent comes from people who badly beclown themselves in the process, when that dissent is not technically aimed at the president, and when the dissenters are men. Because dissent is definitely not tolerated from women. 

Chief Justice John Roberts has also ruled against the president in the past, although not often enough. When he has, MAGA members have been angry at him, too. But they haven’t suggested that his decisions are evidence of “suicidal empathy” that will ruin a civilization, or that such suicidal empathy comes from the inborn handicap of being male. They have not opined that his rulings mean no more men should be on the court. That, of course, would be an absurd suggestion.

But some of the biggest figures in MAGA world are saying exactly that about Coney Barrett: that her decision here indicts not just her, but all women; that it’s evidence not of her views, but of a weakness inherent to her sex.

To be clear, Coney Barrett signing onto part of the dissent in the Supreme Court decision at issue here had nothing to do with empathy. The case was about whether the Trump administration can use a very old law meant to apply to presidential wartime powers to rapidly deport migrants (and possibly U.S. citizens). The sections of the dissent that Coney Barrett signed onto basically just says that people being deported have due process rights and are entitled to bring their claims in court. There was nothing emotional or empathetic about it. The dissent wasn’t focused on the plight of the poor Venezuelans and Salvadorans who are being rounded up and kicked out. It was a cold, rational reading of the Constitution.

But it was read in a woman’s voice, and so: emotional. 

Chief Justice John Roberts has also ruled against the president in the past … But they haven’t suggested that his decisions are evidence of ‘suicidal empathy’ that will ruin a civilization, or that such suicidal empathy comes from the inborn handicap of being male.

This is a fascinating view: Women are presumed to care about other people, and are therefore too emotional to be on the Supreme Court, and even their most blatantly text-based arguments must somehow spring from this well of irrational feeling that sits in their skulls in place of a brain. Men, on the other hand, are presumed to be rational actors, even when they spend most of their public lives behaving with what can only be described as a shocking level of emotional incontinence—behaving, literally, like unruly children, screaming “you’re a dummy!” “no, you’re a dummy!” at one another. 

One irony here is that the reaction to Coney Barrett has been profoundly emotional. Conservatives seem very very afraid of Salvadoran gangsters, and believe Coney Barrett has failed to protect them. One influential MAGA tweeter whined that Trump gave Coney Barrett her dream job and she has nevertheless been “an ungrateful, backstabbing POS since day one.” They are howling at the utter betrayal. This is a big tantrum, and it moves back and forth between emotional extortion to emotional meltdown. But it’s always a lot of big feelings. 

(It seems worth noting somewhere that “boys will be boys” was the same excuse rolled out for Donald Trump when he was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the genitals.)

The sections of the dissent that Coney Barrett signed onto basically just says that people being deported have due process rights and are entitled to bring their claims in court. There was nothing emotional or empathetic about it.

I have never seen an anti-feminist backlash quite like the one we are living through. The embrace of misogyny is thorough and unapologetic. It transcends just about every aspect of this administration, from the president down through his followers. What was once the norm and then thankfully made taboo—saying that women shouldn’t have the right to vote and aren’t qualified to hold public office—is increasingly an acceptable view in conservative circles. This is the case even as the men who ascend to the top of MAGA politics are among the least qualified, least dignified, and most melodramatic, histrionic and emotional in the modern era.

When it comes to lurid dysfunction, the men of the Trump administration could give the Real Housewives a run for their money. And to their credit, I’ll bet the Housewives use fewer emojis in their group chat.