Through a horseshoe, darkly
By 
There’s a certain strain of anti-anti-Trumpism that is willing to concede that there was one bad 21st century Republican president — in part because after 2008 acknowledging his badness did not entail the icky necessity of supporting a specific Democrat opposing him — but preemptively rejects the idea that there could be a another one (let alone a worse one) as liberal hysteria. Before January 6, at least, the idea that Bush was worse than Trump was entirely reasonable. But six months into his second term arguing that Trump isn’t all that ad really requires truly remarkable levels of reactionary nihilism:
The idea that there is “nothing comparable” from Trump in terms of “raw deaths” is just absurd given the dismantling of USAID and PEPFAR alone. When this is brought up, the response is just purest distillation of neoliberal logic imaginable:
I’m not sure what the “sandbox” is — people who prefer liberalism to fascism? — but the idea that people inevitably and foreseeably killed by budget cuts are somehow less dead killed in wars is nonsensical on its face. You will definitely be hearing more of it when the Medicaid cuts kick in, definitely from Republicans and very likely from Ross himself. Needless to say, it’s also misleading to describe the dismantling of USAID and PEPFAR as being “budget cuts,” since the costs savings are trivial and also part of a suite of policies that will massively increase the national debt. They’re not even doing this as a tough choice in a climate of fiscal necessity, they’re just doing it because they hate USAID and PEPFAR and don’t care how many people die because of it. Which for ostensibly anti-imperialist reasons is also Barkan’s position, and it doesn’t become any more attractive if you do some handwaving about “Europe.”
Things do not get better from there:
Say what you will about Mister Trump, but he would never send anyone to a foreign gulag with no due process or hire a billionaire and his army of incels to massively expand the government’s access to sensitive personal data
[image or embed]— Scott Lemieux (@lemieuxlgm.bsky.social) Aug 18, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Citing Gitmo and surveillance as reasons that Bush is categorically worse than Trump in August 2025 is just amazing content. The most charitable explanation is that a well-compensated pundit just stopped being attention to the news when Trump was re-elected, or perhaps woke up from a six-month coma last week. The truth is much worse than that.