I remember it well. It was Oct. 7, 2016, a Friday. That afternoon The Washington Post dropped a bombshell, the perfect October surprise, just a month before the presidential election.
Earlier in the week, Hillary Clinton had been hammering Donald Trump on the news that he may not have paid taxes for 18 years.
The vice presidential candidates, Sen. Tim Kaine and Gov. Mike Pence, had had a feisty debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
It had already been a campaign full of crazy turns and fireworks, and it was about to get even crazier.
“Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005.”
In a never-heard-before recording from an “Access Hollywood” interview, Trump describes how he seduces women as a celebrity to host Billy Bush: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … grab ‘em by the p*ssy. You can do anything.”
It was mayhem after that. Was this the end of Trump’s candidacy? Dozens of Republican lawmakers called for him to drop out. The topic took up a considerable amount of attention at the next presidential debate, just two days later. Professional coaches, offended by Trump’s excuse that it was merely “locker room talk,” condemned the statement.
But while the tape certainly put Trump on defense, as we all know, the revelation that the Republican nominee for president admitted to sexually assaulting women did not derail his candidacy.
For those of us covering this, it was a low point. I remember sitting across from Jake Tapper at CNN, a friend and colleague and someone I admire and respect, and having to talk about this sordid, lewd, crass, gross comments, and the sordid, lewd, crass, gross man who said them.
I felt embarrassed — I couldn’t believe that this is what we were talking about. Nowhere in my journalism career did I think I’d be discussing a presidential candidate who bragged about grabbing a woman’s genitalia.
Flash forward about nine years, and it feels like we’re in a similar place, having crossed yet another unfortunate Rubicon into the moral abyss.
Two of the major story lines in politics today involve MAGA influencers with massive platforms, who are inexplicably white-washing white supremacy and pedophilia.
If you haven’t heard, Tucker Carlson has devolved into a conspiracy-theory spouting, despot-defending, neo-Nazi protecting weirdo. He recently interviewed Nick Fuentes, a self-proclaimed Hitler lover and Holocaust denier who has said some of the most vile and disgusting things I’ve ever heard any person say ever. Carlson didn’t press Nick on his hideous ideas, but instead gave him a very friendly interview where the implied takeaway was, “This neo-Nazi’s not so bad!”
The fawning conversation sparked an internecine battle on the right over whether laundering the reputations of white supremacists is a good idea. Believe it or not, many are defending it. Including the president.
Enter Megyn Kelly, another Fox News washout who’s found a new pool of paid subscribers to rile up, and using all the predictable foils: Bad Bunny, Zohran Mamdani, Michelle Obama, and Meghan Markle.
In addition to defending Carlson, she’s also — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — white-washing Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, too, questioning whether his preference for 15-year-old girls or “barely legal types” actually made him a pedophile.
Referring to someone who was “very close to this case,” she said “Epstein, according to his individual, was not a pedophile.”
“He wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds,” she said. “But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passer-by.”
Of course, 15 isn’t “barely legal,” it’s clearly illegal. But what point is she making in doing pedophile math other than a morally bankrupt one — that Epstein, and by extension Trump, isn’t so bad because he didn’t sexually abuse or traffic an 8-year-old girl?
The decision to protect neo-Nazis and pedophiles, just because it might benefit Trump in some way, is a precipice I never thought I’d see so-called conservatives walk up to. And yet, here they are, giddily leaping off of it.
Trump ushered in so many ugly elements, from white supremacy to rank misogyny. And the MAGA influencers who hitched their wagons to his star have to out-gross each other to prove their loyalty and keep their subscribers sufficiently radicalized.
For these unconscionable ghouls and sell-outs, nowhere is too low. Seriously, if they’re able to normalize neo-Nazis and pedophilia, what else is left?
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.