Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
On Jan. 23, 2016, Donald Trump was campaigning in Iowa when he made a remarkable announcement: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
Unfortunately, with less than two weeks to go until the 2024 election, it appears that despite the absurdity of that statement Trump might have been right.
He’s a convicted felon. He’s been impeached twice. There are a multitude of other criminal charges still outstanding. Yet polls indicate he is running neck-and-neck with Kamala Harris.
An ABC-Ipsos poll conducted in April — after he was found guilty in a hush money case in New York — indicated only 4 percent of Trump supporters said they would not vote for him and 16 percent said they would reconsider it.
Despite all that and The New York Times recently reporting that “the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past,” Trump’s supporters are standing by him.
And leading Republicans are ignoring his behavior.
On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper had Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on his program. Tapper noted that Trump has referred to Democrats as “the enemy from within” and threatened to use the military against fellow Americans. He then played a clip in which Trump said:
“The bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the big — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by the National Guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can't let that happen.”
Johnson responded by saying, “Jake, you know that's not what he's talking about there. What he's talking about is marauding gangs of dangerous, violent people.”
But Tapper pushed back, quoting Trump again and saying the former president was specifically talking about former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
As I listen to the excuses and denials by the speaker of the House and so many other members of Congress, I can’t help but wonder if there is anything that Trump could say or do that would change the minds of his supporters.
And that is what is so frustrating for Americans who believe in the ageless human, religious and philosophical values of truth, trust, reason and civility, and believe in the dignity of people across all cultural, economic, political, racial and gender demographics. It just doesn’t seem to matter.
Maggie Haberman of The New York Times summed it up well: “Trump is a really difficult figure to cover because he challenges news media processes every day, has for years. The systems ... were not built to deal with somebody who says things that are not true as often as he does or speaks as incoherently as he often does. I think the media has actually done a good job showing people who he is, what he says, what he does.”
The sentiment was echoed by Tom Rosenstiel, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland. “The people who don’t like or are infuriated by him cannot believe his success and would like the press to somehow persuade the people who do like him that they are wrong,” he said. “And the press can’t do that.”
Many Americans have already voted, either by mail or at early in-person locations. Those who have not yet cast a ballot need journalists to provide an accurate portrayal of Donald Trump, holding him to account for his words, just like Tapper did on Sunday.
Yet will any of that make any difference? Or was Trump correct back in January 2016?
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.