Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University. He previously clerked for the Montana Supreme Court.
The holiday season lends itself to wishful thinking. With that spirit in mind, I’m asking Santa to help the American people identify and elect a candidate willing to deliver this speech:
My fellow Americans,
I don’t have all the answers. The problems we face today cannot be solved by a couple of tweets nor by a single party. From artificial intelligence to zoonotic diseases, the threats to our well-being have picked up speed, increased in complexity and spread across borders. I wish simple solutions existed. I admit that I’m often as puzzled and surprised by the size and scale of the problems we face as you.
So, though I cannot promise you answers, I can make the following pledges: We will recruit the brightest experts from across America to help us monitor and understand the risks we face; we will collaborate and coordinate with our allies to ensure that the global community is acting in unison; and, we will update you quickly and honestly along the way.
You should also know that I’m going to make mistakes. Although I’m confident that we’re going to increase our capacity to study and solve problems, these policy issues are like Jenga pieces – moving one piece can have significant and unpredictable effects on the larger structure. In an ideal world, I could prevent my team from causing any structural instability; in our current world, wobbles and shakes are inevitable. I won’t hide those from you. Instead, I’ll let you know about missteps as quickly as I let you know about steps forward. In return, I plead for your patience. I know that’s a lot to ask for in an age of drone-delivered pizzas. Nevertheless, your trust is essential to this approach to governance.
I’m also going to have to make trade-offs – to pick winners and losers. This is the roughest part of my job. Though some decisions will have uncertain results, others will very clearly impact certain communities more so than others. Again, I’d much prefer to only make choices that increase the well-being of everyone. We don’t live in that world. I’ll tell you now that when I confront those trade-offs, I’m going to err on the side of our kids. Decisions made decades ago have fudged up the future. This generation and the ones that follow it will need all the help they can get to overcome the potholes we created and failed to cover.
At this point, I know I’ve lost some of you. For those still reading, thank you for bravely considering a different kind of politician. This campaign faces stiff headwinds; it’s akin to a sailboat launching in the middle of a hurricane. There’s a route through the storm, but getting there will require a lot of teamwork and a lot of discipline. I hope you’ll join my crew. I need you and I believe America needs our commitment to a better approach to solving our collective problems.
If you’re still on the fence about whether to join this cause, I urge you to consider how much the status quo has cost us. Our inclination to pick sides means we’re constantly operating at less than full speed. Our bias toward certainty means we’re failing to recognize the substantial uncertainty we face. Our acceptance of a stagnant system means we’re making complex policy problems even more difficult to address.
Let’s dare to learn together, to work together and to bring about a better future together.
Happy holidays.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump delivered his address days after the Supreme Court struck down the administration's tariff strategy, and amid a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf threatening Iran.
Some MAGA loyalists have turned on Trump. Why the rest haven’t
I recently watched "A Face in the Crowd" for the umpteenth time.
I had a better reason than procrastination to rewatch Elia Kazan’s brilliant 1957 film exploring populism in the television age. It was homework. I was asked to discuss it with Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz at the just-concluded TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles. As a pundit and an author, I do a lot of public speaking. But I don’t really do a lot of cool public speaking, so this was a treat.
With that not-very-humble brag out of the way, I had a depressing realization watching it this time.
"A Face in the Crowd" tells the story of a charming drifter with a dark side named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, played brilliantly by Andy Griffith. A singer with the gift of the gab, Rhodes takes off on radio but quickly segues to the brand-new medium of television. He becomes a national sensation — and political kingmaker — by forming a deep connection with the masses, particularly among the rural and working classes. His core audience is made up of people with grievances. “Everybody that’s got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle,” as Rhodes puts it.
The film’s climax (spoiler alert) comes when Rhodes’ manager and spurned lover, Marcia, turns on the microphone while the credits rolled at the end of “Cracker Barrel,” his national TV show. Rhodes tells his entourage what he really thinks of the “morons” in his audience. “Shucks, I can take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them for caviar. I can make them eat dog food, and they’ll think it’s steak. … Good night, you stupid idiots.”
It was a canonical “hot mic” moment in American cinema. But the idea that if people could glimpse the “real person” behind the popular facade, they’d turn on them is a very old theme in literature — think Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (1782) or Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s "The School for Scandal" (1777), in which diaries and letters do the work of microphones.
Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg were very worried about the ability of demagogues to whip up populist fervor and manipulate the masses through the power of TV, in part because everyone had already seen it happen with radio and film, by Father Coughlin in America and Hitler in Germany. But as dark as their vision was, they still clung to the idea that if the demagogue was exposed, the people would instantly turn on their leader in an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for the mass media age.
And that’s the source of my depressing realization. I think they were wrong. It turns out that once that organic connection is made, even a shocking revelation of the truth won’t necessarily break the spell.
In 2016, a lot of writers revisited "A Face in the Crowd" to understand the Trump phenomenon. After all, here was a guy who used a TV show — "The Apprentice" — and social media to build a massive following, going over the heads of the “establishment.” Trump’s own hot mic moment with "Access Hollywood," in which he boasted of his sexual predations, proved insufficient to undo him. That was hardly the only such moment for him. We’ve heard Trump bully the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes.” He told Bob Woodward he deliberately “played down” COVID-19. After leaving office, he was recorded telling aides he shouldn’t be sharing classified documents with them — then doing it anyway. And so on.
Trump’s famous claim that he could “shoot somebody” on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters may have been hyperbole. But it’s not crazy to think he wouldn’t lose as many voters as he should.
In the film, Lonesome Rhodes implodes when Americans encounter his off-air persona. The key to Trump’s success is that he ran as his off-air persona. Why people love that persona is a complicated question. Among the many complementary explanations is that he comes across as authentic, and some people value authenticity more than they value good character, honesty, or competence.
This is not just a problem for Republicans. Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner once had a Nazi tattoo and has said things about women as distasteful as Trump’s “grab them by (the genitals)” comments, and the Democratic establishment is rallying around him because he’s authentic — and because Democrats want to win that race.
Many prominent MAGA loyalists are turning on Trump these days. They claim — wrongly in my opinion — that he’s changed and that the Iran war is a betrayal of their cause. But if you look at the polls, voters who describe themselves as “MAGA” still overwhelmingly support Trump. In short, he still has the Fifth Avenue voters on his side.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.