‘I Have Trump Derangement Syndrome’

It’s Thursday, October 17, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Hollywood finally makes a good Trump movie; a century-old libel against Jews; is the “shaken baby” execution unjust?; why Brianna Wu feels abandoned by progressives; and more. But first, Joe Nocera admits he has Trump Derangement Syndrome—and thinks you should, too.

Joe Nocera is suffering from “TDS,” and he isn’t ashamed to admit it. When our beloved Free Press columnist isn’t loudly condemning Donald Trump’s character, he’s ranting about all of the policy blunders of our 45th president. It’s sometimes difficult to get work done sharing an office with Joe, as he drones on about Trump publishing his own Bible or selling gold-plated sneakers for $499 a pop.

But, Joe explains, “that’s one of the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome: Once you start in on one of his many character flaws, it’s just so hard to stop.” 

Given that Joe was struggling to keep it all inside, we gave him some space to let it all out. Not unlimited space, mind you. (His original draft was 15,000 words long.) 

To hear Joe tell it, Trump is a grifter, “an acknowledged sexual abuser,” a racist, a narcissist, someone who has “zero interest in the rule of law” and “makes ridiculous decisions, like determining that Janet Yellen could not be renominated to chair the Federal Reserve because she is ‘too short.’ ” 

“You’re damn right I have Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Joe concludes. “I wish all Americans had it. We would be far better off.” 

Read Joe Nocera on why his sickness should be your sickness come Election Day.

No prizes for guessing who Joe will be voting for come November. But Free Press columnist Martin Gurri is choosing the opposite side. For the last two election cycles, Gurri has belonged to the “a plague on both your houses” party, refusing to vote for either candidate. But this time he will cast a (reluctant) vote for Donald Trump. Not because he thinks all of Joe’s criticisms are wrong. In fact, he admits Trump is an inveterate liar. 

“The man spouts industrial amounts of nonsense,” he writes. “But in politics, everything is relative. The entire public character of the Biden administration rested on a colossal lie, in which Kamala Harris was complicit: that the president was a wise, energetic senior, fully engaged in the nation’s business. That massive deception, promulgated for years by an irresponsible media in defiance of the evidence of our own eyes, amounted to state propaganda, many orders of magnitude more destructive of trust than the worst of Trump’s outrages.”

Why vote for Trump? Because “there are only two vital forces in American politics today: those who wish to control everything, and those who wish not to be controlled. Reluctantly, I choose the latter.”

Read Martin Gurri: “I Refused to Vote in the Last Two Elections. Now, I’m Voting for Trump.”

Finally, a Good Trump Movie

Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice. (Tailored Films LTD)

And speaking of Trump Derangement Syndrome. . . the phenomenon applies to art as well as life. On-screen, the former president has always been portrayed as either evil or a buffoon. Just think Saturday Night Live, Our Cartoon President, or The Comey Rule. 

But River Page writes that Ali Abbasi’s new film The Apprentice has succeeded where all previous attempts have failed. The film portrays “Donald Trump as a man. Not a good man, but a real one, a complex character, a human being.” And for that reason, he argues, it’s the first truly good on-screen depiction of our former president.

Read River on the first real representation of Trump. 

The Hundred-Year Holy War 

For many Western progressives, October 7 symbolizes an attempt to liberate Palestinians from their Israeli oppressors. But that’s not how Hamas operatives see it. By their own proclamation, it was an act of jihad, or holy war. 

Eli Lake argues that the Israel-Hamas conflict is not just about Palestinian self-determination but is premised on a century-long lie to do with Jerusalem. Namely, that “Jews have no place in their ancestral homeland, and they threaten the third holiest site in Islam,” Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. And that libel, used to justify a hundred years of violence against Jews, “stems directly from one man”: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the first leader of Palestine. 

Click here to read Eli’s latest essay. (Or, if you’d rather listen, you can find the podcast version here.)

What Happened to the Democratic Party? 

At The Free Press we see a lot of people whose politics have shifted over the past few years, whether that’s about gender transitions for minors, Standing Rock, or antisemitism. But very few have experienced that evolution in the public glare in the way that this week’s guest Brianna Wu has. 

“I can’t think of anyone else quite like her,” says Bari of Wu, who she sat down with for the latest episode of Honestly. As Bari explains: “She’s a transwoman who advocates passionately for trans healthcare, but thinks many trans activists have alienated women and feminists. She’s a progressive who once called AOC ‘one of the best politicians in America’ but is also a staunch supporter of Israel. She was attacked by an alt-right mob during ‘Gamergate,’ but now thinks the political left acts just like that mob.”

Have Brianna’s politics changed? Or is it the Democratic Party that has undergone a transformation? Brianna argues it’s the latter. Listen to Bari and Brianna discuss exactly what happened to the Democratic Party, and how it can once again become the party of common sense on the latest episode of Honestly. Click the play button below to listen to their conversation, or catch it on the Honestly feed wherever you get your podcasts.

 

• With the election just weeks away, Kamala Harris faced a tough grilling from Fox News journalist Bret Baier last night. The interview covered everything from the border and the economy to geopolitics. Maybe Harris’s weakest moment was when Baier asked her response to the fact that, after three and a half years of the Biden-Harris administration, 79 percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track. “And Donald Trump has been running for office,” she said. (Huh?) Baier also asked about Harris’s recent comments that “nothing comes to mind” about what she would do differently from President Biden. She replied: “Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” 

• Almost 581,000 votes have already been cast in Georgia, just two days after in-person voting began. Following last cycle’s election fraud claims, Georgia tightened voter ID laws despite charges of voter suppression. Democrats accused Republicans of bringing about Jim Crow 2.0, but the early voting rate is more than double that of 2020. “The votes are coming in, and they’re coming in at a nice level for us,” said the ever-clairvoyant Trump. Forecasting guru Nate Silver currently has Trump ahead of Harris by two points in Georgia in his polling average.

• Trump’s financial losses at his Aberdeenshire golf course have doubled in the last year, according to newly released figures. It’s more bad news for Trump’s Scottish course, following a New York court’s ruling in September 2023 that he fraudulently overvalued it. The Trump Organization is still forging ahead with its plan to build a second course on the estate in the face of significant Scottish resistance, as reported by Jacob Furedi in The Free Press last week: “If the original course was a metaphor for Trump’s triumph during his first presidential campaign, the second could be a symbol of his unraveling.”

• Robert Roberson, 57, a death row inmate in Texas, is scheduled to die today. He was charged with murder after his two-year-old daughter died in 2002 from what the autopsy characterized as death from “shaking” and “blows.” But experts now dispute whether “shaken baby syndrome” is a reliable diagnosis for criminal cases. Roberson’s lawyers argue their client is innocent; his daughter had no history or previous signs of abuse, and they argue she died from a combination of pneumonia and medication that is no longer prescribed to children. Roberson was diagnosed with autism in 2018, which his lawyers say explains his seemingly unemotional response to his daughter’s death. Though many support clemency for Roberson, including crime novelist John Grisham and 86 bipartisan state lawmakers, their efforts have been unsuccessful.

• British Parliament has introduced a proposal to legalize assisted suicide for patients with terminal diagnoses. Prime Minister Keir Starmer says there are “grounds for changing the law.” Under current legislation, pushing someone off the ledge (even while wearing a white coat) is a criminal offense. Disability rights groups say it should remain that way or vulnerable people will face pressure to end their lives. For an idea of how liberalized assisted suicide laws combined with socialized medicine pans out, look no further than Rupa Subramanya’s Free Press dispatch from Canada.

• Mark Robinson—North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial candidate and allegedly self-styled “black Nazi”—has sued CNN for defamation over its coverage of his antigay, racially charged posts on pornography sites. Accusing CNN of orchestrating a “coordinated attack aimed at derailing his campaign,” Robinson described the potentially campaign-sinking story as “salacious tabloid trash.” If reporting on this “tabloid trash” is a crime, lock us up. He’s seeking $50 million in damages and has vowed to stay in the race, but is now polling 14 points behind his Democratic opponent.
  

• An anti-Israel TikTokker filmed herself tearing down what she thought were Israeli flags outside a restaurant in New Jersey. “Free Palestine, bitch!” she said, ripping into the bunting outside of Efi’s Gyro in Montclair. When the staff looked confused, she yelled: “You know there’s a genocide.” A member of staff soon explained to her that the blue and white flags—and the restaurant—were Greek. 

In 2023, Tennessee banned medicalized gender transitions for minors. In June, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge after circuit courts split on the issue. The court has yet to schedule the case. But the stakes are high—mainly because half the states in the country have similar bans. 

One such state is Alabama, whose attorney general, Steve Marshall, filed a blockbuster amicus brief on Tuesday in support of Tennessee’s law. In his brief, Marshall warned that the use of transgender drugs and surgeries on minors amounts to “a medical, legal, and political scandal that will be studied for decades to come.” And in support of that argument, he cited none other than Abigail Shrier’s 2021 piece for The Free Press that featured exclusive interviews with two prominent gender medicine providers who warned about the dangers of “gender-affirming” care for minors—and the suppression of dissent in their field. Read Abigail’s piece, “Top Trans Doctors Blow the Whistle on ‘Sloppy’ Care.” 

Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor for The Free Press. Follow her on X @madeleinekearns. 

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