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Trump’s Rabid Refusal to Regulate AI Isn’t Even Good for AI
If you were concerned that the air was getting too clean, the Trump administration has great news for you. On Monday, Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin announced that the Trump administration had finalized a rule to eliminate a Biden-era policy requiring fossil fuel–fired power plants to reduce their planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions starting in the 2030s. It has also proposed a supplemental rule that—if it is finalized and survives the inevitable legal challenges—would rescind “every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the power sector” and severely limit future administrations’ attempt to revive such rules. Using one of his favorite lines, Zeldin bragged that these changes amount to the “largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history.”
It was easy to miss this news amid all the talk about whether artificial intelligence will imminently “kill all humans,” a conversation sparked by researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned from Anthropic over fears that it and OpenAI “are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” The EPA’s announcement is nonetheless a clear win for Republicans and for the polluters who have been attacking rules to limit power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions since at least 2014, when the Obama administration first proposed its plan to cut power plant emissions. (The goal it set was to cut emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.) But Zeldin’s announcement is also a boon for the companies building AI data centers that are being predominantly powered by fossil fuels, including coal from old and revived coal plants. BloombergNEF has found that U.S. data centers are on track to consume more gas than most countries within a decade; 99 proposed gas-powered data center projects tracked by BloombergNEF could raise U.S. power-sector emissions by 20 percent.
It would be a mistake to let the AI hyperscalers’ warnings about “apocalyptic” risk overshadow the ongoing dangers posed by their business models. As Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk all rally behind proposals to “pace the frontier”—their peculiar way of describing the need to slow down AI development—pundits have marveled over the CEOs’ seemingly novel request for the federal government to regulate them. None of this is entirely new for top AI companies, however, whose employees and top executives have for years argued that the products they’re building could wipe out human civilization. As Amodei wrote in a long blog post over the weekend, Anthropic has “long supported sensible and targeted AI regulation, specifically bills that focus on transparency and on third-party auditing.” Trump dismissed Amodei’s and his colleagues’ warnings, arguing that the only “control” needed to deal with artificial intelligence is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT!”
In pouring cold water on the idea of regulating the AI industry, the Trump White House was pulling from a familiar playbook. The administration seems to have a one-size-fits-all approach to supporting its favorite industries, modeled on its generous handouts to the fossil fuel industry. That strategy isn’t especially complicated: Tear down regulatory barriers to growth, shower companies with tax breaks, and justify all of it in terms of national security. The overriding message here is to keep going as fast as possible for as long as possible—drill, baby, drill.
At the EPA especially, fossil fuel and AI boosterism are one and the same. As Hannah Story Brown reported in The American Prospect, turning the United States into the “AI capital of the world” is now a top priority for Zeldin’s EPA. Data center developers have already been able to take advantage of virtually on-demand “presidential exemptions” from parts of the Clean Air Act—in this case, limits on toxins like mercury, arsenic, and benzene—on the basis of “national security interests.” Zeldin has refused to establish nationwide requirements or recommendations for data centers’ air pollution and water usage; has proposed limiting public input on data center approvals; and has permitted data centers to start construction before attaining air pollution permits. A new report from the Environmental Protection Network—representing more than 800 former EPA employees—details 30 such actions taken by the administration. Even without accounting for recent rollbacks, the report projects that data center–driven air pollution could contribute to some 1,300 premature deaths and more than $20 billion in annual public health costs by 2028.
There are myriad reasons for the general public to be concerned about a gargantuan building binge getting carte blanche from the federal government to pollute. Thanks partly to new electricity demand from data centers, emissions from the power sector—the country’s second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions—rose by 4 percent last year, outpacing those from the rest of the economy. The engines and turbines that power them can emit nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and particulate matter linked to worsening asthma, strokes, and premature death, and which can harm children’s developing brains and nervous systems. But hyperscalers themselves—who haven’t seemed terribly concerned about all that—could find that a “drill, baby, drill” approach may not be in their best interest, either.
You don’t need to be completely cynical about executives’ mass-extinction warnings to understand the more quotidian benefits they might see in slowing down their debt-fueled arms race—and why Trump’s refusal to let it happen could be a problem. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine made the case this week for why a collective slowdown in frontier model development could actually be in the industry’s financial interest. The jockeying among AI “labs” to keep building and releasing ever more advanced models is extraordinarily expensive for all of them, requiring “ever-increasing billions of dollars of computing power,” Levine writes. If they all slowed down at the same time, they could spend less on computing power and keep charging “frontier-model prices for a longer time.” Coordinating a slowdown would seem to constitute a fairly straightforward violation of antitrust law, which forbids competitors’ collaborating to limit output. “But if they publish papers about how important it is to slow down, that might have a similar coordinating function,” Levine writes. “And if the government believes those papers, it might help them coordinate. Maybe the government will impose pacing by regulation that the labs could not impose by agreement. Or at least the government will let them get together and agree to slow down.”
Many things can be true at the same time: Amodei, Altman, and Musk really do seem to believe in the mounting existential risks of “superintelligence.” They could also have a financial interest in “pacing the frontier” and slowing down rapid-fire model development in ways that might protect the public too. There are any number of reasons to be skeptical of these executives’ intentions. OpenAI has lobbied extensively against state-level regulations on data centers and AI alike; OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife were MAGA Inc.’s largest donors in 2025. As much as Amodei has tried to position Anthropic as the “good guys,” his company is building a Minority Report–style “pre-crime” system that can alert authorities to crimes before they happen. So yes, it’s possible this is all just naked opportunism: Anthropic and OpenAI might just want to get relatively weak rules on the books while Republicans still control Congress and the White House. Maybe they’re banking on nothing passing at all, or just want to save face with a skeptical public.
But you don’t need to trust these guys to appreciate the prospective dilemma they face: Trump does not want them to slow down for any reason. If they really do want to “pace the frontier,” including for purely financial reasons, he could punish them. That would be bad news both for companies who might want the government to stop them all from spending so much money—and for anyone concerned that their products really are dangerous.
There’s precedent for this kind of thing in the oil industry, of all places. As Oklahoma prospectors drilled furiously in the early twentieth century, they begged regulators to stop them from driving down prices to unsustainable levels and cratering the market. In 1931, Texas Governor Ross Stirling declared martial law and sent 800 Texas National Guard troops to pry workers off their pump-jacks in the name of keeping prices high.
Whatever nonsense Trump and Zeldin might spew about “free markets,” industries depend on states to create rules that keep individual firms’ self-interest from undermining the industry as a whole.
Governments also don’t tend to like it when companies try to do that themselves. After years of oil and gas companies bingeing on debt to fund rapid-fire shale drilling, previously patient and generous Wall Street investors started to get nervous about that sector’s profitability. The industry began to practice “capital discipline,” prioritizing efficiency and returns over output. Among the loudest proponents of this approach was Pioneer CEO Scott Sheffield. “Everybody’s going to be disciplined, regardless of whether it’s $75 Brent, $80 Brent, or $100 Brent,” Sheffield said publicly in 2021. “All the shareholders that I’ve talked to said that if anybody goes back to growth, they will punish those companies.” The Federal Trade Commission subsequently accused Sheffield of engaging in “a series of efforts to coordinate output levels to keep production artificially low.” As I wrote at the time, the politics of all this were disorienting. While Republicans accused the Biden administration of waging war on fossil fuels, its FTC singled out Sheffield for limiting production while approving his company’s merger with ExxonMobil; Trump’s FTC eventually dropped the issue last summer.
Given its history and preference for avoiding volatility, Trump 2.0’s “drill, baby, drill” approach hasn’t been wholly popular with the traditionally GOP-aligned fossil fuel industry. Since he returned to office, executives have routinely complained in the Dallas Fed’s quarterly energy survey about the administration’s tariffs driving up their costs, as well as about chaos fueled by the Iran war and other half-baked policy drives. “Golly,” one exploration and production company executive wrote in the latest edition of the survey, released in June. “What could possibly be affecting our business other than a COVID-sized supply gap driven by a war being commandeered by an administration that just cannot tell the truth? They jawbone the price down basically every Sunday evening. If they know Hormuz reopening isn’t likely, it’ll make the medium-term supply issue ten times worse.” Another wrote that the “whiplash from diplomacy-by-social-media has become the single most unpredictable input in our planning. We don’t need certainty about the future, just certainty that policy won’t change between the morning and the afternoon.”
Silicon Valley might learn the hard way that being Trump’s favorite isn’t always a good thing. Hyperscalers have enjoyed the benefits of the EPA’s regulatory carve-outs for data centers and tried to preempt state regulations. They’ve spent years trying to get policymakers to tear down barriers to rapid-fire frontier model development, insisting that they’re the most responsible actors to be building mass-extinction machines. Amodei and Altman are probably not building a Machine God. They might reasonably want to stop spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year making machines they don’t fully understand, which they also believe could kill everyone. If these executives really do want frontier model development to be regulated, they should have to follow all the other lifesaving rules they’ve been skirting too.
Federal Workers Got Paid Billions Not to Work Thanks to DOGE
The federal government paid employees $9.5 billion not to work in 2025 as a result of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The New York Times, citing a new estimate from the Government Accountability Office, reports that DOGE’s deferred resignations program increased paid administrative leave by 435 percent in 2025. That’s an increase of over six times since 2023.
President Trump and Musk’s efforts have shrunk the federal workforce by 12 percent since the inauguration in January last year, but that has not translated into any savings. The Trump administration claims that the government has saved over $200 billion, but that has never been proven, and the federal deficit has only shot up thanks to the Iran war and Republican tax cuts passed last year.
Of the $9.5 billion figure, $6.7 billion was spent on DOGE’s deferred resignation offer, which about 139,963 federal employees took, resulting in several government departments losing their most experienced personnel. Many departments later scrambled to restaff those positions: The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization, found that over 20,000 federal jobs vacated by the resignation program have been backfilled. The federal government has also tried to recruit new employees to fill the void, focusing on early-career workers.
“Trump spent billions to push out experienced and badly needed experts across government — this was the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse,” said Democratic Senator Patty Murray in a statement Tuesday.
DOGE was supposed to reduce the size of the federal government and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, with Musk promising $1 trillion in savings. Instead, the entire program appears to be a massive example of setting taxpayer dollars on fire.
Mitch McConnell finally returns to Senate—and the crowd goes mild
After three months of dubious proof-of-life photos and statements, GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky officially made his comeback Monday night. But did he, really? And this was totally normal. The internet got to work, tracking down photos of the 84-year-old who once expedited the judiciary nomination process after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away.
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Trump to Drop Thousands on Public Signs Name-Calling the Smithsonian
The Trump administration has a lot of things “visitors should know” before entering the National Museum of American History.
According to reporting by The Atlantic, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is mobilizing the National Park Service to display at least a dozen signs around the National Museum of American History warning visitors of “ideologies that distract from a coherent and accurate presentation of America’s story” before they step foot on the premises. The signs are projected to cost at least $84,000.
This is the Trump administration’s latest attack on the Smithsonian, a cultural institution that has stood witness to the American story for 180 years. It comes after the September 8 announcement that Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s chief official and founder of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, will retire at the end of this year. Bunch has said that the repeated attacks from the Trump administration and pressure to eliminate exhibits representing “improper ideology,” such as anything to do with race, gender, or oppression, did not influence his decision.
In June, Donald Trump signed an executive order giving his administration unprecedented control over the institution, which he claimed “views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”
The White House Domestic Policy Council elaborated on Trump’s claims in an Independence Day report on the status of the institution. “The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic,” the report said.
When he announced the signs to Senators Jeff Merkley and Lisa Murkowski, Burgum said that the “informational signage therefore will provide visitors with important context about the exhibits they are about to encounter and the personal viewpoints that the curators of the exhibits are seeking to advance.”
“We believe the public should enter the museum fully equipped with the information needed to evaluate whether to invest their time in viewing these exhibits and programming,” he wrote in a letter to the senators.
It is not yet clear what exactly the “information needed” will be. The text of the signs or the plans for their physical structure is still undetermined, but Burgam’s letter suggests direct attacks on Smithsonian leaders, including Bunch and museum director Anthea Hartig.
Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are a textbook example of an administration using its power to manipulate how citizens encounter history and discredit institutions that challenge its preferred narrative—a stepping stone, of course, toward fascism.
Amazon gives its workers a raise of $1 per hour
Sept. 16: Trump’s unpopularity increases … and more!
32 minutes agoWalter EinenkelInline comment thread counts are up and running!Jump into the comments to talk about the stories you’d like to talk about.Copy linkShare on FacebookShare on XShare via email 9 minutes agoWalter EinenkelICE is rushing to fire everyone it never should have hired.WaPo: In recent months, the agency has begun quietly firing some of the recruits, according to three former…
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Canada Invited to Join European Union After All of Trump’s Nonsense
The European Union has offered Canada an associate membership, a move that underscores eroding relations with the United States caused directly by President Trump’s spiteful trade war and general disrespect.
“We must urgently reimagine our partnerships.... I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the European Union,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday.
Von der Leyen emphasized that the invitation was “not a partnership against anyone else, but for our common strength.” And yet Trump’s trade war on Canada—alongside his deranged threats to take over the country and make it the 51st state—is only growing in its unpopularity. On top of that, Trump’s reduced support for NATO and Ukraine has alienated most of the European Union, while his erratic trade war has only made things worse.
“It’s not just Europe backing away from the United States. Leaders of America’s partners in Asia and the Middle East are quietly doing the same,” Jon Finer, former deputy national security adviser under President Biden, told The New York Times. “The second Trump administration’s ostentatious corruption, trade conflicts, military adventurism and mercurial artificial intelligence regulation have produced a new moment in international affairs: a nearly global grand strategy of countries distancing themselves from the world’s most powerful nation.”
While it’s unclear what exactly Canada’s potential membership would look like, it’s obvious that Canada is looking elsewhere as their relationship with their strongest ally flounders.
“You’re very welcome in this house, and I hope you’re already feeling comfortable amongst the member states sitting here,” German politician Terry Reintke told Carney on Wednesday. “Because we hope to see you there very often in the future.”
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Every Democrat Who Voted Against Impeaching Trump
House Democrats launched another hail Mary bid to impeach President Donald Trump, but the effort was undercut by members of their own party.
More than a dozen Democrats joined 213 Republicans in voting “no” Tuesday night. Another 46 Democrats simply voted “present,” including some of the lower chamber’s biggest names: Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar.
It was the third time in two years that the liberal party has tried to oust Trump from the Oval Office, but the proposal—introduced by Texas Representative Al Green—did not receive support from party leadership before Green forced the vote. One Democrat described the situation to Axios as “fucked up,” while others derided the effort as a distraction, with the spectre of midterms mere weeks away.
“Impeachment is a sacred constitutional vehicle designed to hold a corrupt executive accountable for abuse of power, breaking the law and violating the public trust,” Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar wrote in a joint statement Monday. “The effort traditionally requires a comprehensive investigative process.”
Green, who cited the various deaths caused by federal immigration agents as his rationale for impeachment, described the vote as a “life and death” matter. He initially filed the articles in August.
Eighteen Democrats ultimately voted against impeaching Trump. They are:
- Kathy Castor (Florida)
- Emanuel Cleaver (Missouri)
- James Clyburn (South Carolina)
- Henry Cuellar (Texas)
- Don Davis (North Carolina)
- Shomari Figures (Alabama)
- Laura Gillen (New York)
- Jared Golden (Maine)
- Adam Gray (California)
- Rick Larsen (Washington)
- Susie Lee (Nevada)
- Kristen McDonald Rivet (Michigan)
- Jared Moskowitz (Florida)
- Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington)
- Josh Riley (New York)
- Hillary Scholten (Michigan)
- Darren Soto (Florida)
- Tom Suozzi (New York)
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Missouri’s secretary of state is one corrupt character
Poor, poor Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins. He’s just out here living his best life, wearing his finest red blazer, doing his best to deliver Missouri votes to the GOP by hook or by crook, but it turns out he kinda did the latter part way, way too much, and those chickens seem to be coming home to roost. First up: A new whistleblower lawsuit alleges that, among other things…
Will SUNRISE ON THE REAPING Be the Best HUNGER GAMES Movie Ever? Trailer Says Yes
- The new trailer for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping sows the seeds for revolution.
- The prequel story will follow Haymitch Abernathy when he entered the arena during the Second Quarter Quell.
- Nerdist’s Take: This latest trailer for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is the franchise’s best trailer ever.
The Hunger Games film side is currently tied with its book counterparts for most installments, since Suzanne Collins’ third entry Mockingjay got the split-movie treatment. But the cinematic side will soon one-up the novels when The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arrives in theaters. And based on the movie’s fantastic new trailer, it might also end up being the best big-screen installment yet. You can watch the new The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping trailer below.
Nerdist’s Take: This Sunrise on the Reaping Trailer Is the Hunger Games‘ Best Trailer EverI’ve seen every single The Hunger Games movie trailer ever made, and this one for Sunrise on the Reaping is the best-looking one yet. And I mean that both aesthetically and in terms of the story itself. This tale takes place a quarter century before Katniss Everdeen entered the arena. But the seeds for her revolution began when her future mentor Haymitch was named as one of District 12’s tributes for the 50th Annual Hunger Games. That infamous event, known as the Second Quarter Quell, featured twice as many tributes as any competition before or after. It’s also where Snow’s downfall began. The beauty, suspense, and tragedy we feel in this trailer has us feeling like Sunrise on the Reaping might be the best Hunger Games movie to date.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping SynopsisIn addition to the trailer, Lionsgate shares the following synopsis for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping:
Set in the world of Panem 24 years before the events of The Hunger Games, the story follows Haymitch (Joseph Zada) into the arena, where he forms an unlikely alliance with fellow tribute Maysilee Donner (Mckenna Grace) and joins a coalition determined to challenge the Capitol’s control under President Snow (Ralph Fiennes). As the competition unfolds, Haymitch risks everything to take down the Games from within the arena — setting in motion the rebellion that will change Panem forever.
Lionsgate
The film comes from franchise stalwart director Francis Lawrence. It also stars Jesse Plemons, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Elle Fanning, Maya Hawke, Whitney Peak, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. So, you know, not the worst cast.
Will The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping Be the Best Hunger Games Movie Ever?Will The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping deliver on the promise of this trailer? Will it be the best film in the franchise’s history? We’ll find out when the games begin in theaters on November 20. But we’re certainly feeling like the answer may be, “YES.”
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.The post Will SUNRISE ON THE REAPING Be the Best HUNGER GAMES Movie Ever? Trailer Says Yes appeared first on Nerdist.
Why MAGA Went Gaga for Putin
My new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America (HarperCollins), was published this week. It covers how Russia has mounted multiple influence and disinformation operations against US elections (often to help Trump) since 2016 and how Trump, the GOP, MAGA, and right-wing media have aided and abetted this attack by denying it’s occurring.
The book is an attempt to reclaim the Trump-Russia narrative in the face of Trump’s decadelong crusade to brand it a “hoax.” Putin has been waging a twilight war against the United States and the West, and Trump and his crew have unilaterally surrendered, and there are now signs Moscow intends to meddle in the midterms to assist Trump.
Below is an excerpt of the book from Chapter 14 (“Useful Idiots”) that first appeared in my Our Land newsletter and that shows how MAGA and many on the right came to be fans of Putin, a repressive and murderous tyrant and war criminal. This is a major development within the conservative movement that has not drawn sufficient attention.
But first, a video promoting the book, narrated by the inestimable Nick Offerman:
Tucker Carlson began his nightly Fox News show on February 22, 2022, talking about Vladimir Putin. A few days earlier, President Biden had revealed that the United States possessed intelligence indicating the Russian leader planned to invade Ukraine imminently, and Carlson was furious that Putin was being demonized. He railed:
Since the day that Donald Trump became president, Democrats in Washington have told you you have a patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason. Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin. Maybe you’re one of them. Hating Putin has become the central purpose of American foreign policy. It’s the main thing that we talk about… Very soon that hatred of Vladimir Putin could bring the United States into a conflict in Eastern Europe…What is this really about?
Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions. And the answer to all of them is no…So why does permanent Washington hate him so much?
Carlson dismissed the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict as a mere “border dispute.”
This soft-on-Putin stance was not surprising. During Trump’s first impeachment in 2019, Carlson had huffed, “Why do I care what’s going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?! And I’m serious. Like, why do I care? And why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.”
Carlson deployed Russia denialism to justify his support for Putin.
A week after that declaration, Carlson doubled down and said he opposed the sanctions the United States had imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea. “I think we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine,” he remarked. And he tied his pro-Putin fervor to the Trump-Russia scandal. Referring to journalists who had challenged the Ukraine-did-it conspiracy theory about the 2016 election, he exclaimed, “Putin, for all his faults, does not hate America as much as many of these people do.”
He went on: “Russia didn’t hack our democracy. The whole thing was a talking point, a ludicrous talking point, invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign on or about November 9, 2016, to explain their unexpected defeat in the last presidential election.” Carlson had deployed Russia denialism to justify his support for Putin.
Now, with Putin on the verge of launching an all-out war against Ukraine to seize territory and prevent his neighbor from joining NATO, Carlson was on the side of the Russian dictator. His comments encapsulated the titanic shift that had occurred in recent years within the conservative movement. During the Cold War, a core principle of Republicans and conservatives was opposition to the Soviet Union. The GOP had long crusaded against the Red Peril. Ronald Reagan in 1983 decried the Soviet Union as “the Evil Empire.” For decades, the hawks dominated within the Republican Party. In 2012, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Russia America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”
After Trump faced accusations of colluding with Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, his supporters came to see Putin, the enemy of their political enemies, as, if not a friend, then at least not an enemy.
But Trump—and America’s culture wars—had changed all that. While campaigning in 2016, Trump repeatedly displayed his affection for Putin and praised the Russian for being “strong” and for speaking well of Trump. Many of Trump’s followers were swept along.
After Trump faced accusations of colluding with Russia’s attack on the 2016 election—accusations he and his propagandists characterized as the evil fantasies of the Democrats, the media, and the Deep State—his supporters came to see Putin, the enemy of their political enemies, as, if not a friend, then at least not an enemy. After all, if Putin was the Democrats’ boogeyman, he couldn’t be all that bad.
Other factors contributed to the Right’s embrace of Putin. The conservative movement had long been a home for so-called America First isolationists who now viewed (as did far-left anti-interventionists) assaults on Putin as provocations that could lead to US involvement in an overseas conflict. Some within this camp considered the extension of NATO toward Russia and attacks on Putin to be the handiwork of imperialists and neoconservative hawks angling for war and the expansion of US hegemony. And Putin’s staunch opposition to gay and transgender rights, his purported advocacy of “traditional values,” and his support for the Orthodox Church, a mainstay of cultural conservatism, resonated with certain Americans. The measures that the religious right in the United States was pushing in state legislatures—anti-transgender bills and so-called Don’t Say Gay legislation—echoed Russian laws.
During Obama’s presidency, right-wingers hailed Putin’s toughness, largely as a dig at Obama. “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, told Sean Hannity on Fox News. “They look at [Obama] as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.” The conservative cable channel promoted a side-by-side image of Obama wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle and Putin bare- chested on a horse.
Far-right commentator and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who feared the end of “White America” and the death of “Christian America,” looked to Putin for inspiration. “Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?” he wrote in The American Conservative in 2013. “In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?” In 2014, Buchanan hailed Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea as part of the Russian’s overarching goal to turn Moscow into “the Godly City of today and command post of the counterreformation against the new paganism.” He opined, “In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.” For Buchanan and other Christian nationalists, Putin was a global commander in the culture wars.
Mainstream Republicans—a shrinking band—still considered Putin a threat and Russia a strategic adversary. But a significant slice of the Right had jumped on Trump’s pro-Putin bandwagon. During the 2016 campaign, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza tweeted that what Trump admires about Putin “is the way Putin—unlike someone else we know—LOVES his country & FIGHTS for its interests.”
According to Gallup, Putin’s favorable rating among Democrats dropped from 15 percent to 10 percent between 2015 and 2017, yet with Republicans, it increased dramatically from 12 percent to 32 percent.
The following year, right-wing author Ann Coulter, picking up on the Buchanan vibe, declared, “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European”—apparently meaning white. Christopher Caldwell, a prominent right-wing commentator, gave a speech at Hillsdale College in which he said, “If we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time.”
Putin had originally leaned into conservative values to bolster his domestic support from tradition-minded Russians unsettled by the rapid changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He then took this pitch international and positioned himself as a leader against the decadent and relativist modern values rooted in the West—a stance that resonated within the American right.
Despite his military aggression and the brutal and thuggish repression he imposed on Russia—locking up rivals and critics, rigging elections, shutting down the opposition, suppressing the media, eliminating an independent judiciary, invading neighboring countries, murdering foes—he won support and a degree of admiration within MAGA. According to the pollster Gallup, Putin’s favorable rating among Democrats dropped from 15 percent to 10 percent between 2015 and 2017, yet with Republicans, it increased dramatically from 12 percent to 32 percent. The Americans warmest to Putin were Christian nationalists.
By the time Putin ratcheted up his threats against Ukraine in early 2022, he had won over a chunk of American conservatives, with some MAGA figures declaring they cared not a whit about a military attack on Ukraine.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, tweeted, “I’m more concerned with the US-Mexico border than the Russia-Ukraine border. Not sorry.” Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who had become part of the QAnon movement, said of Putin, “The guy’s a very strong leader. He’s been in charge for a long time. And he’s not going to put up with the nonsense he’s seeing in Europe.” JD Vance, then a GOP candidate for Senate in Ohio, remarked, “It’s ridiculous we’re focused on this border in Ukraine…I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” And Charlie Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump youth group, took Putin’s side and echoed the Russian talking point that many in Ukraine desired a Russian intervention: “It feels as if Putin is going into places that want him. They have voted overwhelmingly to be part of it. It is a family dispute that we shouldn’t get in the midst of, that’s for certain.”
Putin’s efforts to covertly assist Trump in 2016 were still paying off. As Moscow prepared for war, pro-Trump voices in America were either on Putin’s side or contending the coming invasion meant little for the United States. They were ensuring that partisan politics would shape—and possibly hamper—the US response to a full-scale Russian invasion.
What a propaganda triumph for Putin: the former American president referring to the invasion force Putin had assembled on the Russia-Ukraine border as peacekeepers.
In this fraught pre-invasion period, Trump couldn’t resist praising the Russian leader. During a radio interview, he extolled Putin for the “smart” move of sending “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen” to the Ukraine border to threaten Kyiv. “This is genius,” Trump said. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine—of Ukraine—Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful…He used the word independent and ‘We’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”
What a propaganda triumph for Putin: the former American president referring to the invasion force Putin had assembled on the Russia-Ukraine border as peacekeepers. Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, tweeted, “Former President Trump’s adulation of Putin today—including calling him a ‘genius’—aids our enemies.”
With war almost at hand, MAGA strategist Steve Bannon and Erik Prince, the onetime head of the controversial Blackwater private security firm, had a jocular exchange on Bannon’s podcast about their fondness for the Russian leader. “Putin ain’t woke,” Bannon declared. “He’s anti-woke.” Prince replied, “The Russian people still know which bathroom to use.” Bannon countered, “How many genders are there in Russia?” Two, Prince answered. “They don’t have the pride flags,” Bannon said.
On the day of the invasion, Bannon echoed Putin’s propaganda, telling his listeners and viewers, “Ukraine’s not even a country. It’s kind of a concept.” He added, “It’s just a corrupt area where the Clintons have turned into a colony where you can steal money out of.” Carlson pushed the same Putin-friendly talking point: “Ukraine is not a democracy. It has never been a democracy in its history, and it’s not now. It is a client state of the Biden administration.” No surprise, his remarks were promoted on Russian state television. (Several days earlier, Putin had called Ukraine a “puppet” of the United States.)
At the Conservative Political Action Conference underway at this time, Lauren Witzke, a conservative media personality, QAnoner, and recently failed GOP candidate for the US Senate in Delaware, summed it up: “Here’s the deal. Russia is a Christian nationalist nation. They’re actually Russian Orthodox…I identify more with Putin’s Christian values than I do with Joe Biden.”
On February 24, 2022, Putin launched extensive air strikes and a ground invasion against Ukraine from the north, south, and east. His goal was to decapitate the Ukrainian government and conquer the country within ten days, but Ukrainian forces mounted a stiff resistance. As Russia pummeled civilian targets, both sides hunkered down for what would become a long, bloody, and costly conflict.
Despite the death and destruction caused by Putin, prominent conservatives and Trumpers defended, justified, or supported the Russian assault.
At CPAC, Trump decried the Russian attack as “appalling” and “an outrage and an atrocity,” and he insisted it would not have happened if he had been in the White House. But he also called Putin “smart” and said the Russian leader was “playing Biden like a drum.” At a competing conference in Florida of white nationalists—which was addressed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican—Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, Holocaust denier, and Hitler fan boy, solicited applause for Russia’s invasion and whipped up the crowd to chant, “Putin! Putin! Putin!”
Despite the death and destruction caused by Putin, prominent conservatives and Trumpers defended, justified, or supported the Russian assault. Religious right leader Pat Robertson emerged from retirement to declare that Putin “is being compelled by God” to invade Ukraine. Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, a Republican and fanatical 2020 election denier, slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a globalist puppet for Soros and the Clintons.” (Globalist was a common code word used by antisemites to disparage Jews.) Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican, remarked, “Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug. Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”
Greene signal-boosted one of Putin’s most noxious talking points: Ukraine was run by Nazis, and the war had been initiated to rescue the Ukrainian people from these fascists. (This was a bonkers assertion, especially since Zelenskyy was Jewish.) She tweeted, “NATO has been supplying the neoNazis in Ukraine with powerful weapons and extensive training on how to use them. What the hell is going on with these #NATONazis?” In an interview, she was a cheerleader for Putin: “There is no win for Ukraine here. Russia is being very successful in their invasion.”
Non-MAGA remnants in the GOP were sticking with Ukraine. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed Cawthorn and Greene as “a few lonely voices off to the side,” and told CBS News, “The vast majority of the Republican Party writ large, both in the Congress and across the country, are totally behind the Ukrainians.” But much of MAGA was lost. Appearing on the podcast of a white supremacist and Holocaust denier, Witzke declared, “Everybody affiliated or standing with Ukraine is either transgender, a Satanist, or a straight-up Nazi.”
I hope that whets your appetite for How Russia Won. You can learn more about the book or order it here. And you can find it wherever you purchase books.
WILDWOOD Delivers a Stunning Final Stunning Trailer
- LAIKA announced tickets are now on sale for Wildwood with one last stunning, emotional trailer.
- The film promises to take viewers on a powerful story full of danger and driven by love through a magical realm.
- Nerdist’s Take: Wildwood‘s trailers have been gorgeous from start-to-finish, which is why we want to see it right now.
What would you do to save someone you love? Where would you go? What would you risk? Those questions are at heart of the final, truly magical trailer for LAIKA’s next film, Wildwood. The stop-motion animation studio is going to the Impassable Wilderness for a dangerous adventure that looks both moving and gorgeous.
I learned a long time ago that a great, emotional trailer does not guarantee an excellent film. (Pearl Harbor taught me that lesson.) But I would wager everything I have that Wildwood will not go down that path. Not only does LAIKA— known for projects like Kubo and the Two Strings, Coraline, ParaNorman—have an impeccable track record, every promo for this film has been absolutely stunning. This is hand-made, stop-motion animation that feels as magical as the story it’s telling.
The official synopsis also promises a powerful story about determination. From LAIKA:
When Prue McKeel’s baby brother is taken into the mysterious forest beyond Portland, she sets out to bring him home and discovers a hidden world on the brink of war.
LAIKA
The film comes from director Travis Knight (Masters of the Universe, Kubo and the Two Strings). He reunited with screenwriter Chris Butler. It features a cast just as impressive as its visuals and story: Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali, Richard E. Grant, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg, Tom Waits, Charlie Day, Blythe Danner, Arthur Knight, Maya Erskine, Jake Johnson, Tantoo Cardinal, Rob Delaney, Jemaine Clement, Marc Evan Jackson, Len Cariou, and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.
This final trailer also doubles as an announcement because tickets for Wildwood are now on sale. And that’s the only bad news about anything related to this film. Tickets might be on sale, but Wildwood‘s theatrical adventure doesn’t start for another month. It arrives on October 23, 2026 despite the fact we want to see it right now. But if we have to wait we can at least watch this trailers another 500 times.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.The post WILDWOOD Delivers a Stunning Final Stunning Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.